Higher education in Asian countries and the role of international ...

5.1.5 Criticism on UNESCO
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According to Burnett (2010) UNESCO is unable to play its active role in education due to two
major reasons; too little resources and too broad mandate. According to him, UNESCO is not
able to deliver the statistical, information and advisory services, to its member countries, in the
field of education due to the limited financial resources for education and heavily politicized
bureaucracy. Furthermore UNESCO is no more a specialized agency for education as it is
engaged in too many activities; Science, Social Science, Culture, Communications,
Environment, Health and now Water also. In such a situation, it is very difficult for UNESCO
management to do justice with education, which in itself is a huge field that comprises of many
sub-sectors. These and other obstacles are resulting in confusion, inefficiencies and low profile
of UNESCO (Burnett, 2010).
Though over the years, UNESCO‟s real budget has declined the share of budget spend on
salaries has increased during the same period. This unevenness distribution of resources led to a
decrease in the funds available for essential development work and field activities (Burnett,
2010). Consequently too low budget allocations for field activities in education sector hamper
UNESCO initiatives and reduce its efficiency and effectiveness. Burnett has noted resource
scarcity produces confusion and makes much of UNESCO‟s work relatively irrelevant and
outside the low income countries of Africa and South Asia, which deserve the most attention
(Burnett, 2010). To achieve objectives in the field of education and to overcome many of the
resource constrain related problem, Burnett has proposed two prong strategy; on the one hand
enhanced resource focus onto teachers, literacy, skills and planning, and on the other hand to
concentrate country support operations based on advice, technical assistance and capacity
development.
Furthermore With the birth of UNESCO a strong suspicion also took birth in mind of critics,
“Americanization of the world” by poisoning men‟s minds with American ideas/ ideologies that
will bring educational and cultural destruction (Bryson, 1946).