No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
When we begin to talk about planning in any society, we are immediately confronted with a whole range of ambiguities. First, are we talking about persuasion or prescription about the future allocation of resources in the society? Are we considering the operation of a technical sector where all issues will be decided by equations and empirical studies? Do we have adequate information about the present, much less the past and its trends or the future? Who will be actually planning for whom? These questions and many others are endemic to any consideration of the social and political environment of the polity under consideration but will also demand clear judgments about what values are important for that society as well as about the dynamics of history and change which will guide what is actually likely to happen.
The conceptual difficulties involved in any sort of planning and the complexity of all societies within which one might undertake planning have combined to make me quite skeptical of most planning procedures outside of a few areas of human concern where there is no dispute about the measures of value, although even there (the market place and/or military body count) one finds room for great dispute about the values measured in relation to the goals of the larger society. This general skepticism about planning has led me to cast a cold eye on the planning processes I have observed in developing countries as well as those in which I have participated in this country. Therefore, I propose in this brief paper to raise the questions of the skeptic about planning as they apply to the particular area with which I have had some experience, that is, education, and as the processes have been manifested in countries with which I have some familiarity, in this case in Africa, particularly Kenya and Tanzania. However, before raising these questions within the context of developing societies, I believe it is a useful exercise to see that the questions all emerge in post-industrial settings as well. Therefore, I shall begin by raising the questions in quite general terms and putting these questions in the context of one developed society—our own. Then, I shall move to a consideration of how the questions themselves might be affected by the institutional context of the developing country, and, in particular, two developing countries with very different conceptions of their present and future—Kenya and Tanzania.
1. This problem seems to have been recognized by Hans Weiler in a paper prepared for participants in an IIEP/SIDA seminar on changing needs for training and educational planning and administration, 27 September-1 October, 1976, Paris, UNESCO about “Changing Concepts and Practices of Educational Planning: Implications for Training.” In this paper, Weiler indicates that quantity and quality have never been effectively joined in the practice of educational planning (see page 5).
2. See the country reports of the International Institute of Educational Planning in Paris, the reports of the International Labor Organization, OECD reports on development, and UNESCO, UNDP, and United Nations documents on aid programs.
3. Harwitz, Mitchell, and Abraham E. Haspel, “Optimal Progress Toward Technical Independence for Third World Countries: Choice of Training Program,” papers presented to the 15th World Conference of the Society for International Development, Amsterdam, 1976.
4. In the 1960s, every major cabinet department in the United States Federal Government established a policy and planning unit headed by an Assistant Secretary to advise the Secretary on planning and budget matters.
5. See IJS-27 “Education and Planning in Israel,” Institute of Current World Affairs, 535 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10017, 1972.
6. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 14,4 (1976), 661–690 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7. Sheffield, James R., Education in Kenya, (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.
8. The information provided about Tanzania is based upon Court's article as well as published and unpublished materials provided by Court about Tanzania. In addition, Budd Hall's book, Adult Education and the Development of Socialism in Tanzania, has been useful for that sector. Also, I draw, to a limited degree, on my own field work in Tanzania in 1973.
9. See Nyerere, Julius, Freedom and Unity, Oxford University Press, Nairobi, 1970 Google Scholar, and Cliffe, Lionel and Saul, John S., Socialism in Tanzania, East African Publishing House, Nairobi, 1972 Google Scholar.
10. See Chapter 19—Education and Training, of the Kenyan Development Plan, 1974-78, Nairobi, Government Printer, 1974.
11. See page 2 of the draft summary of the report of the National Committee on Educational Objectives and Policies in Kenya which emphasizes the employment problems of school leavers.
12. See Adult Education and the Development of Socialism in Tanzania, Budd Hall, East African Literature Bureau, Dar es Salaam, 1975.
13. Taken from Appendix I–Basic data on Kenyan education of the draft summary of the report on the National Committee on Educational Objectives and Policies in Kenya.
14. Court, 690-691.
15. The Kenyan Institute of Education does all the curriculum development work for Kenya and reports to the Director of Education in the Ministry of Education as does the Inspectorate of Education as well.
16. The government moved from a commitment of 26.8 million shillings in 1970-71 to 75.4 million shillings in 1971-72 in order to support adult education.
17. A similar point was eloquently made by Colin Leys in his discussion paper, “A New Conception of Planning” published by the Institute for Development Studies, University College, Nairobi, May, 1969 Google ScholarPubMed.