Education and Development

Abstract

The role which education plays in bringing about economic growth or in hindering it is not clearly understood. At best the role is a paradoxical one. Eric Hobsbawm, the historian, has noted (1968) that the technology behind the Industrial Revolution in England was not so complicated that an ordinary skilled artisan could not have designed it. It was certainly not a technology which presupposed high levels of investment in research or training to develop the skills necessary for its design and implementation. The factors, therefore, which, at least initially, lay behind the industrial development of Britain had little to do with education. Education for the masses came to play a very important role in the formation of an industrial labour force in the course of the nineteenth century, reinforcing factory discipline and teaching respect for authority, but that was much later when the scaffold of the new society had already been erected.