Reforms Aimed at Halting Production of Elite Graduates Who Ignore Masses - President Julius Nyerere, a former teacher, is trying to revolutionize education in Tanzania so that it stops producing an elite graduate who turns his nose up at peasants, dreams of a big Mercedes, specializes in Tudor history and refuses to work with his hands. These graduates, the usual product of African educational systems, cripple African development because they fill important jobs in the government and then neglect the masses in the countryside and their economic problems. Nyerere, in trying to change Tanzanian education, faces a formidable job. The officials in the Ministry of Education, who are assigned the task of implementing Nyerere's ideas, are all members of the elite who are proud of their education and who fail to understand what Nyerere is talking about. Failure to carry out his ideas on education could undermine Nyerere's whole new program of Tanzanian socialism. Nyerere wants his people to develop the country through hard work in agriculture. And he wants the results to benefit all of Tanzania, not just a privileged elite group in Dar es Salaam. To do this, the education system must infuse students with new attitudes about work and development...

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