Planning Education in Relation to Rural Development. Fundamentals of Educational Planning -- 21.

Overview & Synopsis

Assuming that schools, colleges, and adult education programs cannot alone produce significant rural improvement in developing nations, this booklet presents argument for educational policy that is part of a total planned rural policy and that incorporates an indirect rural bias. It is argued that if education with a rural bias is to be acceptable to parents and to children, it must not come as part of a drive to keep people on the land against their will; rather, it should be a gentle innovative but coordinated effort at comprehensive rural development which utilizes rural teachers, trainers, and extension workers as key factors in a total rural development program aimed at an industrialized and modernized cash economy. Citing the input of new knowledge as the most productive of all investments to be made in an agricultural economy, this booklet addresses an imagined 'norm' in an underdeveloped country and presents general rural education principles which are illustrated via a multidisciplinary approach and examples in general, vocational, extension, and adult education and teacher training. General recommendations call for manpower planning, international exchange of ideas, and coordination efforts under a centralized rural education agency. (JC)