Central-Local Tensions and the Involvement of Education within Developing Countries

Extract

We are less prone today than we were a few years ago to designate education as the prime mover in development--be the latter political, economic, or “social.” We are finding it both possible and more imperative to explore just how and when education becomes linked into development. No longer does it suffice to conclude that education is “necessary but not sufficient” to generate development and then supply anecdotes about correspondence between general plans and educational plans in this or that set of countries. We have perhaps become even overly cautious in assuming manpower plans to be useful guides for policies to turn out “high-level manpower.” While we may be little more capable than a decade ago to quantify the contribution of education to one or more aspects of development, we see more clearly how education is drawn into many conflicts that are aroused by the drive by national leaders for “modernization.” We observe also the reluctance of local groups or tribes to subordinate passively their own ideas of how to get ahead to some remote official's notions of which peasants must sacrifice how much in order that “the national plan” will be fulfilled. National officials are finding it less easy, however, to praise their local plans in international forums while rejecting the complaints of local citizens whose activities are the substance of development.

Dividing my discussion into a half-dozen sections, I will treat education as the topic of central-local relationships and conflicts, as an influence upon the balance of central and local weight in policy decisions, and as an element in many sorts of activities that bring forth latent central-local parallel as well as opposed interests.