Education Must Be Improved

Costa Rica must apply technology to industry and offer more practical education before it can upgrade its third-world economy, a University of Costa Rica professor said in a Boylston Hall speech yesterday.

Luis Chavez, a Mason fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, identified himself as one of a growing number of Costa Ricans who believe the country's economic development depends on linking technical knowledge to industry.

"The challenge for this day is to increase the scientific and technological knowledge and link this progress in the University with society," Chavez said to a group of 25.

"Before, all economic attention was put to the basics of production--land, labor. Now we need to look at technological change," Chavez said.

Education in Costa Rica is free and has brought social mobility to society, Chavez said. Still, he said, the country's educational system is flawed. The Costa Rican education is too focused on the humanities, he said. "What we learned was isolated from society."

Chavez traced Costa Rica's economic and educational development, saying that "the present conditions are a result of a historical process."

Costa Rica's economy is agriculturally based, Chavez said. Coffee exports brought European trade in the 1800's, making the country prosperous enough to establish its first university.

While optimistic about the progress Costa Rica has made in entering new industries, Chavez warned that if his country "cannot be competitive in new fields of technology," its economic growth will cease.

Last night's lecture was the first of a series of talks sponsored by the Harvard Organization for the Promotion of Education, which tries to increase awareness of issues in education and economic development.