Development and Education [PDF]

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Development and Education COLETTE CHABBOTT AND FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ

Using considerable literature in cross-cultural education, Colette Chabbott and Francisco O. Ramirez examine the relationship between development and education. In this selection, they look at the effects of education on economic development and social and political progress in less developed countries as well as the effects of development on the growth of schooling. Questions to consider as you read this selection: 1. What are the effects of education on economic, social, and political development? 2. How does development affect growth in educational institutions? 3. How does the systems approach help explain trends in development and education around the world?

MECHANISMS FOR DIFFUSING BLUEPRINTS OF EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT In the post-World War II era, common blue-prints emphasizing education for development have emerged and been rapidly disseminated. The result has been an increase in common educational principles, policies, and even practices among countries with varying national characteristics. Attempts to explain the growth of educational isomorphism have emphasized coercion, imitation, and conformity to norms (Berman, 1983; Berman, 1997; Meyer, Nagel, & Snyder, 1993). Missing from most of this literature is an analysis of the mechanisms that generate this isomorphism. This reading addresses this gap in the following three sub-sections. First, we trace the translation

of rarified ideas about progress and justice into rational discourse about education and development at the global level. Second, we describe the formalization of that discourse into international development organizations. Finally, we look at the role of international development professionals in institutionalizing and modifying that discourse about education and development. Figure 1 outlines our argument, starting from the premise that world ideas about progress and justice translate into discourse about development and, more specifically, about education and development. This rationalizing discourse facilitates the rise of both networks of development professionals and international development organizations. These professionals and organizations, in turn, sharpen and standardize the dis-course by

coordinating activities that showcase discourse. International conferences are one example of these types of activities; between 1944 and 1990, various UN organizations sponsored more than sixteen global conferences on specific areas of development, such as family planning, water and sanitation, and food. Each of these conferences brought together not just national delegations, but also scores of international development organizations. By the time of the first Education for All Conference in 1990, standard products of these conferences included non-binding declarations and frameworks for action. These declarations and their associated frameworks typically invoke the highest ideals of progress and justice, thereby making it practically mandatory for national delegations to endorse them. Given the prominent role played by ideals in both the declaration and framework for action, the national plans developed subsequent to the conference often incorporated expanded definitions of human rights, citizenship, and development. For most of the post-war period this conference-declaration-national plan cycle contributed to a significant amount of loose coupling (Meyer, Nagel, & Snyder, 1993; & Snyder, 1989) between national education policies produced in response to international norms and, on the other hand, the implementation of these policies at the sub-national level. In recent years, however, the governmental international development organizations increasingly recruit and support the participation of

international, national, and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international conferences. They also support NGO efforts to monitor the implementation of declarations and national plans of action at the national and local levels. With the advent of new, inexpensive electronic communications, local NGOs can publicize national plans at the national and local level and draw international attention when national governments fail to implement those plans (see, for example, Social Watch, 1996). Fisher (1998) suggests this may lead to tighter coupling between international norms and action at the subnational level. The following sub-sections describe the process shown in Figure 1 in greater detail as relates to education and development. Note that most arrows in Figure 1 are twoway, indicating that these nodes are reciprocal and iterative. In general, over time, links between education and development grow tighter and more institutionalized; the meaning of development and, by extension, of education broadens; and emphasis shifts from an exclusive concern with collective economic growth to incorporate individual rights and justice. Expanding Development Discourse and Development Organizations Since the end of World War II, a world culture emphasizing progress and justice (Fagerlind & Saha, 1983; Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997; Robertson, 1992) produced a rationalizing discourse

about development, and, over time, constructed a central role for education in the development process. The most legitimate actors became nation-states with broad national and individual development goals, and individual citizens whose education was linked to their [own personal development and the development of their nation-state. An expanded definition of development derives from the United Nations' (UN) 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). The Declaration makes explicit each individual's rights to a minimum standard of living but does not specify how that standard will be ensured. Article 25, Para 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself (sic) and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services…. Later efforts, however, to translate the nonbinding 1948 Declaration into binding international covenants, led to further elaboration of the imperative for states to provide for individual development, and of the wealthier states to provide assistance to poorer states to help them fulfill this responsibility. Article 11, Para 1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate

standard of living….and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent (United Nations, 1966, our emphasis). These documents helped to create a world of "developed" and "developing" countries, with the former encouraged to provide the latter with "foreign aid" or "development assistance." Originally, multilateral organizations, such as the UN, expected to be the main conduits of this development assistance. The advent of the Cold War, however, circumvented the UN's coordinating mandate (Black, 1986); by the 1950s, many Western countries began channeling development assistance through primarily religious and NGOs already established in former colonies, a practice which has grown over time (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1988). In addition, in the 1960s and 1970s, most high-income countries also formed bilateral governmental development organizations. As a results, by the early 1990s, there were about 250 multilateral, 40 bilateral, and 5,000 international non-governmental development organizations (Chabbott, 1996). Over time, as their density increased, these organizations became increasingly bureaucratized and professionalized. Although initially focused on sectors immediately associated with

economic production (such as agriculture or infrastructure), international development organizations eventually broadened into all social and economic sectors, including education. In addition, both the documents excerpted above emphasize that the target of development is not the national economy-the traditional "wealth of nations" but "everyone." Individual development became the means to national development and individual development was equated with individual education in many UN documents. The best known of these include Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), which defines education as a human right, and Articles 13 and 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966), which expands on this theme. In 1990 more than 150 nations accepted by acclamation the Declaration of Education for All, reiterating these rights and consequences and reaffirming their belief in the relationship between development and education, at the global, national and individual levels: 1. Recalling that education is a fundamental right…..; 2. Understanding that education can help ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous and environmentally sound world, while simultaneously contributing to social, economic, and cultural progress, tolerance, and international cooperation; 3. Knowing that education is an

indispensable key to, though not a sufficient condition for, personal and social improvement… Note that this passage sets out both normative (education as a right) and instrumental (education as an essential input to development) arguments to promote education. For most of the postwar period, instrumental arguments, often drawing on human capital constructs (Schultz, 1963), dominated liberal organizations (i.e., the World Bank, USAID). In contrast, normative arguments tended to prevail among more progressive funders (i.e., the UN agencies, the Nordic bilateral organizations) (Buchert, 1994). Finally, the universalistic focus in the development discourse, i.e., "everyone" increased emphasis within international development agencies on individual welfare and on broad participation in the development process. By the late 1980s, this translated into an increasing focus on previously marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities and women. Education became a central theme in efforts to raise these groups to a higher status. In summary, we have described the mechanism by which discourse at the global level about the nature of development simultaneously prompted 1) the expansion of discourse about education and development, 2) the formation of international development organizations, and 3) the proliferation of activities to promote it, such as international conferences. The next section examines the evolution of the content of discourse about

education in the context of shifting discourse about development. Whereas in this section, development discourse facilitated the creation of a field of international development organizations, in the next we show how, once created, these organizations generate secondary discourse that results in an emphasis on different levels and types of education in different decades. Translating International Development Discourse into Educational Development Discourse Since the end of World War II, institutionalized discourse on development within the UN justified the formation of dozens of formal UN-affil-iated organizations with the express purpose of operationalizing the UN's Charter, Declaration, and Covenants. The UN's commitment to promoting education as a human right was manifest in the relatively early creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, And Cultural Organization (UNESCO, f. 1946). Jones (1990) emphasizes the importance of the objective, material needs of the Allies to rebuild education systems shattered by World War II in establishing UNESCO as an action-oriented organization. An emphasis on psychology and international peace was deeply embedded in UNESCO, which popularized Clement Atlee's notion that "wars begin in the minds of men." Illiteracy-or the lack of exposure to the socializing influence of schooling was therefore constructed as a threat to peace

(Jones, 1990). In addition, UNESCO's early education approaches, such as "fundamental education," assumed a causal link between education and development. Margaret Mead, one of a series of social scientists and humanitarians called upon to help UNESCO define its mission declared: The task of Fundamental Education is to cover the whole of living. In addition, it is to teach, not only new ways, but the need and the incentive, for new ways… if the new education is to fill the place of the old, it has to cover all areas of living… In many countries new fundamental education is carried on by teams including social workers, graduate nurses, agricultural assistants, home economists, hygiene experts (Quoted in Jones1990). UNESCO's mandate envisions the organization as the main conduit for much development assistance. Like other UN organizations, UNESCO suffered a major setback with the advent of the Cold War. Since then, many bilateral organizations, and even some other UN organizations created education sections. In addition, several other intergovernmental organizations specializing in educational development emerged, such as the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP. f .1963) (see King, 1991 for a more complete catalog of international educational development organizations). While UNESCO tried from time to time to mount ambitious global level programs,

such as the World Literacy Program, its main contribution to educational development became reports, pilot projects, and conferences (Jones, 1990). Many factors contributed to the rise of what Cox (1968) calls the ideology of educational development. UNESCO's regional conferences helped to create common vocabulary and goals. A group of American economists (Becker, 1964; Schultz, 1963) provided the rational link between education and development in the form of human capital theory. US foundations supported both economic research and expanded support for the study of education and development in other countries (Berman, 1992). Finally, international development organizations expanded their education departments, promoted specific education policies and projects, and funded new educational and research networks in developing countries (McGinn, 1996). The education policies [that were] promoted by the international development organizations, however, do not necessarily derive from the educational research described in Sections 2 and 3, above: rather they tend to the shifting ideas about development (Berman, 1997; Coombs, 1985; Watson, 1988). Table 1 is a simplified mapping of the major approaches to national development in the decades since World War II, as articulated in the mainstream practitioner literature (Arndt, 1987; Lewis & Kallab, 1986;. Lewis, 1988; Meier, 1995). Alongside these development approaches, we show the

corresponding discourse about educational development and the educational priorities associated with this discourse (Jones, 1997; Jones, 1990; Jones, 1992)… Although there is much overlap in these decades, trends are evident. First, the concept of development shifts from national control and orientation to international funding and global orientation. Second, we see increasing complexity in the way the process of development is imagined, with newer approaches subordinating but not entirely replacing older ones. But, most importantly, we see national development increasingly defined in terms of individual welfare, rather than simply in terms of national economic growth and, concurrently, a push to use universal access to primary education as a key measure of both individual welfare and national development. This rationalization -that individual- welfare, particularly individual access to quality education is at the very center of development creates the foundation on which to build broader, normative arguments for education and development. Beginning in the second row of Table 1, the "comprehensive economic development planning" approach promoted in the 1950s by a variety of governments and international donor organizations assumed that each nation-state was a relatively autonomous, self-contained unit. Prudent management of domestic resources was the supposed determinant of national development, and might be achieved with

little help from the outside world. During this decade, UNESCO implemented "fundamental" and later "functional" education programs, introducing literacy as a part of a broad approach to community development. Universal primary education was assumed to be a low cost activity that required locally trained teachers and no scarce foreign exchange. In the 1960s, rapid economic growth became prerequisite to development, still promoted by central planning. Educational planners urged developing countries to focus their limited budgets on formal secondary and higher schooling in subjects related to industrialization. Technical and vocational training also received support, as well as vocationally-oriented literacy. Education was rarely mentioned as a right, but rather as instrumental to industrial development. In the 1970s, as some speculated that economic growth was increasing, rather than decreasing the ranks of the impoverished in many countries, the concept of development was expanded to include "social" as well as "economic" aspects. During this decade, "basic human needs" emerged, along with the idea that the international community had a responsibility to meet these needs in nationstates where weak economies and administrative infrastructure rendered it impossible for national governments to do so. Some more radical analyses extended the responsibilities of the international community even further, suggesting that a New International Economic Order might

be necessary to address chronic social and economic imbalances at the world level that favored the rich countries and maintained the economic disadvantages of the poorer ones. In this context, a "basic education" capable of equipping both adults and children to participate more fully in their societies, became the focus of development agency attention. Education was the way to equalize economic opportunity and incorporate previously neglected groups. Along with formal primary schools, UNESCO in the 1970s emphasized adult literacy and life-long education, and various international development organizations explored the potential of nonformal, i e., out of school education. In the 1980s, structural adjustment brought home the message that no nation is an island, all are part of the world financial system. This implied that nation-states-both developed and developing should adjust their domestic economic policies and structures to conform to the international system, not vice versa; that those nationstates which do not keep their financial house in order will forfeit some degree of their financial sovereignty. Although manpower planning of the 1950s failed to prepare most countries to handle the educational crises in the 1960s and 1970s, a variation on it human resources development became very popular in the 1980s. With education defined as a "basic human need," "human resources development" became a prerequisite to "social" or "human"

development and momentum built toward establishing minimum standards of basic education for all individuals, particularly previously disadvantaged groups (Allen & Anzalone, 1981). More emphasis was placed on formal primary and secondary schools, particularly on improving efficiency and their ability to serve all citizens. Western nation-states reacted to global recession in the early 1990s with cutbacks in development assistance to both multiand bilateral organizations. This reinforced the influence of the World Bank in education in developing countries. The Bank maintained its structural adjustment loans and continued to employ more social science researchers than any other international development organization (Jones, 1997). By the early 1990s, however, the World Bank was coupling its structural adjustment loans with social dimensions of adjustment packages. In general, these packages were designed to strengthen the borrower country's capacity to monitor the effects of structural adjustment on the poor and to channel compensatory program funds through grassroots NGOs. By the mid-1990s, World Bank literature speaks of "development with a human face" and about "sustainable human development" rather than aggregate economic growth. The World Bank joined with UNESCO, Unicef, and UNDP to sponsor the World Conference on Education for All (1990, Jomtien, Thailand). While instrumental arguments lingered just below the surface in much of the focus on girls' education,

normative arguments showed up in the claim of universality in the title of the conference, of human beings having inalienable "learning needs," (Inter-Agency Commission. World Conference on Education for All, 1990) and of underlying equity concerns embedded in calls for "quality education for all" (King & Singh, 1991). The World Bank, convinced that the social returns to primary schooling were higher than for any other type of schooling, promoted formal primary and secondary schools. In the interest of equity, both the Bank and other international development organizations devoted more attention in the 1990s to school quality, both in terms of classroom teaching and curriculum. Most countries now have a national policy mandating universal primary education and the decade has been marked by interest in alternative ways to get children, particularly girls, in remote and/or conservative areas into modern schools (Ahmed, Chabbott, Joshi, & Pande, 1993). In summary, the measures of development as an international and national concern have changed over the last five decades from a narrow focus on national economic growth to incorporate measures of individual welfare and human rights. At the same time, the locus of responsibility for the development imperative has shifted from the national to the global level. Finally, education became inextricably linked with notions of development, and the levels and types of education emphasized in different decades

mirrors trends in broader development discourse, not necessarily empirical research on education and development. None of the education approaches described above (fundamental education, functional education, quality learning for all, etc.) was fully implemented and therefore the postulated contribution of education to development that each claimed has never been empirically established. However, these theories about the relationship between education and development were asserted and reiterated at hundreds of international conferences in the post-war period, many of them aimed particularly at officials in low-income countries and in international development agencies. The role of professionals in promoting these conference that, in turn, promoted different levels and types of education because of their putative links to development, is the subject of the next section. Professionalizing Educational Development Between the end of World War II and the beginning of the 1980s, the background and composition of the staff of international development organizations changed significantly. Originally recruited from former colonial officers, children of missionaries, and war relief workers, newer staff includes former volunteers with organizations like the Peace Corps and International Voluntary Service, and highly educated, expatriate officials from developing countries, fleeing political

upheaval or in search of a larger professional milieu (Chabbott, 1996). The work of the staff in governmental and non-governmental development organizations has grown more bureaucratic and professionalized over time. Development professionals have created and are now sustained by a network of support organizations and publications. For example, membership in the Society for International Development (f. 1957) now includes close to 10,000 individuals and over 120 organizations or agencies in 60 countries. The bi-monthly International Development Abstracts (f 1982) covers more than 500 journals and other serial publications and the Development Periodicals Index (f 1991) lists about 600. With respect to the education sector, the study of developing countries has occupied considerable space in major comparative and international educational journals and conferences since the 1950s. By the late 1970s, specialization in educational development led to the establishment of at least one journal (the International Journal of Educational Development, f. 1981); a dozen post-baccalaureate degree programs, such as Stanford International Development Education Committee (f.1965); and associations, such as the Nordic Association for the Study of Education in Developing Countries (f 1981). In spite of their efforts to professionalize, the routine barriers created by lengthy tours overseas and preoccupation with the politics of securing government funding tend to isolate them

from the Western academic community. Like professionals in all fields, many intend but few are able to remain up to date with new developments in their fields, such as debates in recent decades about the gray of the relationship between education and development. Nonetheless, these professionals play a role in the rise in interest in education and development in Western schools of education. For example, volunteer teachers returning from service with relief and later development agencies (i.e., preprofessionals in our terms), such as the American Friends Service Committee and the Peace Corps, brought new interest in developing countries to international education departments in graduate schools of education. In addition, development agencies funded short- and long- term training for officials and academics from developing countries, creating an important source of revenue for some schools of education. The Ford Foundation funded the creation or expansion of development departments in many schools of education in the US. Most directly, development agencies generated a demand for "experts" in education, who could provide advice to ministries of education in developing countries. Within academia, the study of education in developing countries usually resided in a broader department of comparative and/or international education in a school of education. Despite their symbiosis, the challenge to human capital theory mounted in academic circles rarely surfaced in

professional educational development circles. Instead, professional debates have focused more on the relative strength of instrumental (education as an input to economic growth) versus human rights justifications for education and the value of different levels of education in different contexts. Faith in the power of education to address core development concerns has grown over time, as described in the preceding section. This faith culminated in the 1990 World Conference on Education for All (EFA). As noted above, since the late 1950s, international development conferences have proved a popular way for chronically under-funded international development professionals to move the development agenda forward, to raise global awareness about a particular problem and to call upon nation-states to bring resources to bear upon that problem. By 1990, various UN and other donor organizations had sponsored hundreds of world and regional educational conferences and had produced more than 77 recommendations to education ministers and about a dozen general declarations on the subject of education. By 1990 all the of the blue-print described earlier in Figure 1, which allowed international development professional to legitimately initiate, sponsor, and follow up world development conferences, were in place. The blueprint includes: creating a sense of crisis about some sector at the global level (Coombs, 1968; Coombs, 1985); mobilizing governmental consensus

around a non-binding declaration and a framework for action; generating national plans action; generating additional national and international funding for those plans; establishing international means to monitor compliance with national plans; and, wherever possible, translating the subject of the conference into a binding international covenant or defining it more forcefully as a human right (UNESCO, Education for All Forum Secretariat, 1993). In addition, the Education for All conference was one of the first conferences to invite development NGOs, both international ones and those formed in developing countries, as full participants. These NGOs later helped to monitor national governments' compliance with agreements made at the conference. Equipped with inexpensive facsimile machines and electronic mail connections to other groups and organizations around the world, local NGOs are able to report lags in government efforts to turn international commitments into action (Social Watch, 1996). The impact of Education for All on literacy and primary school enrollments, or even international development assistance levels' to education, has yet to be assessed (Bennell & Furlong, 1998; Hallak, 1991). Meanwhile, the effects of the EFA Conference and other international development projects upon the way education is defined, organized, and appears at the global, national, and classroom levels, particularly in low income countries, remains to be explored.

SUMMARY International development professionals have invoked taken-forgranted ideals to mobilize both nationstates and NGos around a menu of technical-functional education "needs." These ideals, the professionals' claims of technical-functional expertise, and the degree to which the professionals have gained global acceptance of certain activities, such as international conferences, increase the influence of these professionals beyond their individual or collective social, economic, or political status. In this sense development professionals should not be mainly construed as powerful agents pursuing their own interests or those of their nation-states of origin. These professionals have, along with other mechanisms, played an important role in recent decades in diffusing blueprints of education and development and the expansion of different levels and types of education in different decades. They have mainly accomplished this by enacting the role of objective experts and rational managers, engaged in highly legitimate activities, associated with some of the most taken-for-granted notions of progress and justice at the global level.

@Penghuni karangbolong Note that this passage sets out both normative (education as a right) and instrumental (education as an essential input to development) arguments to

promote education. For most of the post-war period, instrumental arguments, often drawing on human capital constructs (Schultz, 1963), dominated liberal organizations (i.e., the World Bank, USAID). In contrast, normative arguments tended to prevail among more progressive funders (i.e., the UN agencies, the Nordic bilateral organizations) (Buchert, 1994).