Showing papers in "Comparative Education Review in 1986"

Educational Decentralization: Weak State or Strong State?

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to demystify the concept of educational decentralization, particularly with respect to the role of the state in education.' The announced purposes of policies of decentralization, namely, increased participation in decision making at the local level and improved system efficiency, are laudable. But there is much confusion about the meaning of the concept and about what actually happens in the process.2 A major source of confusion about decentralization is in the most commonly used definition of the term. Centralization or decentralization is used conventionally to refer to the relationship between the government and the individual citizen.3 A centralized political system is defined as one in which a central government holds most or all authority and power. A decentralized system is one in which power and authority have been shifted down a ladder of aggregation. Decentralization is seen as a process of transferring or "devolving" power and authority from large to small units of governance. The smallest unit is the individual citizen, the atom of society. Authors who (implicitly) use this definition end up with privatization or the doctrine of the free market and the "sovereignty of the

Civic Values Learned in School: Policy and Practice in Industrialized Nations.

Abstract: International trade in educational ideas has been important since the Middle Ages and, to a lesser extent, before. Sometimes imports have flourished, whereas in other cases they have failed. In still other instances, foreign and national practices have come to coexist. Foreign influences have been especially important in shaping broad educational goals and new institutional structures. This exchange continues: once again, in the 1980s, reports of high student achievement in other nations have fueled proposals for educational reform in the United States. There has, however, been little comparative concern with values in education.' One reason for this lack of explicit concern for how values are taught and learned in other countries may be the long-standing tendency of U.S. Americans to view their educational system's impact on civic or moral values as responsive to unique historic and cultural circumstances and to claim superiority for U.S. methods of civic and moral education. In 1899, for example, the Committee of Seven of the American Historical Association conducted a study of education in Europe. Although they identified some promising practices, they concluded that "German and French schools regard pupils as subjects rather than citizens, while English instruction was chaotic and entirely lacking in attention to civil government."2 One can find opinions not too different in recent writing. By the late 1800s, two trends in the United States had, in fact, made American schools different from those in Europe. The first was the rapid growth of the free public high school operated under local control, financed by taxation, and open to students of a wide range of backgrounds. This institution was notably different from the more centralized (often religious)

Planning and Policy Analysis in Education: What Can Economics Tell Us?.

Abstract: Over the past several decades there has been increased enthusiasm for attempting to govern societal development "rationally." This has led to widespread attention to the means of planning public sector activities, often at the national level, especially in Third World Countries (TWCs). Education, which uses a substantial proportion of most nations' government expenditures, has been increasingly subject to such rationalization. The field of economics, more than other disciplines, has played a large role in shaping and guiding the nature of this rationalization of educational planning and policy-making. In my reading of the economics literature on educational planning and policy analysis,' I have been struck by two things: how little the predominant discussions and debates have changed in the last 20 years or so;2 and how narrow a sample of relevant economics perspectives are featured in these discussions. This paper is intended to help remedy this latter deficiency. Joseph P. Farrell, in a 1975 CER symposium on educational planning, argued that one of the key problems has been that the planning "field was early on 'captured' by economists and has been defined largely in, or in reaction to, their terms."3 The point of this paper is that the field has been captured by a very narrow segment of economics views, and it is important to be aware that there are a variety of other perspectives within economics, each supported by adherents and evidence, that offer very different implications for how we conceive of and practice educational planning and policy analysis.

Determinants of Educational Participation in Rural Nepal

Abstract: Nepal is one of the world's poorest and least-developed nations. Annual individual income is estimated at little more than $120 per person. With a population of some 15 million, Nepal's gross national product (GNP) had reached only $170 per person in 1982, placing it slightly ahead of Chad, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia but behind all the world's 121 other major countries. Moreover, Nepal is one of only a dozen countries whose annual growth rate in GNP per capita in recent years has been negative.'

Gibush: The Rhetoric of Cohesion in Israeli School Culture.

Abstract: an organizational fixture rather than a culturally constituted phenomenon. It is therefore rather sobering to learn that in European education "this structure, without which it is hard to imagine school life, dates back no further than the sixteenth or late fifteenth century, and did not assume its final form until the beginning of the seventeenth."3 The modern school class, according to Aries, corresponds (a) to a stage in the progressive acquisition of knowledge (represented by the curriculum); (b) to an average age; (c) to a physical, spatial unit; and (d) to a period of time. Oddly enough, this account leaves out an additional sense of the term "class" as it is routinely employed both in everyday and in scholarly educational discourse: the "class" also corresponds (e) to a particular grouping of students. This understanding of the notion of the "class" as an emergent, transcendent social unit-that is, as a collective possessing properties that are not reducible to the properties of the individual students in it-is hinted at in Aries's observation that "each class

Is Primary School Quality Eroding in the Third World

Abstract: When visiting Third World schools, clear signs of low quality are abundant: classrooms bare of desks or places even to sit, scarce reading materials, and poorly trained teachers often presenting deadly routinized lessons But surprisingly, we know very little about current levels of and recent trends in school quality among developing countries We do know that school enrollments have expanded dramatically over the past 3 decades But has the priority placed on expansion led to a costly decline in the quality and efficiency of Third World schools? In addition, we have no empirical data to help us to understand why some developing nations may have sustained adequate levels of quality and why others may have not This ignorance is all the more troubling as emerging research shows that educational quality, not only the quantity of schooling, strongly shapes academic achievement and eventual economic returns to educational in-

Toward a General Theory of Education

Abstract: There are two types of theories of education: normative theories and sociological theories. The first-normative theories-are generated by philosophers and educators. They are based on conceptions of what constitutes a good education and focus on how to implement these conceptions in terms of structures, contents, and methods. Sociological theories, on the other hand, analyze concrete situations and assess the changing meaning and role of education in the broader social context. The two types of theories are not mutually exclusive. In reality, normative theories can always be interpreted sociologically. The ideas of a theorist are never independent from space, time, and the environment in which they evolved. The degree to which such ideas are accepted is due to historical context. Plato's educational ideas, for example, envisioned in the Republic and the Laws, never became official state ideology during his lifetime, nor did those of Confucius or Marx. However, in the cases of Confucius and Marx, their educational ideals were successfully translated into school practice and became, albeit after their deaths, official state ideology. Their philosophical norms were accepted by the state because they corresponded to the interests of the class or union of classes that held power. My point here is that normative theories are translated into realities only when they bolster the interests of those who hold power and become instruments

Comparative Education: Challenge and Response

Abstract: Comparative education is characterized today by a wide diversity of views, lively debates, and varying theoretical perspectives. Since Comparative Education Review and Comparative Education published their retrospective "state of the art" issues in 1977, the field has changed. In this essay, we will discuss some of these changes and the debates and research trends that have arisen since that time. Our interest is in the challenges posed to the field and the field's response. It is our view that since 1977 many of the approaches that underlay the field, articulated so perceptively in the British and American appraisals in Comparative Education and the Comparative Education Review, have come under criticism. Some have questioned the national comparisons that have traditionally characterized research and have argued cogently for world systems and regional analyses. Others have challenged the field to move beyond quantitative studies of school outcomes to qualitative research on educational processes. The theoretical assumptions that had guided the field, especially in the United States and particularly structural functionalism, have also emerged as subjects of intense debate. Some scholars have begun to explore alternative perspectives such as conflict theory, legitimation theory, and Marxism. Simultaneously, scholars challenged the field to consider subjects of inquiry that it had hitherto ignored. Among these are women's education, the concrete study of social and political institutions, and the question of how knowledge is disseminated, produced, and used. In the past decade, scholars in comparative education have also turned to reconsidering old questions, especially the role of education in bringing about modernization and social change. The pages that follow first consider the new challenges posited to the field since 1977 and then look at the field's response. Our discussion is based on an analysis of research that has appeared in the major journals in the field, such as Comparative Education Review, the International Review of Education, Compare, and Comparative Education, as well as in some of the major books published on the field in the United States and Great Britain, including those in the series issued by Pergamon and Praeger. Our discussion

The Planning of Education: Where Do We Stand?

Abstract: Educational planning is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of education It has been practiced, malpracticed, or simply paid lip service in most countries, especially in developing ones, since the late 1950's This paper discusses a series of educational planning mishaps and attempts a taxonomic clearing of the jargon used in this field It also proposes a shift from macroplanning issues to the consideration of the effects of more specific educational policies In conclusion, the report maintains that a healthy, development-conducive educational system requires a longer-term view that is not easily adopted by governments preoccupied with day-to-day problems Passing the baton from the macroplanner to the student and his family, first, as deciders of what education to acquire and, second, as financiers at large of education is a strategic move This would, in effect, enhance the contribution of education to social and economic development in developing countries

Adult Literacy Policy in Industrialized Countries

Abstract: The title of this chapter may appear rather provocative to any adult educators presently concerned with adult literacy provision in a number of industrialized countries. The provocation lies in the fact that most developed nations are still at various stages of recognizing that there are indeed millions of people in their populations who are completely illiterate or semi-illiterate, and this in spite of a longstanding formal education system through which virtually all adults have passed.

Who Profits from the Public Funding of Education: A Comparison of World Regions.

Abstract: Several approaches can be taken to analyze equity in the educational sector. In general, three main approaches can be distinguished. The first takes the school as a given good and analyzes the access to given levels of education by various population subgroups. Under this genre of analysis, researchers have also delved into the relationship between student achievement and students' personal and social backgrounds, as well as their access to school resources.' The second approach starts by first making explicit the gains that are associated with access to a particular level of education. Two aspects can be considered: (1) the appropriation of public resources that have been used to subsidize the provision of education,2 and (2) the anticipation of higher future earnings.3 Finally, in the third approach the issue of equity is addressed by comparing the gains accruing to various groups in the population with the financial (tax) contribution made by these groups to overall government revenue.4 In this article, we take the second of these approaches and shall focus on equity in the distribution of public resources for education. As we have shown in an earlier paper,5 the outcome depends on two complementary factors: (1) the distribution of public resources for education among members of a given generation according to their terminal level of schooling, and (2) the characteristics (socioeconomic, sex, ethnic or

The New Soviet Educational Reform

Abstract: Between June 1983 and December 1984, the Soviet government adopted an educational reform that embodied three major points: the enrollment of 6-year-olds in primary school, universal vocational training for secondary school pupils, and improvement in the curricular content and performance of teaching throughout the national school system. None of these represented startling innovation. Six-year-olds had been selectively admitted to primary school preparatory classes for years; vocationalism in the secondary school had been on the upswing for 15 years; and, as anyone with even a modest familiarity knows, the history of Soviet education since World War II has been one of cyclic curricular reforms, most notably the Khrushchev polytechnical labor education reform of 1958-64. Announcement of the new reform meant a commitment on the part of the Soviet political leadership in the 1980s to make those changes and others that had also been adopted on a limited basis mass practice. By way of departure, the new Soviet educational reform needs to be considered briefly within the context of the agenda for general socioeconomic reform that has been put forward by the three successive political leaderships since the November 1982 death of Leonid Brezhnev. The preliminary attempts during the last decade of the Brezhnev regime, which was marked by lackluster leadership and inept administration in the Soviet government, to adopt the changes that are being advanced in the current educational reform were insufficient. Since 1983, the Soviet education system has been mobilized and made a highly visible component of the impressive efforts by the new governments to shore up the sagging national economy and to solve serious social problems. Education has been brought into the plans for general socioeconomic reform with specific tasks to fulfill, most important of which, at this juncture in Soviet history, is that of better preparing young people for work. Other goals include extending the public day-care provision in the school system, joining school resources to the officially declared war on alcoholism and to state policies aimed at lowering the national divorce rate and raising the birthrate, and using secondary education in the first efforts to make the Soviet

Effects of Early Childhood Intervention on Primary School Progress in Latin America

Abstract: qualities of objects.4 Available evidence suggests that explicit literacynurturing activities are not a part of most poor children's early childhood experience in Latin America.5 To the extent that this is true, the transition to the abstract and disembedded learning that is typical of schooling will be a traumatic one for these children. A team of researchers in rural Guatemala has examined the interaction of child and parent characteristics as these affect adjustment to formal schooling.6 This basic research was part of the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) longitudinal study, an examination of the effects of nutritional supplementation in four rural villages (to be described below). The researchers in this study found that parents' perceptions of early intellectual ability in their children-which generally seemed to be accurate-led to earlier enrollment (for girls and boys) and greater likelihood of enrollment at all (for girls). It was found that parental education levels and mothers' "modernity" were associated with parents' schooling decisions for their children. In a more dynamic vein, the quality of children's home stimulation during the early years was strongly associated with primary school performance, especially for boys. (Because a more select group of girls attended school, "2James Grant, The State of the World's Children (New York: UNICEF, 1985). s Ernesto Pollitt, Child Development Reference Document: (I) Risk Factors in the Mental Development of Young Children in the Developing Countries (New York: UNICEF, 1984). 4 Elaine Haglund, "The Problem of the Match-Cognitive Transition between Early Childhood and Primary School: Nigeria," Journal of Developing Areas 17 (1982): 77-92. 5 Pollitt. 6 M. Irwin, P. Engle, C. Yarbrough, R. Klein, and J. Townsend, "The Relationship of Prior Ability and Family Characteristics to School Attendance and School Achievement in Rural Guatemala," Child Development 49 (1978): 415-27. Comparative Education Review 195 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.100 on Thu, 25 Aug 2016 05:18:34 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Penetration or Mutuality? China's Educational Cooperation with Europe, Japan, and North America

Abstract: Contemporary educational cooperation between China and countries of the advanced capitalist world is one part of a complex process whereby China is being reintegrated into the global political economy, particularly that part of it dominated by countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 1983, 60.9 percent of China's imports came from Japan, the European Community, the United States, and Canada, while 40.3 percent of its exports went to these countries. Of the students sent abroad by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 1983, 46.7 percent went to the United States and Canada, 33.8 percent to countries of Western Europe, and 16.5 percent to Japan.' The parallel with trade figures is compelling. Students and scholars in the natural sciences and technology will be expected to bring back an understanding of recent technological developments that will enable China to "catch up" with the economic achievements of the industrialized world. The growing number in such social sciences as management, economics, and international law will be expected to transfer knowledge that enables China to understand the markets, legal systems, and economic contexts of these countries. The very few in the human sciences may reflect on broader issues of the fundamental differences in culture and ideology that separate China from the advanced capitalist world. While the sending of scholars abroad is an important channel for this transfer of knowledge and technology, it is largely an individualized one. The success with which individuals master particular fields of knowledge and adapt them to Chinese needs may vary greatly.2 Another channel, involving a Chinese collective and established on Chinese soil, may be even more important-the cooperative educational project, jointly orga-

Free Education in Nigeria: Socioeconomic Implications and Emerging Issues

Abstract: The current educational system in Nigeria has evolved out of the interactive forces of five learning processes, namely, the informal indigenous apprenticeship and Islamic systems on the one hand and the formal Christian, colonial (Western-style), and postcolonial systems on the other. What is most significant in this process of evolution is the transition from the narrow and elitist approach in educational planning that characterized the colonial era to the comprehensive and democratized system that now emphasizes self-reliance and cultural identity. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria stipulates that the "government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels." As far back as 1955 the Western Region of Nigeria had introduced free primary education followed by the Eastern Region, the Federal Territory of Lagos, and the Midwest Region.' However, of the 12 states established at the time, by May 1967 only Western and Lagos States had full-fledged free primary education. The military administration of the 1970s embarked on more elaborate educational programs aimed not only at making primary education free and compulsory but also at creating a new orientation for developing scientific, technological, and vocational education as a basis for the technological development of Nigeria. Then the civilian administration of 1979-83 made a verbal commitment to implement free education at all levels-primary, secondary, and tertiary. With the near collapse of the educational system in December 1983, the new military administration that emerged introduced a less liberal educational policy. What is clear from the experience of the last 30 years is that both the past civilian and the past military administrations endeavored to make budgetary allocations to sustain efforts aimed at providing free educational opportunities for the masses. However, what was not easily realized was that implementing free education even at the primary level could impose serious financial problems. Thus none of the past administrations in

Primary School Literature and Folktales in Kenya: What Makes a Children's Story African?

Abstract: Primary schooling is the terminal stage of education for most Kenyan children, preparing individuals with the cognitive, linguistic, and vocational skills that enable participation in the cash economy and transmitting important cultural and social values as well. These include, in addition to school, acquired secular, pluralistic, and egalitarian values embedded in the modern state and cultural knowledge and related values and behavior that are also imparted by families, age-set institutions, and rituals that punctuate the life cycle. In recent years, a great deal of concern has been expressed about the powerful socializing influence of schools and its implications for cultural maintenance. In Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, such concern has focused on the correspondence between what is taught and what is socially and politically valued on the assumption that the schools are neutral, universalistic institutions whose objectives, organization, and curricula can be localized to foster cultural maintenance. This view

Decentralization, Money, and Power: The Case of People-Run Schools in China

Abstract: Minban xuexiao--people-run schools-have been alive, if not well, in China for the last 40 years. Starting as popular, voluntary village institutions in the 1940s, minban xuexiao today are low status, low quality schools. Whereas the earlier schools were guided by Communist party (CCP) cadres but managed and financed at the local level, contemporary minban xuexiao are funded at the local level but controlled and guided by provincial and central education experts. This evolution reflects tensions in the Chinese polity between centralization and decentralization; it simultaneously exhibits the growing unease of the Chinese leadership with popular participation in the management of social institutions and, in particular, with populist solutions to the problem of educational development. This study analyzes the evolution of people-managed schools as a reflection of the CCP's incremental move away both from decentralized decision making to centralized state and Party control and from populist education to "regular" education. These policy shifts uncover the PRC's negation of experiments that have been seen as models for development in poor societies. They represent continuing solidification of trends begun a decade ago. As Unger argued in these pages 5 years ago, the "diploma disease" has strongly influenced the course of Chinese educational development;' people-managed schools are now, in 1985, even more subject to central control, urban bias, and conflict over educational goals. Concurrently, the value of decentralization in education has been called into question, even though decision making in certain sectors of China's economy is devolving to local levels. Some scholars maintain that decentralization can be a viable strategy when there is agreement between central authorities and local citizens over goals and structures.2 Yet the problem of educational development

Private Schools in France: Evolution of a System

Abstract: Changes in the role and functioning of private schools in France have played an important part in the transformation of the French school system in the postwar period. The general extension of secondary education through structural changes in the public sector beginning in 1959 and a series of attempts during the 1970s to democratize the "long," nontechnical curricula of senior high school have increased competitiveness within the system and have created new roles for private institutions or fortified wellestablished ones. This has been possible as a result of changes in the legal and administrative relationship between private education (mostly Catholic in France) and the state. Since 1951, private schools in France have received state subsidies. The nature of these subsidies and the system under which they are administered have evolved in major ways since that time, enabling the private sector to adapt. But the public funding of private schools has also been a source of considerable political conflict. The fall of the Mauroy government in 1984 in the context of proposals to limit the future independence of private schools is a recent, dramatic illustration.' In this article a review is made of the major phases over which the relationship between private education and the state has developed since the early 1950s. It will be argued that successive changes in the law, in conjunction with other factors, have transformed the nature of private schooling in France and permitted it to play a number of distinctive roles in reaction to the growth and operation of the public sector.2

Engineering Education Systems in Japanese Universities.

Abstract: One major reason for the striking economic success in Japan is the vast pool of highly qualified engineers graduated each year from over 800 public and private universities and colleges. Over half of the graduating senior high school students receive some sort of higher education or professional training and more than 35 percent are able to attend public or private universities. In 1982, Japan's university institutions were able to churn out 74,000 engineers, compared with 88,000 engineers trained in the United States, which has a population nearly twice that of Japan. On average, Japan spent 10 percent of its gross national product on education alone (i.e., about $120 billion per year),' making her one of the largest spenders for education in the world.2 In this paper I shall look into various aspects of engineering education in several Japanese universities and try to draw comparisons with those in Australian universities. The figures and curricula are drawn mainly from three Japanese universities: Tokyo University (TU), Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT), and Osaka University (OU). They may well be equally applicable to many other universities in Japan, as the engineering faculties in these three universities are usually trendsetters for others to follow. Similarly, the engineering faculty at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) is the largest in Australia, and the data quoted may be applied to other Australian universities as well.

Children's Rights and Juvenile Correctional Institutions in the People's Republic of China.

Abstract: The systematic exploitation and abuse of children is an international concern, the seriousness of which compels continued worldwide attention. Starvation, malnourishment, physical and sexual abuse, lack of basic educational opportunity, exploitative labor practice, female enslavement, and infanticide are some of the more graphic examples that illustrate the degree to which the rights and interests of children have been denigrated on an international basis during the past decade.' This paper will examine the topic from a slightly different perspective, chronicling common institutional abuses of children's rights within the juvenile reformatory setting in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is important to note at the outset that there are a number of generally shared assumptions concerning procedural norms involving institutional treatment. The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1959, reaffirms the principles set forth in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1924 and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Although the Declaration of the Rights of the Child does not specifically refer to offender institutionalization process, procedure, and environment, Principle 6 does make passing reference to the desirability of using restraint when deciding whether or not to institutionalize the child. The child "shall, wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of his parents, and in any case in an atmosphere of affection and of moral and material security ... ," and "a child of tender years shall not save in exceptional circumstances be separated from his mother .... "2 Principle 2 of the declaration argues that whenever laws are enacted to ostensibly protect the child or facilitate his growth, "The best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration."3' Principles 4 and 7 affirm the right of the child to receive basic health care and education, while Principle 9 states that children should be protected from cruelty and exploitative labor practices.4

Engineering Education and Its Rewards in the United States and Japan

Abstract: Interest in Japanese education on the part of American and British writers has increased dramatically in the last few years, especially with respect to engineering and scientific education.' Although this interest is gratifying, much of what has been written is at best distorted and at worst completely wrong. Naive writers with little or no knowledge of the Japanese language or the peculiarities of Japanese statistics have compared nominally similar but in fact compositionally different categories. On this basis they have made exaggerated claims for the number of engineers educated, their income and status, and their role in corporate management. They have assumed an undemonstrated relation between their false perception of Japan's engineers and Japanese economic success. If this misinformation had appeared in obscure journals, it could be ignored. Unfortunately, it has been propagated in publications from the National Science Foundation and repeated in mass circulation magazines.2 More important, this misinformation has been presented in reports to Congress and to the president and has been used as support for fiscal formulations.3

The Rationale for the American Withdrawal

Abstract: On December 31, 1984, the United States officially withdrew from full participation in Unesco, thus making good on the notice Washington had served in Paris 12 months earlier. (Unesco procedures oblige a conscientious member-nation to give a year's advance warning.) In one sense, this action was scarcely surprising, for it had been preceded by much discussion, by ample publicity, and by uncommonly clear declarations on the part of the State Department, as well as by our formal notice. Yet the ensuing sense of shock, of alarm, of relief-depending on whom you were observing-was nearly palpable. Few people, it appears, had expected the American government actually to follow through on its threat. Many had supposed that an eleventh-hour reprieve would yield a continuation, however tenuous, of U.S. membership; that at some level the threatened withdrawal had been a giant bluff, intended to manipulate the leaders of Unesco into a set of modest reforms on the basis of which

Withdrawing from Unesco: A Decision in Search of an Argument.

Abstract: November 16, 1985, marked the fortieth anniversary of the signing, in London's Westminster Hall, of the constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco). December 31, 1985, marks the first anniversary of the withdrawal of the United States of America from Unesco. It is a good time to look back at the debate over whether or not the United States should withdraw and to see whether

Political Rationales, Human-Development Theories, and Educational Practice

Abstract: The key premise on which the following observations are founded is that understanding a society's educational practices can be furthered by an analysis of how political rationales, human-development theories, and educational procedures interact. My intention here is to demonstrate one form of such analysis by first describing events in two nations that in recent times have experienced dramatic sociopolitical change-the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Iran. Following the case descriptions, I propose a series of generalizations that, I believe, the two cases illustrate in regard to the interaction of political rationales, human-development theories, and education. Throughout the discussion, the term "political" refers to ways in which societies are organized to distribute power, privilege, and responsibility. A "political rationale" is an argument adduced to demonstrate that a political system is reasonable. The phrase "human-development theory" in this context means a set of beliefs about how people change over their life spans. I am assuming that everyone holds such a set of convictions, even though most people never organize their beliefs in the form of a systematic theory. Typically, the convictions that constitute a person's theory represent answers to a variety of questions about the nature of human development. The five questions chosen to illustrate the generalizations offered later in these pages are the following: What are the causes of individual and subgroup differences among people in their development? What is the goal or direction of development? What motives stimulate people to adopt the activities that they pursue? How does the learning process operate? And what are the proper rules of evidence for determining whether a proposal about development is true? Another assumption that underlies this discussion is that every political system is founded on a theory of human development, in the sense that each system implies answers to questions about causes of development and about the kind of evidence required to support one's convictions about human nature. Furthermore, I am assuming that this set of answers is held in common by those people who willingly and rationally subscribe

Unesco: From Inherent Contradictions to Open Crisis.

Abstract: how built-in organizational contradictions can degenerate into a crisis that threatens the organization's survival. In the case of Unesco, we have a situation that is fundamentally contradictory but nevertheless stable over a long period and then suddenly degenerates into crisis. The process was actually years in the making, and its ingredients are many and of different natures. The organization still operates with its original constitution, although there has been more than a threefold increase in its membership and, therefore, its expectations of the organization. Its largest contributor, the United States, took relatively little notice of its programs and operations and appeared to be practicing a long-term policy of benign neglict toward the organization. The current director-general, a fervent advocate of the interests of the Third World, has combined a certain neglect of the interests of the organization's largest contributors with mismanagement of its financial, personnel, and programmatic operations. Unesco is structured to function in a classic double bind. Politically, it houses countries with very different, and often antagonistic, aims and ambitions. Its member-countries (161 until the withdrawal of the United States) represent the full spectrum of political, cultural, and economic practices. Structurally, there is a legal working majority that has practically no material responsibility for the organization's financial foundations. This structural contradiction works to the advantage of the poorer members, and it is to their advantage that it be maintained.

Review of H.S. Bhola, Campaigning for Literacy: Eight National Experiences fo the Twentieth Century and Valerie Miller, Between Struggle and Hope: The Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade

Abstract: The \"eradication of illiteracy by the year 2000 has been adopted as a goal of Unesco and a significant number of its member states. In a manner similar to successful attempts to eliminate certain diseases, such as smallpox and malaria, the eradication of illiteracy is seen as something that might be possible if only a big push could \"innoculate\" adults along with their school-aged children so that all might be protected from illiteracy for generations to come. Efforts to reduce illiteracy in today's world contain a central paradox: that so much effort has been invested with so little knowledge about how to best achieve success. For example, the well-known Experimental World Literacy Program, organized by Unesco in the 1960s and 1970s, ended with moderate success and little information to use in subsequent literacy programs. After several decades of international attention and financial investment, the literacy rates of most countries are now relatively stable. However, due to population growth, especially in the Third World, the actual number of illiterates in the contemporary world has grown over the last decade. Furthermore, it is now widely accepted that, in addition to illiteracy in the Third World, large \"pockets\" of illiteracy exist in the industrialized nations as well. For this reason, there has been an increased interest within the scientific community in the nature and functions of literacy, even though there exists a surprisingly small amount of contact between researchers and the policy-making community. Disciplines Education | Educational Administration and Supervision | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | International and Comparative Education | Language and Literacy Education This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/literacyorg_articles/13

Primary Schooling and the Rural Responsibility System in the People's Republic of China

Abstract: Since 1978, major social and economic reforms known as the rural responsibility system (RRS) have spread rapidly throughout the Chinese countryside. By 1983, they had been adopted by over 98 percent of all rural production teams.1 The RRS brought considerable wealth to a few peasants, and some improvement in the income of many more. It has also had a profound impact on rural administration, social services, and, not least, education. Rural development is a matter of urgent concern in China, given its crucial role in national modernization, and the stubborn pertinacity of its problems. This concern is reflected in more than 30 studies of rural education and the RRS published inJiaoyu yanjiu (Educational research), China's premier educational research journal.2 Written by members of county, provincial, or university education departments, these studies describe the serious problems of rural education, but they also demonstrate China's determination to solve these difficulties by taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by the RRS. This essay is based on the findings of this research.