9 1.9 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN EDUCATION MOVEMENT

In countries, which were taking their first steps towards industrialization, progress in industry began to have a very nearly direct relation to the popularization of education. As the industrial revolution spread to more and more countries, it triggered an expansion in education leading to the concept of universal and compulsory school attendance, linked historically to the idea of universal suffrage. The social order in which class conflict, far from fading away, grew more sharply defined and acute sought to confine this democratization of knowledge within narrow limits. It was one thing to begin giving rudimentary lessons to children in the cities and the countryside, to ensure that industry had a labour reserve sufficient for its needs. It was quite another to throw open to the people those avenues of classical and university education which were the fief of the well born and the wealthy. When, half a century ago, the United Nations proclaimed that man has a right to education, they were endorsing a democratic ideal several centuries old. Its application, however, continues to be hampered in many places by conditions similar to those prevailing at the time it was first expressed.

Transplanted Colonial Models of Education.
Yet, seen across the prospect of time, and however important the economic eruption of the modern age may have been, nothing seems to have had more significant consequences for the world than the mark and orientation which the colonizing Europeans left on modern education in Latin America, Africa and vast reaches of Asia. Colonial regimes, whether British, Dutch, French, Portuguese or Spanish, transplanted and distributed the various European models of education just as they were to all lands under the sun. In exercising sovereignty over a large part of the world until recent times, Europe, with its political and economic power, set its seal on educational institutions in the developing countries. And just as the political and economic effects of colonialism are still strongly felt today, so most educational systems in American, African and Asian countries mirror the legacy of a one time motherland or of some other outside hegemony, whether or not they meet those nations’ present needs.

Entering the Modern Age
Since the industrial revolution and even more so after modern day scientific and technological transformations the very content of the ways of life and means of production, of man’s hopes and fears, his cares and joys, has profoundly changed. The prospects for education have also changed and become greater, for a variety of reasons. Centralized, lay societies have called in new quotas of trained personnel to serve the State. Economic development has multiplied jobs for qualified men and women, making it necessary to train more and more technicians and professional executives. The right to education has come home to the workers, whose consciousness has awakened, as one of the major means to social emancipation. Accelerated modernization in many societies has led to more and more fundamental, quantitative and qualitative changes in pri¬mary, vocational and generalized education. Meanwhile the pro¬cess of socialist revolutions begun with the October, 1917 Russian Revolution, and the national liberation movements, which reached their zenith forty years ago, have created new demands and new needs.

What general conclusions about education can we draw from this fragment of history?

• First, education has a far richer past than the relative uniformity of its present structures might lead one to think. The African cultures, Asian philosophies and many other traditions are imbued with values, which could become a source of inspiration, not only for educational systems in the countries which have inherited them, but for universal educational thought as well. There can be little doubt that many eminently valuable possessions have been lost in some cases even before the colonial era, through internal decline or were destroyed or distorted through external action, especially through colonialism. It is relevant to note, however, that many nations which have undergone foreign rule including some of those now most resolutely affirming their independence have proudly taken over, particularly in education, the best part of the intellectual disciplines and so called classical culture acquired in harder times.
• Second, outmoded dogma and custom weigh heavily on education and, in many ways, the older nations suffer no less from anachronisms in their educational systems than the young States which inherited them in the form of imported models.

Although this view of the past has been fragmentary, the history of education seems to propose a dual task for the future its restitution and renovation, at one and the same time.