editorial introduction

Editorial IntroductionAuthor(s): Christopher McIntoshSource: International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift fürErziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education, Vol. 45, No. 1 (1999), pp. 1-3Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3444991 .

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EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

Nine years after the 1990 World Conference on Eduction for All in Jomtien, Thailand, the programme launched at the meeting continues to stimulate much activity and debate throughout the world. This is reflected in the number of articles on the subject published over the past few years in this journal, including the present issue. While scepticism has sometimes been voiced about certain aspects of the Jomtien programme, it is clear that the conference and its goal of Education for All by the year 2000 have helped to mobilise remark- able educational efforts world-wide. It is also clear that these efforts have had to respond to varying local and national conditions. This is brought out in the article by Nath, Sylva and Grimes on an initiative by an NGO in Bangladesh to raise basic education levels using non-formal educational methods. A survey to test the effectiveness of this approach indicated that 69.2 per cent of the children in the non-formal programme had attained basic education, as compared with 51.3 per cent in formal education. Significantly, however, this gap did not show up in reading and numeracy but rather in writing and life skills (health, hygiene etc.). The authors also discuss what factors in the two educational systems might have contributed to these dif- ferences. Such finely tuned surveys as this can be of immense value to edu- cationists in other countries where non-formal methods might be appropriate in pursuing the Jomtien goals. An equally differentiated survey, though in a very different setting, is described in the paper by Jacoby, Cueto and Pollitt on school performance among Quechua children in the Pervuian Andes. Here the results included the finding that performance of children in verbal tests was strongly influenced by family background, whereas mathematical performance was more related to their school experience. Again, the article is a useful reminder that a pupil's educational profile is a palette of many different influences and factors, including family, social and environmental ones. It also highlights some of the specific educational problems that arise in the case of an indigenous community whose language is different from the dominant one.

Staying in the Latin American region but moving on to the secondary level, Gomes addresses questions of perennial debate. To what extent should secondary education have a vocational component? At what stage should that component be introduced? Should it be offered only to certain categories of pupil or in certain types of school? And how do how these issues relate to the wider social context and the labour market as a whole? These questions

International Review of Education - Internationale Zeitschrift fur Erziehungswissenschaft - Revue Internationale de l'Education 45(1): 1-3, 1999. ? 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



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are bound up with the way in which social mobility operates and with the fact that some types of knowledge carry more prestige than others. The author makes use of the sociologist Ralph Turner's identification of two types of social mobility: "sponsored mobility," where students are streamed at an early stage; and "competitive mobility" where the selection in postponed until the final phase of schooling. He analyses some of the permutations of these two modalities employed in different countries and describes how Brazil has moved in recent years from the first to the second. In view of the emergence of new technologies and the rapid obsolescence of knowledge, he argues that vocational and general education need to be combined in more flexible ways, with the emphasis on "learning to learn" rather than on the mere acquisition of knowledge.

The debate between education as the general acquisition of knowledge and education as vocational training is one that also affects institutions of higher education. In recent years universities have experienced increasing pressure to emphasise the latter aspect, along with a tendency for higher education to become pervaded by the discourse and values of the market. Writing about these trends from a New Zealand perspective, Roberts describes the emergence of a kind of educational bazaar, where institutions compete with one another for students and funding, and where the vocabulary of business has become fashionable - education is seen as a "commodity" and colleges are "providers" with "inputs" and "outputs". He paints a future scenario in which students will become roving consumers who perceive education as a form of investment. He further predicts an increasing casualisation and exploitation of academic staff and a tendency to hire people on the basis of their ability to raise money. Against these trends, he argues for a defense of the traditional role of the university and for the need to produce questioning, critical minds.

While universities in the developed countries are experiencing an under- mining of their scholarly mission, those in Africa are faced with the additional challenge of developing an education with an African identity. In attempting to meet this challenge, as Brock-Utne points out, African universities face numerous problems, some inherited from the period of colonial domination, others resulting from the conditionalities imposed by the international donors and development agencies. To take one example, no university in Sub-Saharan Africa has an indigenous language as the official medium of instruction. Only one department and one research institute at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, use an indigenous language (Kiswahili). Yet, as this example and previous Tanzanian efforts show, it is perfectly possible for indigenous lan- guages to be used in universities. It is also possible and desirable, as the author argues, for university curricula to be linked with traditional African systems of knowledge.

A similar argument is applied by Yenika-Agbaw to teaching at the primary level in Cameroon. In particular the author examines the inadequacies of a standard English text book widely used for literacy instruction in Africa. Such



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textbooks, she argues, are ineffective tools for literacy teaching, perpetuate the myth of Western or Northern superiority and reinforce gender and other stereotypes. She recommends the development of literacy programmes using material that is non-stereotypical and more closely related to African life and experience.

CMcI



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