ABSTRACT
The growth of the population and simultaneous democratization of society demands universal liberal (general) education and civic training with compulsory school attendance for all. The development of sciences and technology demands scientific-utilitarian knowledge and technical education. Everybody is obliged to work for the survival of the growing population. In the present conditions of industrial work, technical education is essential for everybody, and the time-honoured division into manual and brain work becomes gradually obsolete. But to have a basis for technical education a certain amount of general knowledge is needed. The present demand for education includes both. The growth of the population demands universal mass education; scientific inventions lead to the education of a technical élite. Both demands cannot be simultaneously realized in many countries. In some countries the education-hungry population grows quicker than the number of schools and teachers. But increased demand for education only partially depends on the growth of the population. If we count all these countries, only about a quarter of the increased demand can be accounted for by the larger age-groups of the population. The rest is the demand for increased facilities of secondary and higher education both of a general and technical character. The contradiction of mass universal school attendance and secondary and higher education of the élite is quite evident in Asia and Africa. In Europe and English-speaking countries universal primary education was achieved at the end of the nineteenth century and attention has since been directed towards universal secondary education. As these advanced countries were usually wealthy, they could introduce free secondary and even face free higher education. Attention was concentrated on curricula and examinations leading to higher education.
