Education for Developing Areas: A Proposal for a Global Approach

Abstract

Planning education must rest on the premise that we live in one world, not three or four separate worlds (as such terms as Third World or Fourth World imply), and that this world is comprised of rich and poor nations that are interlinked through ownership, commodity trade, technological and financial relationships, and transnational movements of students. Contemporary capitalism, both a cause and an effect of these interlinkages, now poses a challenge to the rich as well as the poor nations which are faced with a ‘common crisis’. The central purpose of planning education should be to face this challenge boldly by facilitating global consensus-building about ways of transcending the crisis. This requires that North American and poor countries' students be brought together instead of being separated into ‘special programmes’, as is the current trend.