外文翻译---拉美的教育、民主和发展

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1、本科毕业设计（论文） 外 文 翻 译 原文： EDUCATION, DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA Abstract - The education first brought to America by Europeans was hardly more than ornamental culture, literacy was generally unimportant, and African slaves were not educated at all. Only in this century did industrializa

2、tion cause some governments to provide economic and technological support through training and education. In the last decade, the debt crisis curtailed spending, while numbers of students and teachers continued to rise. A comparison between Latin America and South Korea illustrates the formers relat

3、ive decline in investment. The advent of populist and corporatist democracies did not alleviate the situation, although there is now some evidence of concern for basic education for poorer children. With economic adjustment programmes, little else has been done for those who have suffered the heavie

4、st burdens, and no obvious solutions to poverty and technological obsolescence are in prospect. A major reform of State institutions is called for, including a commitment to education, a change in the economic model, and a recognition of global interdependence. Inward-oriented industrialisation has

5、its problems. In Latin American countries, these included modest levels of competitiveness and balance of payment problems. The intimate relationships of companies with the State led to the constitution of a complicated network of connections with official bureaucracies. These often resulted in ambi

6、guous control and support relationships. Moreover, while foreign economic life changed rapidly, that of Latin American countries generally did not. And while international credit helped in the short term to finance some admirable growth, the ensuing problem of foreign debt became a nightmare. As is

7、well known, the position in most Latin American countries then reversed as they became net capital exporters. During the last decade, the continent has remitted approximately US $200 billion to its creditors abroad. In these circumstances, economies were forced to depend upon domestic savings. Inves

8、tment capacity was correspondingly reduced and educational spending, like other forms of general spending, fell drastically. Furthermore, although educational expenditure decreased, enrolment increased, mainly at second and third levels of education (Table 2). In other words, the number of students,

9、 particularly the most expensive ones, increased at an inverse rate to the size of the financial cake available to meet their needs. Curiously, in some cases, the pupil/teacher ratio improved, especially at the first level of education. The number of teachers grew faster than the number of pupils, t

10、hough the opposite would be expected during an economic crisis. The less governments spent on education, the more they relatively spent on personnel. This meant that salaries were devalued, that educational systems had difficulties in the recruitment and selection of staff, and that other running ex

11、penses, as well as investment, decreased. Administrations did not take effective action to improve productivity. In short, serious management problems negatively affected efficiency, quality and equity. Fiscal crisis did not lead to any rationalisation of educational expenditure. On the contrary, re

12、source allocation in general did not conform to expected economic and financial criteria. In contrast, in the Eighties, developed countries not only increased their public expenditure on education, despite their modest population growth, but also improved their educational conditions (Table 3). Univ

13、ersalisation reached not only the first but also the second levels of education. The third level also expanded notably, in spite of the economic obstacles of the last decade. Elsewhere, the Republic of Korea, often compared to Latin America in the lost decade, offers an alternative example. Based on

14、 an outward-oriented model of industrialisation, this country invested heavily in education (Table4). Its public expenditure almost quadrupled in nine years and enrolment in higher education increased enormously. This expansion, however, was not made at the expense of basic education. On the contrar

15、y, current expenditure on pre-primary and first level education per pupil, had its highest increase between 1980 and 1988. These comparisons remind us that when we advocate rationalisation of resource use, we need to ask what kinds of rationalisation are being proposed. The state is a cluster of com

16、peting groups with different goals and means. Thus, rationality has different meanings depending upon the particular elements of the power elite or other major groups of society involved. What rationality means for most educators and economists may mean irrationality for a political group whose purp

17、ose it is to reach or augment its own power and prestige at the expense of the majoritys interests. It is a matter of verifiable fact, that economic crises defeated many authoritarian regimes in Latin America. The fragile democracies which often emerged as a result generally did so in association wi

18、th populism and corporatism, interests which can only be protected on the basis of peculiar criteria of resource allocation. Democratic rule of this kind does not necessarily bring about the structural changes of social participation which its electors might have expected. Yet, at least the illusion

19、 of change is essential to populism. There is, therefore, a sort of hide-and-seek game between politicians and electors. The latter look for solutions at almost any price. The former are interested in short-term solutions, at the same time delaying unpopular decisions and hiding structural problems.

20、 The portrait of Latin American education in such contexts cannot be considered a mere result of mismanagement, and of bad administration of available means. To understand it, we need to take account of ends as well as means. In most countries there are both technical capacity and financial resource

21、s for deeper educational change than actually takes place. On the one hand, money is wasted on personnel and other forms of expenditure. On the other, those employed in education are in general unhappy with their earnings. Repetition and drop-out rates persist at high levels. Nevertheless, Schiefelb

22、ein (1991), Oliveira et al. (1992) and others suggest that an increase of only five per cent of the average cost per pupil could be enough in most Latin American countries to provide the additional resources for essential facilities, equipment and personnel upgrading. In spite of all this, existing

23、relationships between political forces and education keep the status quo almost untouched. Governments deal easily with such matters as enrolment expansion, school building and reform, school lunch programmes, etc. At the same time, however, they leave curricula, evaluation.teacher education, produc

24、tivity and equity virtually untouched. As a result,real educational change in Latin America cannot hope to occur until serious political interest, backed by popular support, can be mobilised. Only a clever combination of stimuli and sanctions, established between all the social actors, on the basis

25、of some consensus, may provide a way of recovering education from its present situation. But establishing this may prove as difficult as establishing negotiation between the proverbial lion and the ant. Hope comes from the educational pre-requisites of the need for economic modernisation. The demand for basic skills and capacity to deal creatively with the problems of social interaction may at least stimulate pressure for the universalisation and substantial improvement of basic education. The unprecedented concern for basic