ROLE OF EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES by C. T. KURIEN *

In the twentieth century enquiry into the causes of the wealth of nations, a s i m c a n t place has been assigned of late to education. This is sur- prising because education has for long been considered as a wealth- consuming, rather than a wealth-producing activity. When the problem of economic development became an international issue soon after the second world war, economists and politicians viewed the process of development almost entirely as a matter of capital formation in a physical sense. Theoretical models that economists were turning out in large numbers, as well as the observations of men of affairs, suggested that countries were poor because they were deficient in capital and that addition to capital, through efforts at home and aid from abroad, was the key to their rapid growth. It was simple enough to point out that most of the poor countries of the world had large populations and hence possessed all the human resources they needed for growth, while they lacked machines and materials which had to come from richer countries. Such a view appears to be too simple now, but it formed the basis of many of the developmental activities of the fifties, particularly the foreign aid programmes. Even today there are many who are committed to such a theory of “growthmanship”.

A necessary investment

But on the whole there has been a marked change in the climate of opinion. During the present century one of the earliest economists to point out the impact of nonmaterial forces on economic development was the Soviet academician Strumlin. In a communication addressed to Lenin in 1919 on the eve of the launching of the Soviet Union’s first great industrial programme Strumlin warned the Soviet leader that investment in heavy equipment, power projects, steel mills and mecha- nised farms would soon prove futile unless a satisfactory level of invest- ment in education were also provided. He based his arguments on the findings that primary education in the Soviet Union increased a worker’s efficiency by over 40 per cent, secondary education over 100 per cent

* Dr. C. T. KURIEN, Church of South India, is Professor of Economics, Madras Christian College, Tambaram, India.

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and an education completed with training at the higher level by over 300 per cent. Strumlin’s comment had little impact on Western economists for a long time. But recent quantitative studies of long-term economic growth, particularly in the United States, showed that the increase in output could not be explained simply in terms of the increased utilization of conventional inputs. In fact it was shown that conventional inputs could account for only 25 per cent or less of the increase in output with the rest constituting a residual, which, one of the early workers in the field described as a “measure of our ignorance” about the process of growth. During the past ten years or so many attempts have been made to discover the missing factor or factors. And the weight of the evidence thus accumulated shows that education has played a signiiicant role in increasing productivity. For instance, a detailed study calculated that the increase in educational inputs from 1929 to 1957 in the USA raised the average quality of labour by nearly 30 per cent and that possibly over 40 per cent of the per capita growth rate during this period represented the contribution of education. Subsequent studies in Europe and other parts of the world also have provided convincing evidence about the substantial contribution of education to economic development. Education has played a key role in the striking economic progress of the USSR and Japan as well. Economists have also discovered passages from their classics to lend authority to their findings. Adam Smith, for example, had stressed the importance of education and given a special role to the “acquired and useful abilities” of the inhabitants of society saying, “the acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study or apprenticeship always costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed and realised, as it were in his per- son.” And Marshall had said that “the most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings.”

Experience of developing nations

Whatever may be the findings of economists, past and present, there is no doubt that those who are directly concerned with development in the underdeveloped areas of the world give a prominent place to educa- tion in their plans of national development. Peoples and leaders in the rapidly changing societies look upon education both as a symbol of their aspirations and as a weapon to bring about a new social order. The

opening paragraph of the Report of Education Commission of India (1964-66) proclaims : “The destiny of India is now being shaped in her class rooms. This, we believe, is no mere rhetoric. In a world based on science and technology, it is education that determines the level of prosperity, welfare and security of the people.” In this sense whether education contributes directly to economic development or not it is an inseparable and important aspect of the broader phenomenon of national development which has been described as ‘the great ascent’ calling for ‘change on a grand scale’. And in many parts of the world the belief is prevalent that : “If this change on a grand scale is to be achieved without violent revolution (and even then it would still be necessary) there is one instrument, and one instrument only, that can be used : EDUCA- TION.” (Report of the Indian Education Commission.) So conceived, education becomes a means to many ends. People turn to education because they believe that it will liberate them from superstitions and the rigid limitations of a traditional society ; that it will lift them above narrow loyalties and attachments and promote a sense of national unity ; that it will give them new ideas, stir their imaginations and pro- mote the right attitudes in them ; that it will train them to enter into new and prosperous avocations; that it will give them control over nature and its hitherto untamed forces ; that it will bring them the benefits of science and technology; that it will open up for them a window through which to look upon the world at large and gain a glimpse of the international community. The expectations are great indeed. It is not surprising then that most countries of the world today, par- ticularly those in Asia, Africa and Latin America, are attempting revolu- tionary changes in their educational systems. For as Whitehead has reminded us “Any serious fundamental change in the intellectual outlook of human society must necessarily be followed by an educational revolu- tion.”

Need for radical reforms

What must be the nature of this revolution ? How may it be achieved ? These are questions to which educators, administrators and politicians in many parts of the world are addressing themselves. At one stage it used to be felt that a shift of emphasis from the arts and humanities to the sciences or a substitution of vocational studies for liberal education would make education relevant to national development. But increas- ingly it is being realized that there is no such easy solution to the problem.

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The Indian Education Comtnission’s Report also says that “changes in objectives, in content, in teaching methods, in programmes, in the size and composition of the student body, in the selection and prepara- tion of teachers, and in organization” are all needed to change the existing system of education. By far the greatest weakness of the educational systems in most of the underdeveloped countries is that they were conceived and have con- tinued in a social vacuum. In this respect they stand in sharp contrast to their counterparts in the West which have been the intellectual out- reaches of their own social systems. But in most ex-colonial countries which today constitute the bulk of the underdeveloped world, the edu- cational enterprise, particularly at the university level, came from a foreign milieu. And often it has meant also that the education that the students of these lands received and continue to receive is as irrelevant as the black gowns in which they throng into a crowded hall on a sultry afternoon to claim the insignia of their achievements. The result of such an education is not merely that the students learn little about their coun- tries and peoples, but that it gives a perverted notion about the very process of education and the concept of knowledge. In this set-up the educational process consists of “mastering” (the term usually means little more than committing to memory) the wisdom of others, and reproducing it as faithfully as possible. It is often a strenuous process, but there is neither an intellectual commitment nor an existential involve- ment in the learning process. As a recent observer of the Indian scene has put i t : “A few unrelated items might be added to the mass of undigested stuff that goes in and out of the poor boy’s head, making it at once more crowded and more empty. The parrot that is taught a new tune remains the same parrot as before.” (J. R. Macphail : The Future of the Indian University). Such an attitude towards education means also that knowledge comes to be viewed as a static body of information produced by the geniuses of foreign countries and available in the market between hard covers. And it commands respect as most other foreign goods do ! The crippling effect that an “education” of this kind has need not be described in detail. Not even the maxim “knowledge its own end” can defend so inane an approach to education. Newman himself had assigned a social role for education. “It aims at raising the intellectual tone of society,” he said, “at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aim to popular aspiration, at giving

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enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power and refining the intercourse of private life.”

Education in the context of development

Hence the f is t step in the educational revolution must be to get the educational system firmly fixed on native soil. It is readily granted that not all disciplines can be directly linked to the society around. The reference is not so much to the content of education as to its setting, environment and tone. Anything that will shake the academic com- munity from its ‘other-worldly’ affiliations and attachments deserves to be encouraged. It may be a simple change in attires and customs, a change in the medium of instruction from a foreign language to the language of the land, the introduction of ‘work-experience’ as an integral part of education or some form of community service as a pre-condition for the award of the degree. The aim in all these cases must be to make the students aware of the society in which they live, to appreciate its cultural heritage and to understand its problems. The need to change the content and approach to education follows. There have been many attempts in this direction. Education has been made ‘modern’ by emphasizing sciences , ‘liberal’ by emphasizing humani- ties and ‘spiritual’ by introducing moral instruction. Or so it is claimed ! And of course, there are all the well-intentioned efforts to make it voca- tional so as to train students for jobs and thus to contribute to national development. But usually such attempts turn out to be misguided or short-sighted. The professional life of the students of today will go beyond 2000 A.D., and so training them for jobs for tomorrow is not likely to help them in the future or contribute to economic development in the long run. In the rapidly changing society that economic develop- ment brings about, professional life itself will be characterized by fre- quent changes in jobs and in techniques that the average person will have to be prepared to learn a great deal throughout his life. Formal education can only be the beginning of this learning process, when the student learns the techniques of learning, the methods of discovery and the principles of disciplined thinking. The “hand-me-down” ap- proach to education widely prevalent in most underdeveloped countries, which nips off the student’s sense of curiosity, enquiry and enterprise even before it has a chance to express itself, cannot serve this purpose. The need is to organize the educational system in such a way that no

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matter what subject or subjects the student learns he comes to have a first hand confrontation with knowledge, realizing the pains and per- sistence needed to get even a distant sight of it as well as the joy and excitement that comes from such an encounter. Unfortunately this is not something that can be achieved by organizational and curricular reforms, much as they are both needed in the process. Sustained and patient endeavour is called for.

Trained manpower The long-term view implicit in such reorganization of the educational system takes concrete form when it comes to the utilization of trained manpower. One of the major social problems that most poor countries face is the unemployment of the educated youth indicating unplanned expansion of education and implying colossal waste of resources. At the same time almost all poor countries also suffer from critical shortage of skilled personnel. Careful calculations of the needs of the economy over a period of time for men and women with different kind of skills and training and the adaptation of the educational system to supply them in right numbers, and at the proper times, are the main features of manpower calculations and projections. Such forecasting of manpower requirements plays a critical role in restructuring the educational systems in the context of economic development. Manpower projections have become regular features in the USSR, Japan, Sweden, France, USA and many other economically advanced countries. Among the underdevel- oped countries which have used manpower projections as the basis of educational reorganization Nigeria and Pakistan are notable examples. An obvious implication of manpower projections is the need to have a long-term plan for education and educational expansion. Popular enthusiasm for education often leads to an unplanned expansion of education. It may be a good thing to provide compulsory and free primary education for all children, but if the next step is to try to provide secondary education for all primary-educated children, and then col- legiate education for all secondary-trained pupils, and post-graduate studies for all graduates, there will be a sprawling growth of “education” which is both unnecessary and wasteful. But the Indian Education Commission’s Report points out that this is precisely what has been happening in India since independence. Children who start on primary education keep climbing the educational ladder because they themselves and others who are responsible for them (including the leaders of their

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countries who seem to know everything else) do not know what ese to do with them ! And when they reach the top and have no more steps to go up they are mercilessly pushed down into the abyss of unemploy- ment ! The situation in India has been so acute that the Education Commission has suggested in good humour that it should be obligatory for the government to offer a job to each new graduate along with his degree, leaving him to decide whether to accept the offer or not, so that there will be an automatic control over the expansion of education. Whether this suggestion is taken seriously or not there can be no doubt that careful long-term planning is necessary if education is to aid eco- nomic development.

Personal maMty and social responsibilities

The relationship between education and economic development dis- cussed so far may appear to be based on a bread-and-butter approach to education. In a sense this is true. When peoples and nations ask for bread, we shall obviously not give them stone, but it is doubtful if promise of mental refinement and culture can be good enough sub- stitutes. Newman drew the distinction between useful education and good education and said that what is useful need not be good. This is perhaps true. But does it mean also that what is useful cannot be good? In the field of education it has long been held that only that education is good which is good for nothing in particular. The relation- ship between education and economic development brings out the fact that this is not necessarily true, and that education can at once be useful and good. As the Robbins Report on Higher Education (United King- dom) points out : “We deceive ourselves if we claim that more than a small fraction of students in institutions of higher education would be where they are if there were no significance for their future careers in what they hear and read ; and it is a mistake to suppose that there is anything discreditable in this.” We may well add that no nation would divert its resources into education unless it expected some concrete benefits. The important question is how we understand the concept of the usefulness of education for the individual and the country. And we have argued that in the context of economic development education will not be useful unless it is excellent in its own right. Only an education which is at once rigorous and relevant can serve the purpose of economic development. This is to assert that education cannot be truly useful

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unless it is sound and good as well. We must go along with the Rob- bins Report and recognize that to do justice to the complexity of things it is necessary to acknowledge a plurality of aims for education. But the real task of education is to sort out the priorities and to put first things first, for then all others will be added m t o it. This is the way of excellence in education, and to enable the world of affairs to recognise this principle in all walks of life is education’s major social responsibility.

There is a growing body of literature dealing with the relationship between education and economic development written, if one may say so, from the economists’ point of view. The interested readers are referred to JOHN VAIZEY : The Economics of Education (Faber and Faber), 1962; FREDERICK HARBISON and CHARLW A. MYERS : Education, Manpower and Economic Growth (McGraw-Hill), 1964 ; C. A. ANDERSON and MARY J. BOWDEN ed. ; Education and Economic Development (Aldine), 1965; and the excellent survey of the literature and an able discussion of the subject in United Nations : Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East; 1965. The subject has also become a major area of concern for the UNESCO which has conducted and sponsored many studies on it in different parts of the world. In this paper I look at the problem primarily as one concerned with education. I make frequent references to India not only because it is the country I know best, but also because I find the recently published Report of the Indian Education Commission entitled Educa- tion and National Development a masterly and stimulating study of the subject.