Rural Education and Under-Development: Aspects of the Politics of Education. IIEP Seminar Paper: 25

The nations of the capitalistic world devote a high percentage of their exports to trade with other nations in that group, while the underdeveloped nations send most of their exports to the capitalistic nations. The low wages in underdeveloped countries are critical for the maintenance of their position as dominated, for these low wages allow the dominant industrial countries to receive goods at relatively low cost and also to reduce the internal mass market of the underdeveloped countries to a minimum. In a colonial period, education is used by the capitalist countries to produce elites in the dominated countries. Today universal education policies in the underdeveloped countries keep these countries in a state of underdevelopment, for the costs of education and the growing unemployment rates of the educated in urban areas perpetuate a state of dependency. For the individual rural family, belief in advancement via education hinders the individual production and accumulation process and also creates a number of family liabilities in the form of children who cannot function within the existing rural society because they have never learned the required skills. By teaching things which have no obvious usefulness, institutionalized education plays a major role in creating the required mentality of a working class which can be and is controlled by the dominant classes in both the capitalistic and underdeveloped countries. (JC)