C. Constraints on Human Development
The global challenges impose constraints on human development in
several ways. First, they create a competition for resources to meet various
social needs, all of which appear urgent and legitimate. There is a need to
provide the poor and disadvantaged with basic subsistence needs, to remove the
sources of social dislocation and disadvantage, to protect the environment, and
to control excessive population growth. All these demands on a nation’s
public and private resources can, and sometimes do, take precedence over the
learning needs of the population.
In addition, the austerity measures adopted by
governments suffering from inadequate financial resources can cause
disproportionate cutbacks in societal development efforts. The education sector,
because it produces knowledge and skills, and the health sector, because
it protects and extends the value of the population, are critical for
development. However, government spending on health and education has declined -
in relative and, in some cases, absolute terms - in many of the world’s
poorest countries. In twenty-five out of thirty African and Latin American
countries for which comparable data are available, the share of the government
budget going to health and education has declined in the 1980s. In the
world’s thirty-seven poorest countries, spending per capita on health has
declined 50 percent since 1980, while per pupil expenditure on education has
declined by 25 percent. In this context, the momentum of many societal
development efforts has stalled, leaving hundreds of millions of people in
conditions of absolute poverty. They are without adequate nutrition to sustain
learning or labour, susceptible to diseases that could be controlled, unable to
read or write, and so denied access to the very knowledge and skills that could
improve the quality of their lives dramatically.
Economic development does not automatically increase the
quantity or quality of human development. A society must decide for itself
to devote resources to education and other learning opportunities. The
development experiences in the 1980s have demonstrated that social advancement
is a fragile process. Without sustained efforts to improve the circumstances of
the poorest members of society, overall development gains are undermined. The
enormity of the global challenges and the differences among rates of national
and individual development now threaten further deterioration in the quality and
equity of life chances. Unless dramatic and effective steps are taken to address
these threats, the future may bring even greater poverty and growing
polarization within and among societies. A world in which only an elite few will
live in health, safety, and prosperity must be avoided; all people deserve the
opportunity to fulfill their human potential and contribute to shaping their
society. In times of economic decline, austerity, and competing social and
economic demands, basic education must be protected through overt measures.
Otherwise, generations will be lost and whole segments of the population
excluded from the development process.
The phenomenal expansion of the national education systems since
the 1950s has continually increased the number and proportion of children in
school and of adults with basic literacy skills. However, the absolute number of
out-of-school children and youth and of illiterate adults has also increased
dramatically in the past thirty years. Today, more than one-quarter of all
adults still can neither read nor write (see Table 1). The more than 105 million
children who are not in school mean adult illiteracy will remain a common
problem into the next century.
The difficulty of combating nonschooling and illiteracy is
compounded by other problems. Many students drop out before completing their
primary schooling; others complete school but fail to acquire the necessary
learning. In addition, whatever their previous formal education, significant
parts of the adult population have yet to acquire the basic knowledge and life
skills that, in addition to literacy, would improve the quality of their lives
at home, in their communities, and in support of their nations.
Table 1 - Illiteracy Rates by
Region (Estimates and Projections)
Note:
No. denotes number of illiterates of both sexes,
aged 15+ (in millions)
Rates denotes rates of illiteracy among both sexes,
aged 15+ (in percentages)
Fem. denotes females as a percentage of total
illiterates aged 15+
a. Data for Arab States also included in Africa and Asia.
b. Data for least developed countries also included in regions.
Source: UNESCO; projections based on 1982
assessment.
The critical problem facing governments and development agencies
today is how to specify and meet the basic learning needs of all. These needs
cannot be met by a simple quantitative expansion of educational programmes as
they now exist although such aggregate expansion may be part of the solution in
certain countries. Despite the efforts and real accomplishments of previous
decades, more and more people have needs for basic learning that are not being
met. Continuing human development means that future generations of children,
youth, and adults will need greater access to and continued participation in
primary schooling and equivalent learning opportunities that provide an
acceptable level of learning attainment.
Given the number of children not currently enrolled in any
school at all, it is imperative that each country identify these out-of-school
populations, determine why they are not participating, and adapt or design
appropriate educational programmes to their specific conditions and needs. In
general, those out-of-school are likely to be female, to be poor, to be ethnic
or linguistic minorities, and to live in urban or peri-urban slums and remote
rural locations. To meet the basic learning needs of such groups, formal
education and other educational interventions must deal with the realities of
their life circumstances and stress effective measures to attract and maintain
their participation and to assure their learning achievement.
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Box 1.01. Street Children in Brazil
For seven million children, the streets of Brazil’s cities
and towns are workplace and even home. The youngsters are everywhere: shining
shoes, washing taxis, guarding parked cars, sorting through garbage for plastic
bottles. But people would rather not acknowledge their existence and the
authorities treat them as delinquents or misfits.
Of course, the problems of street children are not confined to
Brazil: throughout Latin America’s middle-income societies the number of
children living on the street continues to increase. In fact, it is estimated
that half the world’s 90 million street children live in Latin America, but
they appear wherever the world’s cities bulge with new immigrants from
rural areas.
Throughout Brazil, hundreds of community-based organizations
sponsor programmes to reach out to street children and try to find ways to
helping them earn a living and, at the same time, mature intellectually,
socially, and emotionally. In 1981, UNICEF, the government of Brazil, and the
National Child Welfare Foundation began the Brazil Street Children Project to
pool the knowledge gained by these diverse programmes; they also hoped to
increase public awareness of the children by broadening community involvement
and making government responses more effective.
The 70 programs directly involved in the joint project have
different philosophies, objectives and activities, but they share several
features: each seeks to gain the child’s confidence and to build a solid
bond between child and programme, providing meals, income generating activities,
health care, and discussion groups. Some programmes also offer more formal
training or employment. From their inception, the educational methods being used
have placed the primary emphasis on the child as decision-maker.
A 1986 evaluation of the Brazil Street Children Project, using
such indicators as social skills, career skills, personal growth, and moral
values, found that programmes are most successful when they respond to the
children’s own needs, the first of which is for income. For example, the
Salau do Encontro in the city Betim, Minas Gerais, produces a complete line of
home furnishing and employs more than 350 young people. The production process
is labour-intensive and emphasizes the use of local resources. In addition to
manufacturing the products, young people actually manage the enterprise Salao do
Encontro tries to build self-esteem among street children, believing that
confidence creates a secure foundation for personal growth and development.
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The nature and scope of the global challenges, and the effects
of economic decline and fiscal constraints on investment in the social sectors,
mean that a «business-as-usual» approach to basic education policies
and programmes simply will not work. In the long-term, a failure to take
decisive action to broaden the range, resources and suppliers of basic education
opportunities would only deepen the present shortcomings and disparities,
resulting in growing inequities in access to effective learning opportunities,
increasing numbers of illiterate adults, and a growing population of youth and
adults with inadequate knowledge and skills. Expanded forms of basic education
for children, youth, and adults, and innovative modes of delivery and social
mobilization to meet the broader scope implied by the term “basic
learning” will be required, together with resources sufficient to reverse
the declines that are occurring in some countries and to promote real
improvements in all
countries.
