The Sociology of Education in Developing Countries.

This article discusses studies which represent the different sociological approaches to education in developing countries. The major contours of the sociology of education landscape are determined and can only be understood sensibly in terms of the two opposed theoretical paradigms of modernisation and dependency. Modernisation theory has its theoretical basis in the structural-functionalism which dominated sociology. Development as modernisation is taken to be an essentially evolutionary process relying primarily upon changes in the central value system of any particular society. Becoming modern involves the first massive and fundamental resocialisation of the population and secondly, the effective and efficient selection and allocation of appropriately talented and trained manpower. The education system is taken to be of singular importance in both functions. Two further facts combined to provide the policy and epistemological bases for modernisation theories of development. First, it is argued that the economic failure of ex-colonial nations is significantly related to the absence of mass education at primary levels. Secondly, it is assumed that education in western societies is a major source of economic growth which cannot be attributed to the rate of increase in capital formation.