ABSTRACT
Fundamental education emerged as it did because the organisation at its birth required a concept of considerable symbolic value, with its stress on universal mass education, the promotion of equality among all peoples, and international co-operation and understanding. The period after 1974 had its supreme ironies. This was a period in which the Secretariat discarded a reliance on a single global concept, such as fundamental education or functional literacy. The UNESCO crisis brought paralysis to forward planning, a 30 per cent budget cut on top of zero real growth, and uncertainty in the careers of many professional staffers. Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow brought to UNESCO a keen political sense and a driving personal ambition. He played incessantly upon the symbolism of the first election of an African to a UN agency's leadership. Accordingly, the general conceptual character of UNESCO's approach to literacy in the M'Bow years was extremely wide.
