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CHAPTER 3. AIMS AND CONTENTS OF EDUCATION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
1. Educational Patterns and Their New Trend
(1) Educational Goals


The educational goals of the countries of the world, though they vary with the social and cultural traditions and also with the political institutions of each country, can generally be classified into the following four patterns:

(a) To develop the capabilities of the entire citizenry to serve the betterment of their community by establishing a democratic system of education that guarantees every segment of the population universal equality of educational opportunity, with equal emphasis on the actual demands of life in the community and on the desires and aptitudes of the individual. The United States of America is typical of the countries in which such educational goals have been pursued, and post-war Japan belongs to this category of countries.

(b) To aim at training productive technicians and engineers required to meet the demands of the State in which the doors of education are widely opened to all segments of the population and close cooperative relations between schools and industrial enterprises are required. The U.S.S.R. is representative of the countries of this category.

(c) To aim at training men of culture with greatest emphasis on the infusion of knowledge and the development of charactor on the one hand, and on training workers in the trades and industries, on the other. The older European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the German Federal Republic are representative of the countries of this category. In these countries, the conventional education is maintained with two aims of education beginning at the primary level of education.

(d) To aim at total national enlightenment and the training of human capabilities required for the rapid development of the State. This is the goal of education in the newly emergent nations in which a modern educational system is still in its primitive stage and the level of popular education is still low.

Such classification of national educational goals is only tentative and incomplete, and will no doubt undergo changes. Similarly, each of these patterns will surely be modified to meet new requirements as social progress continues. This can be seen in the recent trends of the several countries. In the advanced countries, an era of technical renovation began after World War 2, and rapidly accelerating economic progress and sociological change have made it necessary to train men and women to meet the demands of a modern society, on the one hand, and to develop man's intellectual capabilities for the further advancement of the society on the other. In such countries, educational systems, methods and objectives are being re-evaluated and revisionary programs formulated. In the Southeast Asian and Latin American countries, education has now become the instrumentality of socio-economic development and the formulation and implementation of educational plans have high priority in such nations.

Educational renovation in the major countries has four common characteristics:


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