Items and notes 61

continue to be in the coming decade-- the most important activity in the developing countries of the region. In the last few years, the discovery of high-yielding, fast-maturing varieties of food plants, rice, wheat, etc., has brightened the prospects of agriculture as a modern and viable occupation and, because of this, has underlined the need for rural transformation. Education and training play a vital role in preparing the skilled farmers and agriculture experts needed to carry out this transformation.

Unesco specialists in the Organization's Re- gional Office for Education at Bangkok, stress that the mobilization of a total development effort in the developing countries of Asia is seriously hampered by gross economic and social inequalities. There is need, they point out, for a better adjustment of educational systems to the new requirements of these countries in view of all the changes that have taken, are taking, and will take place through the region. This will involve the goals and functions of education in light of the new requirements.

International Education Year: a starting point

As we know, z97o was designated by the United Nations and Unesco as International Education Year. The Executive Board of Unesco at its eighty-seventh session examined a report on the Year submitted to it by the Director-General. The object of the present article is not to summarize this report, but to show what is the general significance of this first ' IEY ' .

There is obviously a danger that the rapid suc- cession of 'Years', 'Months', 'Days', and so on by which the international community seeks to draw attention to one important contemporary problem or another will weary the public, which receives too many appeals for attention, on too many different subjects, a danger that is accent- uated by the relative paucity of the funds avail-

able for organizing such 'Years', 'Months' or 'Days'. Finally, so far as the press and mass media are concerned, the general nature of the themes chosen for this kind of 'campaign' very often obscures the topicality of the subjects being dealt with and is scarcely calculated to induce them to lend their support and give these cam- paigns the publicity hoped for by the promoters. How did International Education Year fare in this respect? And to begin with, what was the need for such a 'Year'?

T h e reasons for an event

Historically speaking, it will be remembered that the idea of an International Education Year began to take shape at a conference organized by Cornell University at Williamsburg in Octo- ber i967, the theme of which was 'The World Crisis in Education'. Admittedly, it was not until the end of 1968 that the United Nations General Assembly, at the suggestion of the General Con- ference of Unesco, unanimously adopted a reso- lution proclaiming 197 ~ International Education Year (IEY). All the same, IEY ought certainly to be seen in the context of this 'crisis', of which we have had much additional evidence since I967, and this is how its historical significance can best be grasped. One might prefer other terms to the word 'crisis', but the existence of certain facts clearly indicative of a state of crisis is beyond dispute. The fact that so few of the world's children of primary- or secondary-school age are actually being educated can of course be interpreted and analysed in d.ifferent ways, but none of them gives us grounds for optimism. Nor can we derive satisfaction from the fact that, despite the great and praiseworthy efforts made by all countries, particularly over the last ten years, to devote an ever-increasing proportion of their national budgets to education, the absolute number of illiterates has increased.

According to the estimates of responsible stat- isticians, the world as a whole is spending 2 per cent more of its gross national products on mili- tary expenditure than on education a fact that

62 I~msand no~s

brings credit upon nobody. Facts like these, which could unfortunately be multiplied, would of themselves be enough to justify, at the present point of history, that call to universal awareness which took the form of an Education Year. Quite apar t from the quantitat ive aspect of the matter, there are only too many reasons for questioning the validity of our education prac- tices and structures. The rejection by young people in so many countries of education systems passed down from another epoch is of course the most obvious sign. Another is the anomalies produced by the application of modern techni- ques (television, p rogrammed learning and so on) to educational structures whose general conception is archaic. We shall say no more of a situation in which there are so many changing factors that we do not yet understand. At this point we shall merely emphasize the fact that the decision to proclaim an Interna- tional Education Year was not a purposeless gesture on the par t of the Member States of the United Nations and Unesco; on the contrary, it was taken at a most crucial moment , as full of promise as of danger, in the history of education.

One last point may be made which illustrates its importance: the Federal Office of Education in the Uni ted States is of the opinion that 7 ~ per cent of the children at present in p r imary schools will, when they are adults, take up occupations which do not yet exist. This unprecedented phenomenon can be found to roughly the same extent in all countries, and who can say that our educational systems are designed to meet this challenge? Was it not right that all the countries of the world should, at a particular t ime unite to consider the question?

The choice of I97O in preference to any other year was due to the fact that we were midway between the two Development Decades, the second of which, of course, begins in 197z. I t is true that nobody today doubts the importance of education for development; but some points require further clarification for instance, exact- ly how education contributes to development,

and how we can determine which kinds of edu- cation are desirable in a particular development situation. In any case, the Second Development Decade will provide an opportunity to solve many problems, the solution of which will be of the greatest assistance with reference to the critical analyses begun in connexion with IEY. This is true in part icular of the revision of curricula with a view to training students so that they obtain the qualifications required as so- cieties evolve; it is also true of the adaptat ion of education to the needs of rural development; and lastly, it is true of the problem of the effectiveness of educational investment.

International year or national year in 125 countries?

An important point about the resolutions by which the General Conference of Unesco and the General Assembly of the United Nations designated 197o as International Education Year was that in them the term 'education ' was used in its widest sense. One result of this was that not only Unesco, which of course had the principal organizing role, but also all the other organizations of the United Nations system were necessarily associated with the event, since all of them, in varying degrees, are concerned with the problems of training and mobilizing human resources. The year 197o has provided I L O and W H O , FAO and W M O with an opportunity to consider the situation as regards educational problems and to plan their educational activities for the coming years.

In the last analysis, however, the real signifi- cance of the Year and its true impact on the course of events were felt at the national level. Reviewing resources, considering the existing situation, analysing educational problems--a l l this can and must be done at the national level. This, too, is the level at which the decisions that prove necessary in order to give a new direction to educational systems can be taken.

I t is therefore no paradox to say that the International Year has been the sum total of

Items and notes 63

what countries have done towards identifying and solving their own national educational problems.

W h a t t h e I EY was

A great deal was done by Member States, in all sorts of ways, to make the International Year. The Unesco Secretariat was notified of more than 1,6oo projects by the i i 4 countries which in fact participated in its celebration including national and international meetings, radio and television broadcasts, studies research, operation- al actions and so on. The projects involved pratically all fields of education, and concerned most of the educational problems facing the modern world. In the report submitted to the Executive Board, about forty headings were needed to cover the main topics, ranging from functional literacy for adults to sports education, from pre-school education to educational re- search, from the status of teachers to the reform of systems and so on.

We cannot in this article give details of the hundreds of activities carried out all over the world in connexion with the opportunity for reflection and stimulation offered by IEY; but we shall try to point out some of the trends common to all these projects, which are so varied in appearance.

I t would have been rather surprising if, solely because of International Educational Year, a universally accepted unifying principle had sud- denly emerged which enabled all aspects of edu- cation to be fitted together to form a coherent whole. Unesco had proposed that this unifying principle should be sought in the concept of life- long education. In many cases, in .fact, national services and international organizations have (often for the first time) appreciated the integra- ting force of this concept in regard to sectors (such as pre-school education, education of de- linquent children, preparation for old age, de- sign of community buildings and equipment) with which it had rarely been associated before. An important step has therefore been taken

towards the acceptance of this concept and the recognition of the advantages to be derived from it; in future, we shall every reason to speak about 'before' and 'after' 197o in the history of lifelong education.

However, if we had to describe in a few words the generality of programmes drawn up for the Year about which we have received informa- tion, we should have to say that they expressed a universal desire for progress and the regeneration of existing systems. There is, in what we might call the 'content of International Education Year', a definite movement towards both the quantitative and the qualitative improvement of education, whatever criteria may be used to measure this ' improvement ' ; this trend is not accompanied by the emergence of really new institutional models involving the fundamental transformation of existing structures. Experi- ments are taking place and ideas are being exchanged as to the division of school education into its usual stages (primary, secondary and higher), structural changes which the introduc- tion of new educational techniques might usher in, or new links between the school and the community. Such experiments and ideas are cer- tainly paving the way for decisions to be taken in this direction, and yet this movement towards a new type of education is not leading towards violent upheaval. The impression that one gains is that education has reached a turning point - -a l though it is still not possible to foresee what lies beyond- -and that there is widespread resis- tance to the changes of direction that this turning point implies; the mind recognizes the obvious need for these changes, but they are rejected by force of habit and opposed by the inertia of both the educational system and the organization of society.

I t is also interesting to note that International Education Year was treated in much the same way by industrialized countries and by develop- ing countries. O f course, their different concerns found expression in programmes that were worked out in different ways, and their priorities were not identical; for that matter, countries in

6 4 Items and notes

the same region, such as Europe or Lat in Amer- ica, have different priorities. One striking simi- larity between the reactions of Member States, and between those of non-governmental organ- izations was that Internat ional Education Year was seen as a t ime when the most serious prob- lems should be faced, in all their gravity, rather than avoided or concealed behind irrelevant information about previous achievements.

The International Year and the future

To judge by the spirit which prevailed in z97o , neither the reflection nor the research which IEY inspired should come to an end with the ending of the year. The hope entertained at the outse t - - tha t the Year would be a starting point and not an end in itself, a milestone in the search for new patterns of education and not a sterile occasion for useless ceremonies--will therefore be fulfilled.

Thus, once the scepticism and uncertainties of the initial phase had been overcome, the first International Education Year produced an ex- t raordinary number of activities, the compara- tive heterogeneity of which reflects the variety of situations concerned; but their common deno' minator is a kind of productive dissatisfaction and a search for ways of bringing about renewal.

The task is now to continue and make full use of the impetus which has been given. For the moment , the most useful task at a world level seems to be the elaboration of world strategies for education, which, as the Year has helped to show, are both necessary and difficult to plan. National programmes for the Internat ional Year showed that there was a universal desire for renewal and improvement in all aspects of edu- cation, but they also showed that there was a very great diversity in educational ideas and planning. Such a state of affairs surely calls for that pooling of needs, aims and resources which is both the condition and the final aim of world strategies in this matter.

The decision taken in z97o to establish the International Commission on the Development

of Educa t ion- -a decision which gives practical expression to these ideas--is therefore the natural extension of International Education Year.

Raymond Rodriguez

Brain drain from the Arab world

This text is taken from an address given by the former Deputy Director-General of Unesco at the eighth Arab Cultural Conference on the Training of Scientific Workers in the Arab World.

The Arab brain drain is seemingly small. About IO,OOO professionals--5,ooo to 7,000 of them highly ski l led--migrate annually from eight Arab countries with a total population of 123 mil- lion and a higher education enrolment of 300,000 (Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syr- ia, Tunisia, United Arab Republic). The Pear- son Commission computes that around 40,000 skilled persons migrated in 1967 from the devel- oping to the industrialized countries, giving Arab migration a 12 per cent share in the total.

But the Arab brain drain is only seemingly small. Beyond statistical configurations, the cost of the migrat ion cannot be computed. The cost of training a scientist has been calculated at around $20,000 and on this basis the ap- parent cost of the Arab brain drain is around $IOO,OOO million a year out of an annual total of around $i,ooo million for all developing countries. But this is not the real cost. One of these eight countries produces two Ph.D.s in physics a year and their migration means either no depar tment or its disruption for years, with all the multiplying consequences to its entire educational and scientific system and on to its political, social and economic structures. The cost is really beyond reckoning.

I t is a drain of the highly skilled. A Unesco- sponsored study made on the subject in the