Biblio Flash. WORLD EDUCATION ENCYCLOPEDIA Volume I - III N°34 1990

Directorate-General For Education And Culture

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• Publié par: DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-EDUCATION-AND-CULTURE
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 30 Mo

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WORLD
EDUCATION
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Volume I III
1988
Facts On File Publications
New York, New York · Oxford, England
Facts On File Limited
RF: 89B/266 SL Collins Street
Oxford 0X4 1XJ INTRODUCTION
The World Education Encyclopedia is designed as a the past or convention as a gradual refinement and
descriptive survey of the national educational systems an incorporation of ideas whose worth has been
of the world. It is a global report on the state of proved in other countries. The third significant feature
education in the closing years of the bimillennium. It of global education is that it is becoming the cause
describes not so much educational theory (which is as well as the result of a growing egalitarianism and
of interest only to educators) but the actual working democratization in all countries. It is generally ac­
of the systems, which concerns all educated people. cepted that education is an engine of modernization;
In doing so, it defines the levels and characteristics it can break barriers and raise consciousness in pol­
of the systems; their growth, especially since World itics and society. Education has spin-offs and ripple
War II; their legal, political and social foundations; effects whose influence extends beyond the class­
their contributions to national welfare; their bases and room—horizontally across all layers of society, and
their biases, their problems and their performance. vertically across layers of time. While enhancing in­
The encyclopedia compares but does not evaluate; it dividual worth and dignity, shared learning also can
informs but does not criticize; it analyzes but does become a strong bond among individuals, creating
not pass judgment. new social and professional castes or classes.
Education is the largest single activity in the world, Education has long been recognized as the cenUal
involving over 700 million students and 31 million element in the development of human personality. But
teachers at all levels, not counting millions of others in the 20th century, it has acquired a new range of
in educational support activities. But its importance functions. It is no longer merely one of the sectors of
stems not merely from its size but also from its role national life—like agriculture or industry—but a mul­
as institutionalized knowledge—the principal reposi­ tidimensional process that energizes and pervades all
tory, producer, disseminator and transmission belt of other sectors. As the 1948 UNESCO Declaration put
all forms of knowledge. The most significant feature it, "Man is both the end and the instrument of edu­
of global education in the 20th century is not so much cation."
what the French call l'explosion scolaire ("pupil ex­ In almost all countries, education is designed to
plosion"), but the knowledge explosion, which has fulfill three well-defined functions:
expanded the catchment areas of learning so fast that
it takes only a decade now for the state of the art in • As a basic human need. People require education
any field to become obsolete. The modes of commu­ not only for the structured information in the
nicating that knowledge are also changing and be­ core subjects of the curricula but also as a tool
coming more sophisticated; knowledge now can be for gaining attitudes, values and skills on which
dispensed technologically and electronically. Teachers they can build later. The former may be called
and formal school structures are becoming less im­ surface learning and the latter deep learning.
portant, and the conventional age limits on the learn­ Deepg triggers learning potentials and
ing process are becoming blurred. Change is not only enables students to respond to new opportunities
becoming the only constant in educational systems, without formal guidance, to participate in society
but also adjustment to change and the upgrading of and to respond to change.
skills are being incorporated into the very fabric of . As a means of meeting other basic needs. Edu­
instruction. A second notable feature of education is cation influences and is in turn influenced by
the growing homogenization of curricular materials other basic needs, and it also serves as a catalyst and standardization of teaching techniques. It is in creating needs where none existed before. This
proper in this sense to speak of a global village school. is the upward pull or mobility that raises a coun­
Education is functioning as a major promoter of the try's level of aspirations and expectations. A
migration of ideas across borders. It is possible now country's quality of life is the sum total of these for a student from, say, Papua New Guinea to go to aspirations and expectations, and it is directly
France or the United States and continue his or her related to its quality of education.
schooling without having to relearn or unlearn any­
• As an activity that sustains and accelerates eco­thing. Certain educational philosophies have become nomic development. Education prepares and universally accepted, and when one speaks of inno­
trains skilled workers at all levels to manage vation, it does not imply so much a radical break with
capital, technology, services and administration Models of delivering education—formal, informal, in even,· sector of the economy. Economists be­
nonformal—are conceived today not as alternatives lieve that long-term returns on investment in
education exceed returns on alternative kinds of but as complementarles. Formal education—the in­
investment, and these returns are not subject to stitutionalized, graded and hierarchically structured
system covering primary, secondary and tertiary lev­cycles and recessions. Second, through trained
els—is the most prominent mode of delivery. Informal personnel, developed methodologies and insti­
education—the unorganized, lifelong process by tutional settings, education facilitates the ad­
vancement of knowledge in pure and applied which everyone acquires knowledge, skills and atti­
tudes through experience, contacts, reading, watching, fields. Third, rapid economic growth, technolog­
etc.—is coterminous with life itself but cannot function ical advancement and social change tend to tear
as a surrogate for formal training and instruction. Its down traditional social and religious support
systems. Education enables individuals to make major disadvantage is the lack of a corrective or eval­
uative mechanism. Nonformal education—systematic the transition to new social orders by providing
learning activity carried on outside the formal sys­self-understanding, better knowledge of the
tem—provides a second chance to those who have choices available and a critical appreciation of
the nature of change itself. Thus education be­ missed formal schooling. It enables the rural and ur­
ban poor to acquire a wide array of skills either di­comes a kind of future-shock absorber.
rectly associated or not associated with their work. It
Education, however, operates in every country un­ provides minimum rather than maximum education
der a variety of constraints, the most powerful of them and often is associated with development rather than
education. being political and economic. Education is certainly
most effective in settings in which there is a general All governments acknowledge their responsibility
climate of freedom as broadly understood, a composite to provide basic education to children within certain
of political, academic and economic freedoms. But ex­ age limits. Universal, free and compulsory primary
perience suggests that even in the absence of such education remains the watchword of all ministries and
freedoms, education does not necessarily act as an departments of education, and in many countries this
agent for maintaining or reinforcing the status quo. goal is an attained reality. But even ins where
On the contrary, widely diffused educational activities education is neither compulsory nor free nor universal,
provoke and facilitate change in prevailing sociopol­ this goal remains enshrined in the constitution and
itical conditions by sowing seeds of discontent, by the statute books. The nonschooling gap—the differ­
suggesting alternatives and by generating a clearer ential between the school-age population and the ac­
understanding of political and social rights. When it tual enrollment—has narrowed worldwide during the
does so, education can become an explosive force in past four decades, except in the case of the least
its own right. Through the ages, the enemies of free­ developed countries. According to World Bank fig­
dom have echoed the words of Governor Sir William ures, lower-income and lower-middle-income countries
Berkeley of Virginia in 1671: achieved only a 65% enrollment ratio by 1985.
Even where education is universal and compulsory,
I thank God there are no free schools, and I hope we it is not equal. A larg