Trends and Problems in Social and Educational Equality

Abstract

The commitment of politicians in all countries to the virtues of industrial society, and their optimism in the emerging post-industrial society, simplifies problems of social and educational equality. Their main internal problems are seen as the application of the increasing wealth produced by their rapid economic growth to irradicating the few remaining areas of poverty and material deprivation (Lipset 1964). Equality of social opportunity is seen as provided by the redistribution of the economic surplus produced by their own growth and the application of the newly discovered tool of social progress-technology. In their external relations there remains great optimism in the capacity of the industrialized countries to assist the underdeveloped countries to achieve modernization. Economic growth and technological development are seen as gradually making the world into a replica of western industrial society. The Western model of industrialization, urbanization and affluence is still seen as “the whole world’s future happening now”.