Zambezia (1977), 5, (ii).CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATION*ELIZABETH HENDRIKZDepartment of Education, University of RhodesiaWHEN I BEGAN incubating ideas for this lecture some months ago I happenedto pick up a copy of Arnold Bennett's Clayhanger. My subconscious mindmust have been mulling over the lecture-topic ideas instead of concentratingfully on the book, because the following passage almost leapt out of thepage at me. It describes Edwin Clayhanger, hero of the book, at the pointwhen he had just completed his schooling:The various agencies which society had placed at the disposal of aparent had been at work for at least a decade in order to equip himfor this very day when he should step into the world . . . Knowledgewas admittedly the armour and the weapon of one about to tryconclusions with the world, and many people for many years hadbeen engaged in providing Edwin with knowledge. He had received infact a 'good education' Š or even, some said, a thoroughly soundeducation Š assuredly as complete an equipment of knowledge ascould be attained in the country. He knew, however, nothing ofnatural history and in particular of himself, of the mechanisms ofthe body and mind through which his soul had to express and fulfilitself. As yet not one word about either physiology or psychologyhad ever been breathed to him, nor had it ever occurred to anyonethat such information was needful.This passage set me wondering about how true the situation describednearly seventy years ago by Bennett is of people leaving school today. Thatis, how well does present-day education equip the young for their post-schoollife? Could it be, perhaps that they, too, are in possession of as 'completean equipment of knowledge as can be obtained' and yet be inadequatelyprepared for the real world which they will encounter? It was but a shortstep from this speculation to identifying a number of important questionsabout education, which ought to be asked frequently, in any age, and in anyplace where education is publicly provided. Although the questions mightremain the same, the answers would probably vary substantially in differentperiods of time, if they have been honestly given. This circumstance is prob-ably the foundation of a story told about an eminent professor of educationin a great American university. A woman who had been out of teachinga number of years to raise a family decided that she would take a refreshercourse at her old university before resuming her career, and found the sameprofessor in charge. At the end of the course she was most surprised to findthat the examination questions were the same ones that she had answered*An inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Rhodesia on 11 August1977.103104CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATIONmany years earlier. Rather gleefully, once she had seen her name on the passlist, she tackled the professor about it. His solemn reply was: 'Madam, ineducation it is not the questions which change, but the answers . . .'Here, then, are some of the unchanging questions which, as suggestedabove, should be frequently asked about education and answered with honestyand insight. Firstly, what is it expected, or intended, that the educationalprovision will do for its pupils and its providers? Secondly, how closely doesthe educational provision achieve these intentions? In fact, is there any con-flict between the expectation and the realization? By implication, at least,part of the intention of the schooling which Edwin Clayhanger received wasthat he should be equipped with knowledge, on the assumption that know-ledge, per se, would be sufficient to enable him to 'try conclusions with theworld'. His academic success ast school demonstrated that he had indeed, tothe satisfaction of the school, acquired the knowledge which it offered. Soon the face of it there was no conflict between the expectation and the real-ization. Obviously, then, more questions are needed, since it can scarcelybe doubted that in Edwin's case there was conflict somewhere.A third question worthy of consideration would be: What ought educationto be doing for its pupils and its providers? With this question we are com-ing into the realms of both educational philosophy and curriculum theory,and are confronted with very fundamental issues indeed. Looking again atBennett, we clearly see that he thought that education ought to haveequipped Edwin, with knowledge certainly, but with knowledge of a differentsort from that which he actually gained, that is, knowledge about his ownenvironment and the people in it and, above all, about himself, his ownphysiology, insight into his own motives, interests and so on; in Bennett'swords,natural history, and in particular of himself, of the mechanisms ofthe body and mind through which his soul had to express itself.As yet not one word about either physiology or psychology had everbeen breathed to him, nor had it occurred to anyone that such in-formation was needful . . .While Bennett's own analysis of what education ought to have done forEdwin is not necessarily the best one, nevertheless it does illustrate the sortof thing I had in mind when selecting the topic of this lecture. Here indeedis a place where there can be conflict, between the basic intentions and ex-pectations of the providers of education and what is actually needed by bothpupils and the community which provides the education.A further question to add to our list is how can educational provision beplanned and structured to cater for the real needs of pupil and society? Itis here that the area of compromise comes in. As I hope to show, educationis increasingly expected to achieve conflicting objectives, for both groupsand individuals, but it cannot be all things to all men (or women, or child-ren) and it becomes largely the art of the possible, using compromise toreduce conflict. It is time that we looked at some less fictional examples ofpossible conflicts between educational expectations, realities, achievementsELIZABETH HENDRIKZ1O5and provisions. Perhaps we may thus gain further insight into the processesat work and identify considerations essential in ensuring that our own edu-cational provision is as free of conflicts as possible, through appropriateanalysis of what education should achieve and what practical compromisesmay be necessary to achieve it.Throughout history, the reasons for making educational provisionbeyond that found informally in the family and local community havebeen many. For example, among Australian Aboriginal groups it wascustomary to designate one man who taught boys between certain ages thevery difficult skills of hunting with boomerangs and spears, and of trackingand capturing snakes and water creatures. The techniques of fighting, bothaggressive and defensive, were also included. Life was so precarious in theharsh Australian countryside that it was essential for the physical survivalof the individual and the group that all boys be schooled by an acknowledgedexpert. It was too important to be left to chance. So education here was in-tended to ensure survival; as long as it achieved this, there was no conflict.The need is easily identified, easily filled and the effectiveness of it easilyassessed. Survival has been an important basis for many other informal,community-organized forms of education. The survival need not always bephysical but spiritual, or the survival of the group through the preservationof its social structure, traditions, religious beliefs and similar intangibles,and such community education systems exist throughout the world and haveexisted for thousands of years (Boyd, 1964; Butts, 1955). Social anthropolo-gists such as Mead (1942, 1943) and Benedict (1935) have studied and re-corded such educational processes. The purpose was survival of the groupand its method was to ensure that all young people knew and would acceptthe traditional ways. Essentially such educational provision was conservativein nature and intent. It was education to retain the existing community struc-ture without change. Any deviation was socially unacceptable and threaten-ed the survival of the community. And indeed, such communities preservedtheir traditional ways almost intact often for hundreds of years, with noreal conflict between purposes and achievement, though there may wellhave been conflict within individuals, especially those who found it difficultto conform.It would be interesting to look at the purposes of education which someinfluential educational philosophers have identified, to illustrate the grow-ing complexity of expectation from education without, it would seem, paral-lel restructuring of educational provision to achieve the expectations. Noticethat virtually all of them are analysed in terms of what the community orthe state requires of its citizens, accompanied by the recognition that thecommunity or state must thus make provision to ensure that its young areprepared for the sort of citizenship that is desired. For example Plato in hisRepublic says, that every person, irrespective of sex and social rank, shouldreceive the training which would enable him to play the part in the statefor which he would be best fitted. Each occupation group would receive aneducation to develop the particular aspect of its 'soul' which was most needed.106CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATIONFor the common people it would be temperance; for soldiers, courage; forgovernors, wisdom. The quality of the state depended upon the kind of edu-cation received by its component groups. A not dissimilar view is offeredtoday by Young (1958). Notice that the earlier views presuppose that theclass structure is fixed and social mobility between them negligible. This isin marked contrast to the more recent concept that education can be a pro-moter of social mobility and, paradoxically, egalitarianism. Aristostle in hisPolitics shifted the emphasis to some extent to include personal fulfilment aswell. He maintained that education should train body, character, and intel-lect to ensure both the well-being of the state and the right enjoyment ofleisure. Calvin (in Boyd, 1964) was much more down-to-earth. Education,for him, was necessary to secure public administration, to sustain the Churchunharmed and to maintain humanity among men.Much nearer to home, at least in time, President Conant of Har-vard (in James, 1951) in the late 1940s put forward a view rather similar tothe one offered by John Milton over two centuries previously, that thereshould be (in Milton's words) a 'complete and generous education, that whichfits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices,both public and private, of peace and war'. Conant's translation of Miltonreads: 'a common core of general education which will unite in one culturalpattern the future carpenter, factory worker, bishop, lawyer, doctor, sales-manager, professor and garage mechanic'. The then High Master of the Man-chester Grammar School, Sir Eric James (1951, p.34), takes serious issue withConat because, he says, such aims are impossible to implement; there can beno educational compromise which can achieve these conflicting aims:. . . Professor Conant ... is simply asking for the impossible. Thedemand for such a common culture rests either on an altogetherover-optimistic belief in the educability of the majority that is cer-tainly not justified by experience or on a willingness to surrenderthe highest standards of taste and judgement to the incessant demandsof mediocrity.So here is conflict, not only within the defined aims, but between definers ofthose aims who are men of considerable eminence and influence in educa-tional matters.There are many other attempts at analysis of educational aims, but I amafraid we will have to leave them here, with perhaps the final comment that theneatest of definitions is offered by Pickering, a medical academic (1969, p.28),who states that education is 'the preparation and training of youngpeople for the problems, the tasks and leisure as these exist today and canbe foreseen tomorrow.' This view is, of course, deceptively simple, but it hasthe merit of providing guide-lines for analysing existing educational provisionin a variety of different historical and environmental circumstances. I my-self would like to add a phrase such as 'taking due account of the humanand financial resources available'. Idealism is excellent, but if not temperedwith realism leads inevitably to conflict, and possibly inappropriate com-promises made as a result of force majeure rather than intelligent planning.VELIZABETH HENDRIKZ107The more one looks at existing contemporary education systems, especial-ly in the more established countries of the world, the more one realizes thatthey have just grown out of what went before, the direction most obviouslytaken being one of expansion of size and scope rather than of fundamentalchange. It follows that the original purposes for which that education wasestablished have been taken over as well, often without it being realized whatthose purposes were. This is not necessarily a bad thing since evolution isusually a less damaging process than revolution and human institutions areusually, like humans themselves, capable of considerable adaptation. But alltoo often, and for compelling reasons, the expansion and adaptation do notreflect the changing requirements of education, and a consensus on whatthose are and how to achieve them is near impossible. This is partly becauseof the sheer size and complexity of the existing situation. You cannot just shutdown educational systems for a few years and start from scratch; inertiacarries them on. Then, too, it is very difficult to effect fundamental changein people already working in an existing system (in our case mainly teachersand administrators) whose whole concept of a system and their place withinit have become deeply entrenched. Very few of us have that sort of flexibilityand courage, and there is the added danger that the results of extensive andspeedy change, unless it is based on rigorous research, may be worse thanthe original. A further barrier to radical change is the fact that the clientsof the education system (parents, employers and even pupils) resist changebecause of the feelings of insecurity which it breeds in them, on the principlethat the devil you know is better than the devil that you do not know. Theresult is that purposes for which the education system was originally estab-lished become inadequate and inappropriate for a subsequent era, but thesystem based on them remains substantially the same.Here, then, is a major area of conflict in education, a conflict betweenout-dated and contemporary purposes which, it is often alleged, producesan out-dated education system. An example par excellence here (Price, 1970)is that of traditional Chinese education, which attained a very high level ofacademicism over 2 000 years ago, initially to ensure a literate priestly, mer-cantile and administrative class of people. The content then became crystal-lized and remained an end in itself, and probably in turn crystallized thestructure of society until revolution in this century created conditions, aswell as an obvious need, for change. Few other systems remained as staticas the Chinese one did. Most Western European systems while still retainingvisible traces of their elitist and academic origins are today reasonably nearto serving the purposes which the community thinks they should serve. Ingeneral, one can say that most advanced countries have highly developedsystems with full-time schooling available for all young people, often up toeighteen years or more, and fairly extensive opportunities for vocationaland higher education, though one could still often level the accusation im-plicit in the Clayhanger excerptŠthat they may have much knowledge butare not necessarily equipped for the world in which they will live. Mosteducational planners in such countries think that changes and compromises108CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATIONare necessary to achieve valid educational purposes. D'Aeth (1975, p. 56)summarizes them as follows:more 'democratization' of the educational system, more emphasis on'learning' as opposed to 'teaching', and the development of an exten-sive and flexible range of opportunities to provide for 'recurrent edu-tion' throughout the life span. Increasingly in the advanced countriesdevelopment is being thought of in terms of maturing a system, ratherthan of continued expansion; and highly institutionalized systems ofeducation, with large bureaucratic administrations, are slow in res-ponding to changing circumstances.Despite the recent extension and change in such sophisticated systems,there are many outspoken critics who urge that a far more fundamentaloverhaul of educational provision is necessary. Present systems, they say,are manifestly not producing people with the personal and intellectual qual-ities and skills (in contrast to knowledge) which are essential for people whowill live in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. They allege thatthe sorts of intellectual activities required of pupils, and the classroomapproaches used, all too often fail to produce people with critical and en-quiring minds, who still retain their curiosity in the world around them.Along with this goes the further allegation that a great deal of the actualcontent of what was learned is lost, as soon as school is over, mainly becauseit was never seen as having any real relevance in the first place. These pointsof view are epitomized in books often with dramatic titles, by, for example,Holt (1969) in How Children Fail, Mich (1973 a) in De-Schooling Society,and Postman and Weingartner (1971) in Teaching as a Subversive Activity,They all, as do many others, in their various ways, point to conflicts betweenintended, even expected, achievement and actual achievement in the school.It is worthwhile looking at Postman and Weingartner's thesis in moredetail to illustrate the point. They start off by identifying two major assump-tions about society: firstly that its survival is threatened by an increasingnumber of unprecedented and so far unsolved problems, such as pollution,exhaustion of the world's material resources, explosive population increase,increasing rates of crime and mental ill-health; at the same time the in-creasing possibilities of mischievously controlling and manipulating people,individually and in groups, facilitated by the communication revolution andgreatly increased knowledge of group and mass psychology, are facts of life.Their second assumption is that something can be done both to solve theproblems and to reduce the potential for the abuse of power over people.A major agent for preparing people for the solution of the problems lies inthe sort of education provided. They support their arguments by quotinga number of influential contempory thinkers, including McLuhan, who holdsthat what is currently provided is irrelevant, Wiener, who holds that it shieldschildren from reality, Gardner, who holds that it educates for obsolescence,Bruner, who holds that it does not develop intelligence, Holt, who holds thatit is based on fear, Rogers,, who holds that it avoids the promotion of signifi-cant learning, Goodman, who holds that it induces alienation, and Frieden-burg, who holds that it punishes creativity and independence (p. 13). AsELIZABETH HENDRIKZ109an aside, it is interesting, and probably significant, that most of these criticsare not 'educators' in the formal sense.The blame for the alleged ineffectiveness of highly expensive, complexand sophisticated education systems lies in many areas, including the class-room climate and the teaching techniques all too often used. They say, asdoes McLuhan, that the 'medium is the message', and the messages thatpupils get from most classrooms are the ones itemized above, even thoughthe teachers had hoped, and planned for significantly different 'messages',or 'learning' to be achieved. Postman and Weingartner propose that thechanges (or, in our terms, compromises) needed must be in both the teachersthemselves and in the organization in which they work. Teachers, for example,must be shaken out of their existing ruts and challenged to change. Some ofthe rather bizarre solutions they propose (pp. 134-7) are, for example:(i) there should be a five year moratorium on all textbooks;(ii) teachers should be randomly assigned to teaching subjects;(iii) all teachers should be limited to three sentences impartinginformation, and fifteen questions per lesson, none of thequestions to be ones to which they themselves know theanswers;(iv) all teachers should be required to take a test, prepared by theirpupils, on what the pupils know;(v) classes should be optional and a teacher's cheque should bewithheld if students do not show interest in going to thatteacher's classes during the next month;(vi) all teachers should be given one year's leave of absence in everyfour, in order to work In another field.I suspect they had their tongues firmly in their cheeks when making someof the proposals. But the three-way conflicts between the acknowledged pur-poses for which the education is provided, the purposes which the real worlddemands, and the actual achievement of the educational provision are notthereby diminished, and there is, in this latter quarter of the twentieth century,great need for extensive and imaginative compromise. Such considerationsare not irrelevant to this country, or indeed to any country of whatever degreeof educational and industrial sophistication.To summarize the argument up to this point, conflicts in education arise,fiistly when the hopes and expectations of the educational providers andrecipients do not coincide with what is actually achieved by the educationalprovision. Secondly they arise when what education ought to be achievingfor the community is at variance with what it is hoped it will achieve, thatis when the real educational needs of the community have not been clearlyanalysed. Thirdly, conflicts can arise when the community expects fromits educational provision benefits which it cannot In fact provide. Educationalprovision for any community at any time will only be as effective as thequality of the analysis of the community's real requirements of education,which in turn must be catered for within the realities of the available re-sources, human, material, financial and methodological.110CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATIONI should now like to pursue further the implications inherent in bookssuch as that by Postman and Weingartner, that the solution to much ofsociety's ills lies in the hands of the educators and the formal provision ofschooling. It is important here to look at some of the aims and expectationsof educational provision in developing countries in the last decade or two.It is largely a story of disappointed hopes, at least as far as the idea is con-cerned that educational provision is a panacea for all the problems of adeveloping country which is wanting to rush headlong into a twentieth cen-tury economy. In many such countries there existed a relatively limitededucational structure designed initially, if it was designed at all, to providepotential employees to serve the colonial administration at various levels.The intention was generally not to prepare the country's inhabitants for afull and independent role in the world in the foreseeable future. In Zaire,to take an extreme example, there were fewer than thirty Congolese univer-sity graduates to administer twenty million people in a country the size ofBelgium and France combined. In general, such education as there was forthe indigenous peoples tended to be a close copy of that of the colonialpower. The influence of the traditional British grammar school structure isobvious in the African secondary school system in this country. This is notto imply that there is not a place for such a grammar school type of education:I am merely illustrating the imported nature of school systems and, by im-plication their purposes, which have come from the best of intentions andoften with great success in terms of what they were trying to achieve.Newly independent countries especially those in South America and Africa,put great pressure on their political leaders to provide universal free school-ing, at least at the elementary level, in order to ensure fast and effectiveeconomic and social development. Not only the leaders of the newly-develop-ing countries themselves assumed that more educational provision of thetraditional variety would promote rapid, beneficial and extensive change inthe lives of the people. Major industrial powers anxious to assist economicdevelopment, and international agencies such as those of the United Nations,assumed the same thing. Plans for the development of education usuallyincluded an analysis of things which it was expected to achieve, oftenidealistically, though usually with great humanity. It was anticipated thateducation would lead to economic growth and hence improve the generalstandard of living through better employment possibilities. It would enableindividuals and their communities to live richer, healthier lives, and thus topromote beneficial change in the communities. The development of the skills,technical and social, needed for life in a westernized society would lead tothe development of such a society. A more equitable social structure shouldfollow, thus reducing tensions and frustrations leading to stability. The keyreally was the relationship between educational and rapid economic develop-ment. Given this, most other things would flow from it, it was thought.Sadly, the reality often failed to live up to expectations. Since the modelusually aimed at was a western one, problems of prohibitive costs soon aroseeven in providing only a minimum of primary schooling for all.ELIZABETH HENDRIKZ111Thus an elitist system tended to develop. The bookish nature of the educa-tional content tended to alienate the young from their families while at thesame time produced too few skilled workers and a surplus of academic people.We must not overlook some of the carefully thought-out and persuasiveeducational programmes based on economic and political realities, such asthat of Nyerere (1967) which aimed at the eradication of the capitalist andcompetitive aspects of education, the inculcation of approved social attitudes,the production of good farmers and the general preparation of children for thekind of life most of them will lead, and not for selection into secondaryschools. Disappointingly, even when the strongly persuasive powers availablewere used to move populations into the collective villages which were cen-tral to the educational and political plans, some of the high hopes placed ineducation have not materialized and the economic situation, especially inthe production of food, seems to have deteriorated somewhat.This is not the place to make any sort of definitive analysis of why educa-tion is not, apparently, achieving what was hoped of it in developing countries,or even of what is really needed of it in highly-developed ones. All I am try-ing to do is to illustrate some areas where the aims and expectations ofeducational provision are in conflict with both what is being achieved andwhat, indeed, can be achieved by education. By and large the educationalprovision actually made is only minimally adapted from provisions madefor a different historical time, or different social circumstances. The originalpurposes conflict with the present ones to such an extent that the results areoften not merely disappointing but at times positively retrogressive.I should like now to be rather more positive in my approach by identi-fying possible implications for this country, which is in the fortunate posi-tion to benefit from experience in other developing countries, as well as otherindustrialized ones. Here I am largely indebted to D'Aeth (1975). He startsfrom the premise that any educational provision must take into considerationboth human aspirations and the practical realities of the situation. All toooften the former were over-emphasized, while too little account was takenof the material and human resources available to achieve them, or even ofappropriate techniques for their achievement. By and large the failure ofeducational provision in developing countries has been the result of an over-simplified approach, of equating education with formal schooling, which inturn was thought to be a direct and major causative factor in economicgrowth and improvment in social conditions. It is becoming increasinglyrealized that education must be part of overall planning, industrial, economic,social and political, and not be planned in isolation from all these. Fie identi-fies such an overall plan in a developing country as needing to include:1. overcoming the extensive abject poverty which exists; this will in-clude rural development;2. improving the physical quality of living, which in turn may improvethe social life and freedom within it;3. providing opportunities for the young for self realization withintheir own culture (though not necessarily restricted to it);\\Z CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATION4. providing for the development of the modern sector, which needspeople with high level skills, which in turn will create a new elite;education has not only to provide the manpower but also to act asa selection filter into its ranks;5. ensuring a balanced development between the urban and rural sec-tors, especially in the matter of food production and populationgrowth (i.e. more food and fewer babies).He proposes that an education system which was integrated in overallplanning would be much more flexible and much more community-orientated than commonly exists at present, and much less examination orien-tated. He rejects the concept of education being something like a ladder fromwhich very many fall before they reach the top. He suggests that thereshould be a basic provision of education for literacy for all. This would notattempt to cover a general educational programme. In every communitythere would be literacy groups, for children of all ages and available to alladults. A great deal of the tuition here would be undertaken by local tutors,sometimes full-time but usually part-time, or voluntary, but supervised andhelped by qualified people. Parallel to this must be a continuing supply ofreading matter suitable for different age and interest groups, which couldincidentally give information on a variety of matters (such as health andagriculture) which in turn could improve the quality of life. Readingcircles would remain a feature of community lives so that literacy wouldbe continuously improved and strengthened. Those who have achieveda sufficient level of literacy, and who are sufficiently motivated to do so,would have access on a full or part-time basis to a wider, more generaleducation, perhaps in primary schools but probably for some time to come,in less formal community learning centres where learning 'packages' wouldbe available, using self-instructional and mass-media material as well astutoring and group work. This would, again be available for all ages, andwhile tests for adequate understanding and achievement would indeed feature,the purpose of the learning would not ultimately be the acquisition of a'certificate'.The provision of secondary schooling with a more academic bias (butnot exclusively 'bookish' academicism) should be available, again for thosewith the aspirations and the persistence, as well as the ability, to achieveappropriate levels of general education, a major criterion for admission be-ing motivation and persistence. A variety of entry criteria could be availablehere, and not the narrow age-criterion and passes in a defined range ofsubjects as at present. Again, much of the instruction would be 'packaged'self-learning, because the realities of the situation as regards availabilityof highly-qualified staff and the money to pay them dictate this. Much of theavailable highly-qualified manpower and resources would be devoted to pro-ducing 'packages' which had real relevance as well as appropriately-demandingactivities within them. This, then would be the major route, and filtersystem, into the industrialized sector. Below is a diagrammatic illustration ofhow D'Aeth's principles could be translated into an overall educationalELIZABETH HENDRIKZT 13structure for this country. It attempts to show not only the relationshipsbetween the various sectors of the system but also he flexibility of entrymethods and the way in which the relatively scarce high-level human re-sources could be used to the greatest benefit throughout all sectors of theeducational structure. Further it attempts to demonstrate how the needs ofthe individual within his local community as well as the administrative andindustrial needs of the country may be catered for.A PROPOSED EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURETERTIARY EDUCATIONprofessional, technical,universitySECONDARYSCHOOLfee-payingSECONDARY EDUCATIONstudy centres, learning-packages, full andpart-time <ŠfPRIMARYSCHOOLfee-payingGENERAL EDUCATIONcommunity learning centres, packages,tutors, groups, full and part-timeEDUCATION FOR LITERACY AND NUMERACY ONLYcommunity learning centres, reading circles withfull and part-time tutorsSuch a system of educational provision presents a compromise, a workableone, it is contended, between the human aspirations and practical realitiesof this and possibly other developing countries. It has something to commendit for developed ones, too. It also reduces conflicts between generationswithin the family and within and between local communities while allowingfor individual and community aspirations to be achieved. Hopefully, it mayeven reduce the conflict between political aspirations and influences andthe right of human beings to choose between alternatives, since, with properly-planned programmes and self-learning techniques the intellectual skills suchas judgement and critical analysis can be developed widely in the community,without alienation from one's family.114CONFLICTS AND COMPROMISES IN EDUCATIONIt would be impertinent of me, especially in a lecture such as this, to implythat I have outlined even a partial blueprint for educational developmentin this country. Nevertheless it is vitally important at this moment in timein this country that plans for a realistic development of educational provisionbe made in advance of political change. Such plans must be made in thelight of considerations such as those discussed in this paper and in a realizationof the need for intelligent compromise in order to achieve valid twentiethand twenty-first century purposes: the preparation and training of youngpeople for the problems, tasks and leisure as these exist today and as theycan be foreseen for tomorrow....ReferencesBALL, C. and BALL, M. 1973 Education for a Change: Community Action and theSchool (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books).BENEDICT, R. 1935 Patterns of Culture (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).BENNETT, Arnold 1910 Clay hanger (London, Methuen).BOYD, W. 1964 The History of Western Education (London, Adam and CharlesBlack, 7th edit).BUTTS, R. F. 1955 A Cultural History of Western Education, Its Social and Intel-lectual Foundations (New York, McGraw-Hill).Education and Development in the Third World (Farnborough,D'AETH, R. 1975Saxon House).HOLT, J. 1969 How Children Fail (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books).ILLICH, I. 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