According to human capital theory, the educational level of the agricultural labour force has an influence on agricultural productivity. This relationship may take three forms:
• education can improve the quality of farmers’ labour by enabling them to produce more with their available stock of production factors (other than labour);
• education can increase the efficiency of resource allocation;
• education can help farmers to choose more effective means …show more content…
The main objective of these reforms was to bring schools closer to the rural world not only by instruction in agricultural techniques but also by the use of new teaching methods. These policies have often been referred to collectively as ‘ruralization’, but this is in fact a term that recalls certain practices used under the colonial regime. During the colonial period, ruralization of education was one of the two facets of the colonial strategy: (i) humanistic education to prepare the elites and the staff of the colonial administration; (ii) a second track of practically-oriented education for the rural population.
In the post-independence context, this concept does not reflect the complexity of the efforts to adopt an educational approach that ensures the relevance of education to its environment without the discriminatory purpose explicit in the colonial ‘ruralization’ strategies. (Pg. …show more content…
The teaching of literacy is built upon the visual materials generated in each community, such as maps, matrices, calendars or diagrams. A strong link is made between active discussion of local issues and the capacity of people to communicate about them and act upon them. Empowering participants so that they are better enabled to improve their conditions of life is a central objective and the need for literacy is seen as interwoven with this. The emphasis is on actively producing texts rather than passive reading. Core materials to read are produced by participants with the help of a facilitator. No primers are used as they are seen as barriers to a participatory approach. However, supplementary reading materials are brought into the circles for practice and critical reading. Literacy facilitators are recruited locally, given a short initial course in REFLECT methodology, typically of two to three weeks’ duration. This is followed up by regular bi-weekly (later monthly) meetings of local facilitators, ongoing refresher training (three to five days every few months) and by support/supervision visits about once a month by supervisors who often are of high educational calibre. An evaluation of REFLECT carried out in 1996 in three