Social mobility, education and development in Tunisia

A revolution in education and literacy has taken place throughout the Third World within a generation. The vast majority of parents in developing nations are illiterate, while the majority of children, by the time they reach their teens, have enough formal education to assure more or less permanent literacy. To be sure, the quality of this education, the duration of the schooling experience and the equality of educational opportunity for males and females, rich and poor, urban, town and rural dwellers varies considerably from country to country. However, the fact remains that for the first time in history, formal education has become available to the majority of mankind. The consequences of this new state of affairs must surely be significant. For example, children have the means quickly to acquire more knowledge than their parents possess, which might call into question traditional relationships of respect and honor accorded to older people, based on their greater life experience and knowledge of the ways of the world. Or, as new jobs or occupational roles become available in societies, the superior education of the young might give them competitive advantage over their elders in access to new jobs, higher pay, or other means to enhance the quality of life of their families. Are these changes taking place? To date there have been very few attempts to answer this question, which makes James Allman's study of the impact of formal schooling on Tunisian youth of interest to educators and planners throughout the developing world. -- From JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/stable/218264 (May 2, 2013).