APPENDIX U- RECOMMENDATIONS FORM THE UNESCO FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATION DURING 1951
To consider recommendations from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the improvement of education during 1951.
Unesco's task in education is to help Member States to ensure that their educational systems are adequate in every way to meet the needs of society and of the individual. The campaign against illiteracy, the need to increase the supply of teachers and technicians and to develop adult education, and the birth of new educational ideas and methods-all call for consideration my Member States. In various countries efforts have been made to overcome the difficulties raised. Exchange of information about these efforts, discussion, and stimulation to experiment will all be necessary for the educational progress which the society of the future will require. Unesco collects information about such experiments, analyses it and promotes its distribution.
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In addition to helping Member States to improve their existing educational systems, Unesco takes the initiative in helping them to extend these systems to meet new needs. Unesco has the duty of helping Member States to ensure for everybody whose education has been neglected, interrupted or impeded, the chance to overcome his Unesco cannot afford to neglect any sphere of education, especially fundamental and adult education, and the training of handicapped children.
From the standpoint of Unesco, better methods of education and a wider diffusion of literacy are not, however ends in themselves. The final object it to equip the man to play his part harmoniously in the modern world. Unesco, therefore, must help competent organizations and institutions in promoting education in world citizenship.
The various recommendations of Unesco for the improvement of education in 1951 are as follows
(1) Fundamental and Adult Education.
The aim of Fundamental and Adult Education programmes is to create a movement throughout the world for mass,education. As ignorance and prejudice are amongst the chief causes of poverty and war, it is clearly Uneseo's duty to place its resources at the disposal of institutions endeavouring to combat those evils. The various movements that are growing up with a view to improving the living conditions and promoting the cultural development of the people co-operative movements, workers's educational movements, education for health and for the conservation of natural resources literacy Campaigns, etc. should provide a basis for the development of Fun- damental and Adult Education.
In 1951 Unesco will provide, in the first instance, for the establishment of the closest possible contact with most effective of the organizations concerned, and for publicizing and aiding their work. These organizations may be of widely varying character And include universities, teachers' training colleges, cooperative educational institutions, research institutions, etc. Unesco will provide all the documentation at its disposal. Unesco will give assistance to those organizations in the form of advice and technical facilities. Some -such undertakings, if successful, may lead to the establishment of centres for the training of staff and preparation of teaching material. Unesco will provide financial and to Haiti experiment and experts to India for production of films and audio- visual material for fundamental education. A Seminar will be organised in the Middle East. Permanent fundamental and adult education centre will be set up in Member States. Steps will be taken to encourage the establishment of national committees and associations for fundamental and adult education.
The programme resolutions for 1951 are given below
1. EDUCATION
1.1 IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATION THROUGH THE EXCHANGE OF
INFORMATION. Member States are invited to contribute, jointly with the Director- General to the improvement of education, by exchanging information, by collecting documentary material and organizing collaboration between specialists on Questions included in the Organization's programme.
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1.11 EDUCATIONAL MISSIONS. The Director-General is authorized :
1.111 To send to Member States, at their request and with their financial co-operation educational missions or technical advisers, for the purpose of considering certain educational problems peculiar to the country concerned, proposing suitable solutions, and subsequently providing, if need be, technical assistance for the implementation of the measures recommended ;
1.1111 and to publish these reports, in agreement with the governments concerned.
1.12 DOCUMENTATION-GENERAL ENQUIRIES. The Director-General is authorized:
1.121 To maintain a clearinghouse in education, giving primary attention to approved. projects and such clearing-house activities as are incidental thereto ;
1.122 To undertake a survey of the teaching of living languages as a means of achieving international understanding, and to report on this matter ;
1.123 To pursue, in collaboration with the International Bureau of Education, the enquiries into the introduction to natural science in Primary and Secondary Schools as a factor in the modernization of educational method;
1.124 To complete, in collaboration with the International Bureau of Education and with teachers' organizations, information on the administrative status of the teaching profession.
1.13 SPECIAL RESEARCH AND STUDIES. The Director-General is authorized
1.131 To arrange, in collaboration with the International Bureau of Education, for a session of the Conference on Public Education to be devoted especially to the universalization and prolongation of free compulsory education ;
1.132 To publish some monographs on a. certain number of countries, to illustrate the various ways of applying the principle of free compulsory education and to invite the International Bureau. of Education to continue the general enquiry into the position in this matter
1.133 To pursue the study-.of the problem of the access of women to education in order to, assist the work of the Commission on the Status of Women of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations ; and to prepare, jointly with the International Bureau of Education and women's international organizations, a session of the Conference oh Public Education in 1952 to be specially devoted to this problem ;
1.134 To furnish financial assistance to the International Universities' Bureau (or to the International Association of Universities, if founded in 1951) and to cooperate with that body in carrying out the programme of Unesco, more particularly in carrying forward the stud of the problem of the equivalence of university degrees and of Conditions for matriculation;
1.135 To assemble. with the assistance of Member States, documentation and the necessary standardized statistical data for the publication of a supplement to Statistical Year-book on Education published in 1950.
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1. 136 Member States are invited to undertake, research to study the, aptitudes of children, both,physical and psychological in relation to educational demands, and to determine the effect of overwork on their physical development and personality.
1.14 CIRCULATION OF INFORMATION. The Director-General is authorized
1.141 To publish regularly a bulletin on fundamental and adult education, containing more particularly an analytical review -of fundamental education
1.142 To contribute to the publication of the working papers and reports of the international Conference on Public Education.
1.15 PREPARATION AND EXCHANGE OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL
The Director-General is authorized
1.151 To collect material for a travelling exhibition of a technical character prepared for educationalists on various aspects of fundamental and adult education:
1.152 To prepare exhibition material for two seminars, and
1.153 To prepare from time to time documentation for a number of associated experiments in fundamental and audit education.
1.2 EXTENSION OF EDUCATION.
1.21 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION AND ADULT EDUCATION. 1.2111 Member States are invited to initiate or encourage projects in fundamental education and particularly research and experiment in
1.21111 Literacy teaching methods;
1.21112 Teaching in indigenous or second languages;
1.21113 The educational and cultural utilization of folklore;
1.21114 The preparation and-use of audio-visual aids.
1.2112 The Director-General is authorised to organise a regional seminar in, the Middle East for the purpose of examining the fundamental and adult education material assembled in 1950.
1.212 Technical Aid to Fundamental Education and Adult Education Undertakings. The Director-General is authorized
1.2121 To give special aid, in collaboration with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies, to experiments in fundamental education and adult education in selected areas and to make available to authorities responsible for each of these experiments the services of one or two experts for periods of between two and six months.
1.21211 Member States are invited to make use of the experts sent by Unesco to contribute to the training of personnel belonging to the selected areas.
The Director-General is authorized :
1.2122 To continue to provide the Haiti experiment with financial aid:
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1.2123 To engage a team of experts with a view to the local production of audio-visual material, especially films and lantern. slides, for fundamental education in India;
1. 2124 To continue to assist. the Training and Production Centre for Fundamental Education set up in 1950, in accordance with the agreements made with the Government of Mexico and the Organization of American States.
1.213 INDIRECT AID 1. 2131 Member States are invited to establish national committees or associations for adult education, fundamental education or both, which will cooperate with Unesco in developing projects and experiments and act as expert advisory committees.
The Director-General is authorized
1.2132 To facilitate the work of the national committees or associations for fundamental and adult education, by assembling once in 1951 experts for the purpose of advising the Secretariat or assisting national or international -organizations in the study of certain problems of fundamental and adult education:
1.2133 To draw conclusions from the work of the 1950 Seminar on the methods of adult education by using the services of the specialists brought together then and of the Consultative Committee on Adult Education.
1.214 Work with universities and similar qualified institutions.
The Director-General is authorized :
1.2141 To submit to the universities and similar qualified institution, certain problems, e.g., linguistic or psychological problems, arising in connexion with Unesco's various undertakings in fundamental and-adult education.
1.2142 Member States are invited to prepare, with the help of their universities, and if the need arises of similar qualified institutions, lists of those universities which-collaborate in adult education campaigns, with a view to supplying material for a comparative study of the results achieved and to publishing monographs.
1.215 Co-ordination. of the work of the United Nations and of the, Specialized Agencies.
The Director-General is authorized:
1.2151 To. take the initiative in setting up a joint commission for the special purpose of co-ordinating the work, in fundamental and adult education, of the competent services of the United Nations, be Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and Unesco ;
(2)Maladjusted Children.
Of the seven to eight hundred million children in the world, it is estimated that approximately two hundred and fifty million are undernourished, while same tens of millions axe still without homes and receive no regular education. These figures reveal the alarming extent of educational or social maladjustment among children suffering either from individual physical or mental handicaps or from unfavourable family, social or international conditions. This problem as gigantic as it is urgent, must be solved by appropriate international action on a world scale. Unesco must, therefore, not merely carry out research into the heart of the educational problems of distressed and maladjusted children
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but, in so doing, help to evolve the most upto date educational methods, and so contribute to the implementation of that provision of its constitution which recommends " suggesting. educational methods best suited to prepare the children of the world for the responsibilities of freedom". Unesco will list the needs and resources of the various regions concerned, and establish a research and action centre in Asia, under the supervision of a travelling specialist.
The programme resolutions for 1951 are given below
1.22 EDUCATION FOR HANDICAPPED CHILDREN . The Director-General is authorized.
1.221 To collect and disseminate information
1.2211 on the methods used or contemplated in various countries to protect, children from the undesirable influence which may be exerted by the press, the radio and the film, and especially to improve children's newspapers and literature.
1.2212 on the special methods used for the education and reeducation of handicapped children
1.222 To extend financial assistance to the International Federation of Children's Communities and other organizations capable of making a contribution to education of handicapped children.
III. EDUCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING It is Unesco's duty not only to help to spread education and raise its standards, but to try to strengthen, through education one of the basis of peace-mutual knowledge and understanding among the peoples of the world Education involves three inseparable processes : the balanced development of the personality, adjustement of the individual to the social community, and, transmission of a certain stock of knowledge and feelings. Unesco does not intend to assign a fourth separate task to teachers,.but rather to place educationin its threefold aspect at the service of international unuerstanding. How- ever, as in most cases this new trend will necessitate far-reaching, reforms, with prior or simultaneous research and experiments, it has seemed necessary to emphasize the trend by using the expression " education for international understanding ". In this part of the programme, the expression will be applied more particularly to young people, but it is obvious that the work plans for adult education are governed by the same principle. "Education for in ternational understanding" covers the programmes, methods and instruments of school education and, on the other -hand the education received or spontaneously acquired by young people outside, school.
(A) Curricula and methods.
At the first stage, it was especially concerned with the curricula for such essential subjects as History, Geography and " Social studies " (including Civics). The comparative study of those curricula, undertaken in 1950, will be concluded in 1951. The conclusions drawn from, this study will be submitted to national and international associations of teachers and to the school authorities in the various countries.
Unesco is also endeavouring to help teacher train pupils in the spirit of international understanding by publishing, for their guidance, practical suggestions that may be adopted in classes dealing with any subject. In 1951, Unesco will publish two further pamphlets in the same series. The first will contain the final text of the guide to the teaching of History, the provisional
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draft of which will have been considered in 1950 by the members of the seminar on that subject ; the,second will contain documentation and practical advice on school teaching in the matter of racial relations, from the point of view both of teaching as such and of actual everyday life.
One of the most effective methods tested by Unesco is the international seminar, at which a number of teachers chosen by the Governments of Member States pool their knowledge and experience to consider certain educational problems, examine the results of research carried out by Unesco or under its impetus, suggest further subjects of study, and prepare their own plan of work. The seminar, which is a true international community, is itself a practical example of education for international understanding. In 1947, 1948 and 1950 six seminars were devoted to various aspects of this form of education. In 1951, Unesco will hold a further seminar for which preparations will have been made in 1950 and which will deal with the teaching of History in Primary and Secondary Schools.
This seminar, essentially technical in character, will deal with curricula, as well as methods.
The 1951, Unesco will also invite Member States to help prepare two further seminars to be held in 1952 on the following subjects
The Teaching of Languages and
The Training of Teachers.
The latter problem was considered at. a seminar held in 1948; Unesco is intentionally reverting to it four years later in order to carry still further the study of the vital problem : how can teachers be trained to play their proper part in the development of international understanding ? This series of seminars forms a general cycle which will eventually cover all aspects of Primary and Secondary Education.