| Chapter 2: | Review of Relevant Literature |
- 2. Who had benefited from the development and expansion of TV in Mexico, and how those who have benefited from TV’s presence and commercial nature are related with the groups and classes that have controlled and benefited from the development process in general;
- 3. What had been the social functioning of the medium, including what main functions television has fulfilled in Mexico’s development process. (p. 3)
As a result of his research, Sanchez-Ruiz found that television in Mexico had drastically increased its influence. However, “at the same time, its influence has been increasingly concentrated in a few hands, in a process of monopolization that has culminated in its present structure: the State and a private corporation, Televisa, hold a duopoly over the pervasive informal education vehicle that … is television” (p. 383).
The objective of education researchers Philip Coombs and Manzoor Ahmed was “to develop – on the basis of examining past experience, present evidence and any fresh ideas – improved information, analytical methods and practical guidelines that would be useful to those actually involved in planning, implementing and evaluating programs of non-formal education geared to rural development” (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974, p. 4).
These researchers hoped that their work would help the “planners and policymakers who are concerned with improving the conditions of life in the vast rural areas of the world’s poorest countries” (p. 3) more clearly realize the outcomes of the choices with which they were faced (p. 4). As an integral part of their study, these authors assessed what they concluded were some basic educational needs for effective rural development. Those needs were: general or basic education, family improvement education, community improvement education and occupational education (p. 15).
The authors defined general education as formal education, basically the type of education expected to be achieved by primary and secondary schools. They considered “family improvement education” to be “designed primarily to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes, useful in improving the quality of family life on such subjects as health and nutrition, homemaking and child care, home repairs and improvements, family planning …” (p. 15).