647 



Education has long been recognized by students of the development 

 process as a paramount element of the technological infrastructure." 

 The characteristic pattern of education in the United States, by com- 

 parison with several nations of Western Europe, was discussed by 

 the U.S. delegation to the 6th session of the Industry Committee of 

 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 

 March, 1968. It noted that diversity of educational backgrounds, 

 characteristic of the United States, "... seems to be an advantage, 

 for broad possibilities of matching the education of workers with 

 educational requirements for specific types of work." Conversely, the 

 miifonnity of educational attainment in Western Europe made for 

 reduced flexibility and adaptability of labor in those countries. 



It was also important, said the OECD Committee report, that in- 

 dusti-y and the universities maintain contact "so that the former can 

 make known its requirements and the latter make known what they 

 can offer." "^ 



At the other extreme, Paul G. Hoffman, Managing Director of the 

 United Nations Special Fund, declared : "Of the 1,300 million people 

 living in the less developed countries for which the United Nations 

 has some responsibility, almost half cannot read or write." '" 



HEALTH 



Health as an essential element of the "living infrastructure" was 

 stressed by Dr. M. G. Candau, Director-General of the World Health 

 Organization, who told the United Nations Conference on the Ap- 

 plication of Science and Technology, 1963, that "the health of a 

 people is among its greatest assets, and an indispensable source of 

 its wealth." '« 



In the past [Oandau continued], neglect of these obvious facts has had un- 

 fortunate consequences. . . . History is full of the records of the effects of 

 killing and disabling diseases. Malaria has destroyed civilizations; great pes- 

 tilences like plague have brought misery, poverty, and the destruction of society 

 in their train ; i)oisons like opium and alcohol can eat insidiously into the life 

 and prosi)erity of a community.™ 



According to W. Arthur Lewis, the principal opportunities for 

 social investment were in public health : 



The spectacular fall in the death rate over the past hundred years owes very 

 little to curative medicine. The great killers have been wiped out at relatively 

 small cost, using the services of only a handful of doctors, either by improve- 

 ments in the water supply — which have curbed cholera, typhoid and dysentery — 

 or by environmental sanitation which has materially reduced the incidence of 



'5 United Nations. "Science and Technology for Development. Volume I. World of 

 Opportunity." Report on the United Nations Conference on the Application of Science 

 and Technology for the Benefit of the Less Developed Areas. (New York, United Nations, 

 19.36). page 56". The quotation is by -Professor M. S. Thaeker, president of the United Nations 

 Conference on the Application of Science and Technology for the Benefits of the Less 

 Developed Areas, at Geneva, Switzerland, in February, 1963. At the same conference, Pro- 

 fessor V. K. R. V. Rao, director of the Institute of Economic Growth, in the University 

 of Delhi, India, declared that 'Even if we could get all the capital in the world, that would 

 not give us the kind of rate of economic growth that we want." What was important was 

 the "human factor" — the development of human resources. He declared : "The human being 

 has got to be trained, has got to acquire knowledge, and has got to be given the capacity, 

 and organized to use that knowledge." (Ibid., page 59.) 



™ Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. "United States Industrial 

 Policies." Observations presented by the U.S. Delegation before the Industry Committee at 

 its 6th Session, March 1968. (Paris, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Develop- 

 ment, 1970), page 64. 



•^ Ibid., pages 62.-65. 



'« United Nations. "Science and Technology for Development. Volume I. World of Oppor- 

 tunity." Op. cit., page 58. 



™ Ibid., p. 56. -^ 



