CEPAL Review - Volume 1983, Issue 21, 1983

This study looks at education in Latin America from the angle of the counterpoint between social participation and élitist exclusiveness. It alludes first to the educational model proper to the colonial system and to its perpetuation as reflected in an exclusion from culture and knowledge which is described as a distinguishing feature of the situation in Latin America up to the middle of the present century.

The first part of this study aims to justify on the one hand the validity and interest of the historical dimension and, on the other, the use of categories of analysis such as development ‘models’ or ‘styles’.

The central purpose of the present article is to examine what role has been played by formal education systems in the processes of change in Latin American countries during recent decades.

This article is dearly divided into two parts. The first reviews the controversy on unemployment and underemployment problems in Latin America, their nature and causes, and the measures which should be applied to eradicate them.

The problems connected with education in rural areas are so many and varied that the author has arranged them in four broad categories with a view to facilitating their consideration by those who are responsible for adopting decisions in this field.

Although there is a consensus to the effect that the problem of school failure still loms so large in Latin America that it casts a shadow on the successes achieved through the ever-increasing coverage of the educational system, its causes are the subject of ardent theoretical and empirical controversy.

After analysing the educational situation in Brazil, and particularly stressing its shortcomings, the author seeks to answer an important question: wherein lies the need for education?

In a number of articles, some of them published in CEPAL Review, the author has made a critical analysis of the development models which prevailed in Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s, their limitations —both as regards their results and as regards the assumptions on which they were based— and the new models proposed, especially during the last decade.