HOW UNESCO IS WORKING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 29, 14 November 1949, Page 4

HOW UNESCO IS WORKING

MANY PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE ALREADY GIVEN The problem of educational assistance to under-developed countries and how Unesco was working to solve it, was described in a broadcast talk last night by Dr. C. E. Beeby, Director of Education, who has recently returned from Paris, where he was assistant Direcctor-General in charge of Education in the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Culural Organisation.

Dr. Beeby said at the beginning of his talk that New Zealanders would naturally be wanting to know what Unesco had done, and what it was doing now. “The question is a fair one, though it is not easy to answer in 10 minutes: Unesco is doing a great multitude of things—indeed far too many, I think —and I can only pick out a few sample ones to-night. Let me take my„own field of education; Even there the scope of our activities is very wide, but you might be specially interested in the work we were doing to help education in backward and undeveloped areas, if only because their problems are so very different from our own,” said Dr. Beeby. example, the Secretary for Education of Pakistan came to see me in Paris about two months ago, and put his problem to me something like this. He said that Pakistan is a hew country, that it is pledged to establish a democratic form of government based on full adult suffrage. The first provincial elections are to be held in four months, and all must be completed within two years. Unfortunately, he said, they have not the necessary civil service, the majority of the population of Pakistan have only the vaguest idea of what we call democracy, and 85 per cent, of their 80,000,000 people cannot even read and write. The problem, he said. Avas obviously of education, but they have not tfie necessary trained staff to tackle it, and they scarcely know how to begin. He finished by asking me flatly what Unesco could do to help.

“It is, believe me, no enviable experience to have the problem of 70,000,000 illiterate human beings put on your desk on a Friday afternoon. Clearly the situation cannot be met in in four months or four years. There is a generation of heartbreaking work there. But there was a little—all too little —that Unesco could do, and. my answer may give you some idea of the way Unesco works. “I told him, to begin with, that we were organising a six weeks’ seminar or ti’aining course in India for leaders in illiteracy campaigns from all over Asia. It began last week in Mysore, with representatives from about 2(1 different countries meeting under the leadership of five or six of the best experts that we could find anywhere in the world. They are studying the educational problems they have in common and are planning a campaign against them. I promised him also that, if Pakistan wished it, Unesco would send them an international mission of educationists to examine their problems on the spot and to advise them on what steps they should take. I also promised to provide fellowships for some of their own people to go overseas to study other countries which had dealt with similar problems. In addition, I arranged to have him supplied with all the material we could collect about similar work done anywhere in the world. In my own department in Unesco we were in touch with almost everyone m the world who is working in this field of mass education, and it was easy for us at> least to advise him where to turn for help. “The Secretary for Education of Pakistan still has his 70,000,000 illiterates and his almost overwhelming problem of ignorance and superstition, but at least he and his colleagues know they are not alone. Whatever accumulated knowledge the world has of such problems can be put at his disposal in a way that would not have been possible without Unesco.

Help for Afghanistan

“Similar problems were put to us many other countries. During this year we have sent international missions to the Philippines and Siam, and there is one at this moment in Afghanistan. It is made, up of a Frenchman, an Englishman, an American and an Arab. They have a particularly difficult job.. Afghanistan is a country that has come under the influence of several foreign States, and its education system is the most curious mixture. Some of its schools teach in English, some in French, some in German, and some in Arabic, Persian and Pushta. It now has a university that does not know what language to teach in. Afghanistan wants to develop secondary industries. To do that it must have a -system of technical education, but it is no easy business to build that on the strange hotch-potch of schools it already has. So the Government came to us for advice. We in Unesco did not know the answers, but we did know where to find the people who might help them. When the mission has put in its report to the Government, Unesco will, if they want it, send Afghanistan a few experts for a longer period to help them to put the new scheme into operation.

Experiment in Haiti

“A different kind of problem came to us from the other side of the world, from the small Negro Republic of Haiti. Now Haiti is in a serious condition at the moment.. It is poor and over-populated, and through ignorance and bad farming its soil is each year becoming less and less able to support its growing population A large proportion of Haitians are poor, diseased, totally uneducated and quite unable to help themselves. The Haitian Government came to Unesco to ask us if we could take just one small poverty-stricken valley with 30,000 inhabitants and use it as a sample to show the rest of the country what education could do to improve the lot of the people. We took up the challenge and' put into the valley a couple of men skilled in that kind of village education. No miracles have occurred—unless indeed it is a miracle to put hope into the hearts of people who have never had hope before—but already there are marked signs of improvement. “With little material help from the outside, a road has been built into the

valley by a newly-formed co-operative, wells have been dug for the first time, a community centre and two simple schools have been erected, a weaving school has been started and contracts secured for, its products, one cooked meal a day is prepared for the children at school, the peasants have begun to terrace their miserable hillside sections, and to plant suitable types, of corn, a clinic has been set up and adult literacy classes have been fairly successful and—last and perhaps least —of the recently arrived babies several of the boys have been christened Unesco and the, girls Unesca. That at least showed a pathetic faith in the help the outsjde world could bring, a faith, that made us feel very humble when we realised how little we could really do. “It would be a small thing and a matter of little account that a few poor Negro peasants should be helped to lead a better life through educational help and leadership if their state were not typical of that of half the human race. Have you ever realised that half the human race are underfed, unhealthy, badly housed, uneducated and totally illiterate? Education alone cannot save them, but without education no other kind of help will be of much use. Any experiment like the Haiti one , that points the way towards a better steie of affairs has a significance far beyond its size,” declared'Dr. Beeby.

“So I make no apologies for having dealt longer than I intended with this problem of educational assistance to under-deleveloped countries. But I may have given you a very wrong impression of Unesco. Even its educational work is much broader than I have indicated, and much of it is concerned with well-developed countries such as our own. In addition there is alt its work in the fields of science and general culture, that I have not even touched upon,” the speaker concluded.