Social Development : Its Aspects, Means, and Implications
The task before me this afternoon is to introduce the theme of social development to your deliberations. It is not a concept new to trade unionism, for ultimately the very essence of unionism and its success are anchored on the two pillars of enhancing the economic benefits of its members and of promoting their social development., But because we li8ve in fast changing times, and because we are all watching as the calendars and clocks tick away inevitably towards the coming of the next century, we are also aware that the very understanding of social development and its implications for the future are themselves changing rapidly.
A recent milestone in that understanding of social development was reached almost exactly two years ago, in march of 1995, during the World Summit on Social development, in Copenhagen. There the leaders of the world and a cross-section of society, and the labor sector was also well represent, recognized that the previously dominant econocentric view of the world needed to be balanced. Why, for example, do donors and banks have to justify human resources development by saying it is good for economic development, when in fact human development is the end and economic development should only be the means? The ensuing Copenhagen declaration puts the human being and communities at the center stage of development, and not money or capital.
This is not to say that the links between economic development and social development are any less important; in fact they are stronger that ever before, and we now have the mountains of evidence to show the impact of enlightened social development policy upon economic progress. To cite just one example recently referred to by President Ramos in his keynote address just over a week ago to the ASEAN Ministers of Education: In a longitudinal study of three countries conducted by a major development bank of three countries, Algeria, Republic of Korea, and the Philippines, it was seen how a few decades ago all three were at the same economic level, In the past two decades Korea put substantially more investment in the social sector , especially education, than the other two, the Philippines put in less, and Algeria put in by far the smallest proportion share. You can see the impact, with Korea now an economic powerhouse, Algeria still struggling with conflict and poverty, and the Philippines is somewhere in between.
It is not my ambition to enter into a comprehensive discussion of social development and all its aspects. We in UNESCO know the human resource development side of this best, and so I will concentrate my remarks of that. It is my hope that the panelists responding to this presentation will expand our discussion and include considerations of health, housing, nutrition,environment, social security, and other concerns as well.
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Before I talk about human resource development and education in particular, let me take a few minutes to look into the crystal ball of the future and venture to picture the new world for which education should be training the next generation:
And as we look at the reminder of the century, we realize that the dizzying pace of change around us, far from levelling off, will accelerate rather than slow down. It seems that history has a way of speeding up and crowding major events and turning points at the turn of each century, somewhat like a student cramming for a final exam. And these changes are often not the logical progressions of earlier evolutions, often they are changes of discontinuity, dramatic quantum leaps, revolutionary innovations that change the very paradigms we are comfortable with, leaving us a transition state of uncertainty, unpredictability, eve instability. As Ogden Nash once put it " The future is not what it used to be. "
At the turn of the century, for example , technological progress in transportation was not the continuous evolution of a better and better horse carriage, rather it was the introduction of motorized vehicles, and eventually airplane; similarly, in this century, progress is not the development of a better and better typewriter, it is the introduction of micro- computers, fax machines, e-mail modalities. Politically, the last century saw the beginning of the end of the great colonial empires, and the rise of the nation state with citizen rights; in this century we are beginning to see questioned the very notion of a nation state and its often arbitrary boundaries, as simultaneously ethnic factionalism divides countries, while regional aggrupations of nations, such as ASEAN in this part of the world, enlarge one's sense of identity and social cohesion.
This is not to say that we are all marching to the same drummer, and uniformly moving into the next century. Many countries in this region of immense diversity are by these yardsticks still experiencing the transition pains that others have experienced a century or even two centuries ago. Indeed within the same country, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh in India, or even Bangkok and the hill tribes in Thailand, the differences are so great that you feel specific populations live in different centuries.
Still, at the risk of oversimplification, I might say that the one predominant revolution that will eventually affect all the peoples of the globe in the next century is the information/communication revolution. The dawn of this century brought about an analogous revolution in transportation; what would have taken you weeks and even months of travel to come to an international meeting such as this now takes only hours. Now transporting bodies takes place with an efficiency and speed beyond the imaginations of those of century ago. IN the same way, the transporting of information and ideas around the world in the next century will take place so much more efficiently, quickly, cheaply, and in such volumes that our imaginations can barely predict it. This implies a change in the very paradigms of not only technology and information, but also of market and economies, of politics and participation, and yes of industry, the workplace, and the future role of trade unions.
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What does all this mean for human resources development and education? Perhaps the greatest single phenomenon of education in the twenty - first century that will affect labor in general and trade unions in particular is the fact that more and more education as we know it will be moving out of the classrooms into all spheres of life, especially into the workplace. Schooling systems as we know it are subjected to such pressures that they can no longer cope and provide needs of an increasingly complex and learning society. Consider these pressures:
- The growth of student populations has required a minimum a quantum leap in capacity. There were 252 million student in primary schooling worldwide in 1960, there are 492 million today. In recent years the numbers in higher education had grown at an even more rapid rate: Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia among others now have three times the number of tertiary students than they had a mere twenty-five years ago. As more and more society enters into a learning mode, much of the education vehicles to service them will have to be found in the workplace, and partnerships with industry and with labor have to be forget to meet these needs in new setting.
- The real revolution in informatics and communication technology will open new avenues. I have said enough earlier about the spectacular breakthroughs in this area and the possibilities, already now being realized, for quicker, cheaper, more efficient, and fundamentally different ways in which information and knowledge can be transmitted. This should have a profound effects on the way education should be re-conceptualized; no longer will classrooms and large schools and libraries be as needed as before.
- Accompanying this phenomenon is the virtual explosion of available information to the average person. With a keyboard at one fingertips, it is possible to tap into the great libraries and databases of the world, indeed to establish much more personal contact and collegial network in a way never imagined before. Education must thus redefine itself no longer as seeking additional knowledge and information, but as learning to sort out, evaluate and choose which sources of information to use and integrate. The learner is no longer is a desert looking for an oasis of information; he is in an ocean of information looking how to use it selectively and not drown in it.
- Most important, the International Commission on education in the Twenty - First Century headed by Jacques Delors has pointed out that new lifestyles and work patterns require shifts in the old educational paradigm where formal schooling was a preparation for life. The paradigm was useful in the past, when a life cycle was predictably one of study, then work, and then retirement. But in the future more and more people will weave in and out of these three periods, learning, working, and resting, alternatively and in different spheres even simultaneously. Multiple career paths or even simultaneous career paths are becoming more and more common, with periods of self - development and rest punctuating periods or productivity. We are entering not only a post - industrial society but in a sense a post - professional society. This implies difficult, even revolutionary, structural change, but if education is meant to be "the continuous construction of the human individual," we must structure education so that individual can learn throughout his life. No more a fixed early period of theoretical preparation, removed from reality, followed by hard initiation into the real world. No more the cartoons poster of the successful wise guy who learns back and says, " I was educated once, but I finally got over it. "
In response to the above mentioned pressures, policies and structures of the system need to be re-engineered. Industry and labor will have to join hands and assume major roles in human resources and social development. In particular, three policy implications need to be heeded.
- New lifestyles require new educational structure. This flows directly from the last point in the above section. Formal pre-service education can no longer be assumed to be a complete and adequate preparation for a lifetime of work; facilities and structure must be devised and expanded to take advantage of newer ways of transmitting knowledge, and new sets of consumers of this knowledge, of all ages at different times, need to be taken account of. Trade unions have a particular responsibility to guarantee that these opportunities of life long learning are provided within the frameworks of all work/employment situations.
- Government resources will simply not to able to keep up with the cost of quantum leaps in enrollment numbers and fundamental changes of structures. Government, however, has a responsibility to put in place the policies and guidelines that shape an environment where not only private schools but new forms of public-society. Privatization with all its opportunities and pitfalls, is inexorably on the rise, but it is in a more fundamental sense the increasing responsibility of communities, parents, and associations of learners themselves ( including unions) who have to assume the responsibility of finding ways and means to provide the continuous learning vehicle. -
- New structure will demand new partnerships and new networks. Quite apart from the increasing role of communities, parents, and the private sector an education system re-engineered for the future will have expanded partnerships with industry and agriculture, various government service ministries, international academic linkages, and a host of specialized - often informal - networks. These must be welcomed with an open - minded attitude, but must be handled with management efficiency and clarity to avoid confusion and duplication.
How all of this affects the workplace, and the human resources development that takes place in the workplace, must be a major of their members, and for the sake of protecting them from the obsolescence made all the more real by more competent younger entrants into the workplace.
The eighth plan of the Thai government, for example, has recognized this danger. They are aware that the average Thai worker has an education of only six years of schooling, and that if Thailand's economic success is to be sustained, and if the present workforce is not to be forced aside by younger more competent workers, it is not enough merely to expand the secondary school system. They have therefore designed a plan to provide secondary school equivalency programmes for factories and marketplace of Thailand so adult workers cancatch up and be empowered to take on the more complex tasks demanded of a progressive middle income economy.
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Before I end, I would like in particular to address a very specific segment of the trade unionists among you. Education is a major enterprise in all countries, and trade unionism within this sector is certainly dynamic. This was clearly brought home to me only last month, when I was in Hawaii, and the public school teachers' union call for a one day strike. Not only was the school system paralyzed, so was the entire civil society-parents who did not know what to do with their children had to skip work, transportation and traffic became aberrant, the rhythm of the city was jolted. Fortunately negotiations continued, and normalcy soon returned.
But the dynamic of trade unions in the education sector will sooner or later be profoundly affected by the changes in society and how society will learn in the future. There is a delicate dilemma that teacher unions will have to face. They are committed to enchancing, or at least protecting the status quo, but at the same time they do not want to stand in the way pf progressive reforms, which sometimes involves new formulas of credentialling, work, scheduling , and teaching practices yet to be codified. For example, the controversial use of para-teachers, seen by professional teacher groups as threatening have nevertheless situations. As a changing society forces a changing role for the teacher and changing mix of what is required in a learning society, it may be counterproductive to insist on the formulas and credentialling systems of the past.
In a new paradigm, the structure so necessary and effective in the previous paradigm need to be examined and re-evaluated. The professionalization and credentialling of a teacher, the formation of unions to protect teachers from exploitation in a now changing manager/employee setting the need for standard organizational checks of supervision and administration-- all of these are anchored on the assumption that the future will not dismantle existing bureaucracies and systems. But on the basis of all we have discussed today, this assumption may not hold true for very long. It is best to anticipate and be proactive in redefining the organizational context of teachers, and the corresponding new roles for unions, before circumstances and new structures forces this redefinition.
The teacher has historically and through the ages been recognized as a central and respected member of society, the vehicle and the channel through whish the student understands and sees what humanity has learned about itself. In previous non-monitized economies the teacher or the sage was never perceived as under rewarded or inadequately compensated. But as learning became more systematized in recent times, and as the educational enterprise became a giant service industry, subject to market and economic forces, education became a commodity, and the teacher became an employee. Thus the shift in paradigm from teacher as a public resources to teacher as a public expenditure. The monetized economies of central governments have had to cope with recruiting and paying ever larger numbers of civil servants or public employees for education. Eventually the tyranny of expanding demand took its toll. Teachers' salaries in almost all countries took dramatic drops in real income terms, and the corresponding status and prestige of teachers in society likewise dropped. A vicious downward cycle began, as status and salaries dropped, the quality of those attracted to the teaching profession also dropped and succeeding generations of teachers proved incapable of earning the respect levels of their talented predecessors.
But this downward cycle can and must and will stop. It willnot stop however by a miraculous reversal of the fortunes of national budgets; it will not stop by salary and status increases within the context of the present system; as the Hawaii strike proved, even bargaining with unions can achieve only so much. It will stop because the vey premises and foundations of the present system will have to change. The future is uncharted territory, and as society changes teachers around the world will have a new beginning, an opportunity to recast their role in their communities, to change the attitude of their communities and societies about them.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the challenges of the future are upon us. The future will need trade unionism more than ever before. But if it is to be effective in that complex and fast changing future, it too must change with equal rapidly. It must not be perceived as a stubborn obstacle or guardian of the past, but as a prophet and guide for a better and more enlightened, yes a more socially developed future for its members and for all of society. It is your tack to ensure this.
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