Joel Samoff

Education and Social Transition in the Third World

Through a comparative analysis of educational theory and practice, this analytic overview illuminates the larger economic and political changes occurring in five peripheral countries--China, Cuba, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Nicaragua--commonly viewed as in transition to socialism. Current political patterns and leadership in these countries have emerged in the context of predominantly agricultural, industrially underdeveloped economies. Each state has played a major role in social transformation, relying on the educational system to train, educate, and socialize its future citizens. Discussing the similarities and differences among these states, the authors show the primacy of politics and the interaction of material and ideological goals in the process of social transition, and how shifting policies reflect and are reflected in educational change. This collection first examines critical analyses of education in capitalist societies, both industrialized and peripheral, and explores the utility of those perspectives in the political and educational conditions of the countries under study. Together these essays offer the first systematic explanation of how and why education in socialist countries undergoing rapid change differs from education in developing capitalist countries. Contributions to the study were made by Mary Ann Burris, Anton Johnston, and Carlos Alberto Torres.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Institutionalizing International Influence

Education is perhaps the most public of public policies. Yet most of the major studies of education, explicitly commissioned to guide policy decisions, have very limited circulation. Designated “confidential” or “restricted,” Africas education sector studies are generally available only to the commissioning agency and a few government officials. The volume of theses studies, their central role in the aid relationship, and thereby their influence on objectives and priorities in African education is the most visible manifestation of the evolution of the international role in education: the institutionalization of international influence. Individually, none of these studies, or perhaps even the aid programs that spawned them, is likely to prove very consequential over the longer term. But as a group, these studies outline and provide insights into changing patterns of international influence in education. In this discussion the author traces that evolution briefly, concerned especially with the experiences of the worlds poorer countries and particularly those that became independent during the second half of the twentieth century.

Education sector analysis in Africa: limited national control and even less national ownership

Abstract Numerous and voluminous, the Africa education sector studies undertaken during the early 1990s turn out to be strikingly similar. With few exceptions, they have a common framework, approach, and methodology. African education is in crisis, they report. Governments cannot cope. Quality has deteriorated. Funds are misallocated. Management is poor and administration inefficient. Notwithstanding the diversity of the countries studied, the recommendations too are similar. Education sector analysis is potentially a very powerful tool for supporting and improving education policy and programmes in Africa. Generally undertaken within the context of the aid relationship, it is also an important vehicle for international partnership and development cooperation. To date, however, that cooperation has been accompanied by general frustration with the sector analysis process. Far too often, that process has remained driven by the agendas and procedures of the funding and technical assistance agencies, with constrained national participation, limited national control, and very little sense of national ownership. To shift its center of gravity toward Africa, the process itself requires major restructuring and reorientation, from conception through completion. Most important, what is required is genuine dialogue among partners who not only talk but also listen and hear.

The Promise of Partnership and Continuities of Dependence: External Support to Higher Education in Africa

Abstract: After a period of conscious neglect and dramatic deterioration, higher education in Africa is again attracting external attention, with an emphasis now on “partnerships” rather than “aid.” This report is based on an extensive survey of links between African institutions of higher education and foreign governments, foundations, and universities, with particular emphasis on links with the United States. In it, we explore the evolution, characteristics, promise, and problems of external support. Earlier, most African universities were linked to European institutions. With independence, they asserted their sovereignty and autonomy. By the 1980s, however, resources were inadequate nearly everywhere. Today, renewed attention may bring new funds, yet it also may bring new problems. Academic partnerships are often one-sided, and external support commonly carries conditions. By framing, organizing, and orienting the academic enterprise and thus ways of knowing and validating knowledge, partnerships threaten to reintroduce, in both explicit and subtle ways, the external direction of the earlier era. A consideration of these and other issues is followed by several appendixes, which contain a thorough cataloging of this material and may be used as a resource for future research.

Which priorities and strategies for education

Abstract Marvelously complex, education affects us all. Nearly everyone has advice to offer on education, perhaps the most contested of public policies. Still, none of us, novice or professional, is quite sure how it works. The World Banks experts are apparently more confident. Detached clinicians, they offer the unambiguous terms and orderly logic that (some) economists and fiscal managers seem to require. In their search for global recommendations, not only education but public policy more generally become largely matters of technique and administration. What could have been a pragmatic vision turns out to be just pragmatic, and perhaps not even that. Education as interaction, education policy making as a participatory process, education decisions as locally contingent, and the education of a billion illiterate adults all get short shrift. As analytic method obscures both education content and process, education for all seems likely to remain a distant goal. Copyright

The Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa

Often regarded primarily as a lending institution, the World Bank has increasingly emphasized its role as a development adviser. Few, if any, other international institutions have a comparable concentration of development expertise and experience. Its investment in research surely exceeds that of most African countries and perhaps all of them combined. In some domains-education is a prime example-the World Banks development advice may have as much influence on programs and policies as its loans. As it plays this role, the World Bank becomes more than a broker of relevant information. Directly and indirectly, it seeks to guide and manage the creation of knowledge and, in doing so, to set the standards for what has come to be called knowledge production. Implicit in the provision of foreign assistance to African education are several broad propositions about the relationships among research, knowledge, and public policy. Generally accepted uncritically, these propositions seem unexceptional, so obvious that they hardly require systematic presentation and supporting evidence. Embedded in these propositions is an increasingly influential conjunction of funding and research that has far-reaching consequences for African education and for African development in general. The understanding implicit in the assistance relationship begins with two related assumptions: education is essential for development, and education in Africa is currently in such disarray that it cannot fulfill its developmental role. From that starting point comes a third widely accepted proposition: foreign assistance is required to support new initiatives in education, to rehabilitate African education systems that have deteriorated in recent years, and to meet recurrent expenditures. A second set of propositions informs the determination of what sort of assistance is to be provided. Although foreign assistance is of course negotiated and thus subject to the exigencies and vagaries of politics, priorities and targets for foreign aid should be determined, it is generally assumed, on the basis of careful research on education and development. That is, reliable knowledge about education, both in general and in its role in African development,

Managing Knowledge and Storing Wisdom? New Forms of Foreign Aid?

Aid agencies claim that their development expertise and advisory services are more important than their funds. Development research databases highlight broader problems in the knowledge management systems that have been established to record and distribute that expertise. In practice, distilled digested mini-facts disseminated electronically risk perpetuating rather than reducing dependence. A banking model of knowledge and knowledge sharing stymies learning because it undermines and devalues learners’ initiative and responsibility. More consequential than detached bits of information is learning, largely initiated, maintained, and managed by those seeking to change their situation. Problem-solvers must be directly involved in generating the knowledge they require. Achieving information affluence in poor countries cannot rest on transfer and absorption but rather requires a generative process with strong local roots.

The Bureaucracy and the Bourgeoisie: Decentralization and Class Structure in Tanzania

A decade ago, most African states had proclaimed their commitment to centralized planning and administration. At the end of European rule, African leaders saw their countries as poor and malintegrated, but with great potential. That potential could be realized, they thought, only through firm central direction. Scarce resources, including capital and technology, had to be coordinated effectively and managed carefully. The few skilled personnel had to be located at key points. And the divisive tendencies of regional, religious, and ethnic differences had to be constrained by a centralized, national authority.

School Expansion in Tanzania: Private Initiatives and Public Policy

In much of Africa, as elsewhere in the Third World, education is the most prominent public policy arena. A large percentage of the population, a substantial portion of the annual national budget, and a good deal of the foreign assistance are all involved in education. Education policy is necessarily very political in its effect and therefore in its specification. This most prominent of public policies, however, has distinctly private dimensions.

The Façade of Precision in Education Data and Statistics: a Troubling Example from Tanzania

To understand what people do and why, we need to know something about what they have done. Rarely, however, are social scientists direct observers of all events of interest to them. Hence, most often we rely on information that someone else has collected, more or less systematically, usually for some other purpose. The behavioural revolution in the social sciences, with its shrill cries of ‘falsifiability!’ and ‘reproducibility!’, has pushed us towards the sort of evidence that can be recorded and stored in quantitative form. It has as well urged us towards increasingly complex, and perhaps sophisticated, techniques for exploring relationship within that evidence.