Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Effects of Gender Relations in Textbooks

Gender-Relations

The effort to educate the world’s poor is making strides with the United Nation’s new commitment to education, as well as the resourcefulness of people who see a need for their communities. The U.N. proposes that 90% of children have been reached. However, the majority of students are boys and many children who do not attend school are girls.

Getting to school is not the only challenge for girls. Part of the problem are the curricula’s textbooks that depict gender inequality. This is evident in countries like Thailand, Pakistan, Bengal and Kenya.

The stories, images or examples either do not include women or describe them in submissive, traditional roles like cleaning, cooking and serving men. The men are depicted as the ones who hold positions as political leaders, drivers, teachers or doctors. Often, history books leave out influential women in history or do not accurately portray the lives of women. For example, a Thai book shows only a man receiving a land title, when in reality a large portion of the women hold their own land titles. While these biases are subtle, studies have shown that they still reinforce negative stereotypes of women.

Rae Blumberg, who has done extensive research on gender relations in textbooks, insists that “When girls don’t see themselves in textbooks, they’re less likely to envision themselves doing great things.” There are already low percentages of women working in government and leadership positions in these poor nations. The textbooks only “reinforce, legitimate and reproduce patriarchal gender systems” that keep women out of these positions.

The lack of accurate portrayals of women in these positions can discourage young girls from getting an education or trying hard in class. However, educating women and young girls is the key to raising communities out of poverty. For instance, by keeping young girls in school, child marriage can be reduced. There are links between education and lower birth rates and birth mortality. Education can also protect children from diseases and malnutrition through the provision of health information, such as prevention techniques. With an education, girls can make a living and be positive contributors to their community, the economy and their family.

It is important to keep young girls in school. While changing cultural norms that prevent girls from attending school will take time, addressing bias in textbooks is a reasonable start. By replacing the textbooks or having conversations about the bias, more girls can succeed in getting an education that will hopefully eliminate gender biases.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: The Guardian, Manushi-India.org NPR, UNESCO Reuters Blogs
Photo: Fabius Maximus

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Education in Bangladesh Sails on Despite Floods

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Ripped apart by rivers, drenched by monsoons and floating just above the sea, Bangladesh is like the toe that the Himalayas are using to test the waters of the Indian Ocean. All of this exposure to water leads to yearly flooding, an immense challenge for the developing nation of 156 million. From crop loss to infrastructure damage, the costs of flooding are massive hurdles to poverty reduction; the floods in 2004 costed the country seven billion dollars. Perhaps the most insidious impacts of the floods is their disruptive effects on education in Bangladesh.

Founded in 1998, the Bangladesh nonprofit Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, recognized how the floods prohibited students from making it to school and decided to bring the school to them. They achieve this by bringing boats up the flooded waterways, which serve as both school buses and schools.

A fleet of 22 boats sail up the swollen rivers stopping to pick up children before they dock and class begins. Each boat takes around 30 children and has a small library and access to the world’s largest library through computers hooked up to the Internet and powered by solar panels.

With primary school attendance around 80%, increasing access to education is high on the agenda. The boat schools provide classes to an estimated 1,810 children. Although many more remain in need, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha reaches some of the most vulnerable.

What’s more, the boat schools provide critically-needed adult education that focuses on sustainable agriculture, healthcare and climate change adaptation. These programs holistically target the restraints that keep them in poverty.

For example, the climate change workshops help farmers develop production methods, such as floating vegetable gardens and raising fish and ducks, that can endure longer flooding periods and raising sea levels, both of which are effects of a changing climate. The lessons on sustainable agriculture help farmers to reduce erosion and pollution, and increase yields. These programs work together to clean the environment, increase access to food and boost incomes. Healthcare, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s other focus, brings medicines and doctors to rural parts of the country that have no access to clinics, keeping the populations healthy throughout the year.

What is even more important is that the success of the floating school model appears to be scalable. Many other parts of the world face similar issues that climate change will exacerbate. Cambodia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia are all testing this innovative development strategy. The humanitarian arm of the United Nations that focuses on children and mothers, UNICEF, praises this method as “having a transformative impact upon education and communities in flood-prone regions.”

– John Wachter

Sources: Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, World Bank BBC, UNICEF 1 UNICEF 2
Photo: Tenders On Time

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Computer Game Educates Players About Global Issues

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Five years ago, a group of students from the Philippines created the computer game “Wildfire” to win the Microsoft Imagine Cup Game Design Competition, one of five major categories in the annual contest. The theme of the contest was, “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.”

The technology competition brings together students from all around the world with the goal of helping solve the globe’s biggest issues. Overall, the 2010 contest saw over 300,000 students from more than 100 countries go head-to-head.

The five creators of “Wildfire,” a mix of college students and graduates, call themselves By Implication. The group of friends decided to enter the contest after Typhoon Ketsana brought devastation to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, in 2009.

On its website, By Implication stresses that worldwide problems must be tackled head on, as they cannot be overcome by using magic or potions.

“Wildfire,” which is free and can be played an unlimited number of times, demonstrates just this. The computer game educates players about global health issues and how they can help solve them.

Designed and created with a virtually nonexistent budget, the game permits users to navigate their own city in an attempt to defeat the health issues, known as the “bad guys.”

Players are on their own until they collect “inspiration points,” which they can then use to obtain the assistance of volunteers around them. This teaches that a player is powerless if he or she is alone. Transition to the real world, and this idea illustrates that by working together, people have the ability to do something great.

In addition, the computer game educates players with informative buttons. A player can encounter the buttons, which contain short facts about crises including poverty and water quality, while navigating his or her own city. In the end, if players and volunteers can defeat not only the problems they encounter, but also the time limit, their city will thrive.

For the creators of “Wildfire,” they hope that by learning about certain issues, those who play the game will become motivated to help solve them.

– Matt Wotus

Sources: ABC News, Imagine Cup, Imagine Cup Wildfire by Implication
Photo:Neogaf

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Cash Incentive Improves Malawian Girls’ School Attendance

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Global poverty is connected to the lack of access to education that many young girls face. In Malawi, a program offers cash incentives to young girls and their families in order to encourage school attendance. The results have exceeded expectations of the girls’ school attendance, and there are also additional health benefits for these young women.

Young girls are often not encouraged to attend school because their parents do not understand the value of education for girls or would prefer for them to help out at home. A recent extreme case in Pakistan is a clear example. A father strangled his three girls to death because he did not want to “waste money” on their education and felt that the girls were a burden to his family.

While stories such as this one are shocking, the conditional cash transfer program in Malawi works to help alleviate the barriers to education for young girls and their families. On the other hand, the father of the young girls in Pakistan refused to provide them with any money, and their school fees had to be paid for by their maternal grandparents.

The Zomba Cash Transfer program in southern Malawi offers girls and young women aged 13 to 22 and their parents up to $15 per month if the girls attend school regularly. An additional group in the study received the money without conditions, and a control group did not receive any money.

Improvements in school attendance were observed after 18 months. There was no significant difference between the two groups that received the cash payments, suggesting that education can be valued without forced restrictions if families can afford to send their children to school.

In addition to the increased school attendance, there were changes in the sexual behavior of these young girls. Girls had less sex and chose safer, younger partners. Child marriage and teenage pregnancy were also reduced. Most significantly, the International Center for Research on Women states that there was a “reduction by 60 percent of HIV prevalence rate and [a decrease of the] HSV2 (herpes simplex virus) infection.”

The program targeted 23,561 households in seven of Malawi’s districts and has the potential to be scaled up even further. In addition to sending their children to school, families used the money to buy food, medicine and farming supplies, and to travel to the hospital to buy antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS. The money can help lift families out of poverty and empower young girls. With proper education, these girls can then participate fully in society and help break the devastating cycle of poverty for their own children.

David Bull, Executive Director of UNICEF U.K., believes that investing in education for girls benefits everyone in society. Girls will specifically benefit from the obtainment of skills to participate in society and protect themselves. However, businesses will also be able to hire more qualified women and broaden their customer base. When half of a country’s population is prevented from participating fully in the economy, economic growth will be stunted.

Global health and development, as well as the protection of human rights for girls, are central global goals. While conditional cash transfer programs need to be further evaluated to understand their sustainability and long-term effects, there is promise for great improvements in gender equality.

– Iliana Lang

Sources: Boston University, Daily Mail, The Guardian, International Center for Research on Women, National Center for Biotechnology Information, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Photo: Camfed

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Michelle Obama Launches New Education Program for Girls

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On a recent visit to London, Michelle Obama unveiled a new international plan to improve girls’ education. Obama’s Let Girls Learn Initiative aims to bring quality education to girls around the world. To kick off the initiative, Obama announced a new $200 million partnership between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The new partnership will be a joint effort by both countries to properly allocate funds to the countries with the greatest educational needs. The first projects will help 450,000 children in the Democratic Republic of Congo receive a primary school education, with benefits also going to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In developing areas like these, girls often lack access to proper education. In total, there are approximately 62 million girls around the world today that are not in school. Even worse, half of this uneducated female population is made up of adolescents.

Looking ahead, the First Lady’s multi-million-dollar program is expected to benefit more than 755,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 18 over the next five years. Through bilateral collaboration, girls will be provided with access to education.

The plan includes enrolling students in accelerated primary school programs, reducing barriers to school access and mobilizing parental and community support. It will also focus on improving the quality of teaching materials and methods.

The partnership will also encourage other advocacy organizations to collaborate with one another in order to find the best solutions to improve girls’ education worldwide in terms of quality and access.

Shortly after the initiative was originally announced in March, the White House released a statement saying, “When a girl receives a quality education, she is more likely to earn a decent living, raise a healthy, educated family, and improve the quality of life for herself, her family, and her community.”

This press release highlights the connection between girls’ education and even larger, more deeply rooted worldwide problems. It is in the world’s poorest areas that girls’ education suffers the worst deficiencies. Improved education could bring improvements in other important areas as well.

Rocco Blume of the charity Plan International U.K. points out that improved education for girls could result in an influx of contributions to developing economies and impoverished communities. In fact, targeting issues like girls’ education is key in tackling other challenges like poverty and maternal health.

Countries with more girls in secondary school tend to have lower maternal mortality rates, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of HIV/AIDS and better child nutrition. These facts stand at the foundation of the Let Girls Learn Initiative and the core of the U.S.-U.K. partnership.

Poverty is one small word for one incomprehensibly large problem. It must be tirelessly chipped away at, piece-by-piece. The worldwide effort to combat poverty is strengthened by zeroing in on particular issues like girls’ education. Hopefully, this new partnership will spark increasingly focused on international collaboration.

– Sarah Bernard

Sources: CNN, Essence, Voice of America, The White House
Photo: eNCA

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The Grim State of Education in Pakistan

Education in Pakistan
The status of education in Pakistan is a bleak one. Officially, the overall literacy rate is 46%, with 26% of girls being literate. However, third party organizations reduce the overall rate to 26% by excluding people who cannot do more than sign their names. It has the second-highest rate of uneducated children worldwide, with 5.1 million kids out of school in 2010. Two-thirds of the children out of school are girls, giving a ratio of 8 educated girls for every 10 educated boys.

There are merely 40,000 schools in the country that serve girls. Moreover, these schools are concentrated in more heavily populated areas, with more remote girls receiving little access to education. In these regions, half of the girls have never attended school. Furthermore, in many of these rural provinces female education is restricted due to religious reasons. In the provinces of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier, female literacy stands at approximately five percent.

Girls in these areas oftentimes enter the workforce early to support their families and many become domestic workers. Khanzadi, a 10-year-old girl from a rural province who works in a wealthy district in Karachi is “lucky she’s with [a rich household] because [they] can spare some food and help her grow,” her mistress says. However, seeing urban girls her age attend school every day makes Khanzadi feel less than fortunate.

Militant groups, including the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and foreign groups, have been based in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas for more than a decade and launch attacks both into Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Since June 2014, more than one million displaced children have been unable to attend school. Hazrat Zaman, a father of 17 who brought his family across the border to Afghanistan to search for schools before returning to Pakistan, said, “We are completely in the dark about our children’s future.”

Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have stepped in to improve education access for girls in rural provinces. One organization, Alkhidmat, has set up more than 100 informal schools for girls and women to receive a basic education. The organization operates on the belief that women who are educated will help build a stronger, more developed nation.

Needless to say, there are many long-term impacts on a heavily uneducated population. One in three young Pakistani people, or about 12 million people from the ages of 15 to 24, lack the basic skills necessary to be hired. Men earn, on average, 60% more than women. This income gap is widest among illiterate workers. However, education still makes a huge impact on women’s earnings: educated women earn 95% more money than their uneducated counterparts.

– Jenny Wheeler

Sources: IRIN News, UNESCO 1, UNESCO 2,
Photo: Pakistan Today

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Education Helps Eradicate Poverty in Chile

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In recent times, some of the largest economic growth in South America has occurred in a small and notoriously narrow country, the Republic of Chile. A standard-bearer of free-market capitalism, Chile’s rapid expansion over the past 35 years has been staggering. According to Forbes, “poverty has fallen from 50 percent to 11 percent, per-capita income has increased from 4.000 dollars to almost 20.000 dollars and inflation was reduced from over 250 percent per year to less than 7 percent per year.” Often referred to as the “The Miracle of Chile,” this development seemed to lift the country out of economic and political chaos and into remarkable prosperity.

In 1973, Chile was in dire straits. Its annual rate of inflation had reached 150 percent and its economy was spiraling downward. On top of this, the country experienced the bloodiest coup of 20th century South America in which the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet seized power from the Socialist president Salvador Allende. Over the course of just one month, over 3,000 Chileans lost their lives as military planes strafed and bombed the presidential palace. Ironically, this militaristic dictator became the source of the economic miracle.

General Pinochet promptly began to dismantle Allende’s socialist system and in its place instituted free-market economic policies. To enact these policies, Pinochet gathered together a collection of economists named the ‘The Chicago Group,’ as many members had studied at the University of Chicago. The group endorsed lower tax rates, the privatization of state companies, lower government spending and deregulation. But this growth came at a price to civil liberties and democratic values. In his 1980 constitution, Pinochet set the stage for Chile’s growth by prioritizing economic freedom at the cost of political oppression and social programs.

In 1990, Pinochet failed to retain his office after losing a public election and Chile steered back towards democracy. While his policies in the 1980s had brought the country out of financial failure and into economic prosperity, they left the poorest Chileans behind. Due to tax cuts and lackluster government spending, 45 percent of Chileans still lived in poverty. To the new Chilean government of the 1990s, the next big step was to confront poverty. Their solution was social spending.

Their plan was extraordinarily successful. Between the years of 1989 and 1997, the new Chilean government increased “health and education investments (mostly ignored under Pinochet) by 179.3 and 115 percent respectively,” according to a report from Brandeis University. This social spending helped to dramatically lower poverty; every percentage of growth Chile experienced between 1990 and 1996 counted 50 percent more to the reduction of poverty than under Pinochet’s regime. Ultimately, the poverty rate fell from 39 percent to 20 percent from 1990 to 2000. In comparison, poverty across South America only fell from 48 percent to 44 percent.

Of all social expenditures, education received the most attention and made the greatest impact. During the 1990s, spending on education grew at a rate of 10.6 percent annually and 274 percent cumulatively over the entire decade. The same Brandeis study mentioned above found that the increases in education spending were particularly effective in decreasing the severity of poverty in Chile.

However, Chile’s expansion, while exceptional, has not exactly been miraculous. According to the Brookings Institute, Chile has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. Unfortunately, Chile’s education system, particularly higher education, suffers from a similar form of stratification even though it has expanded by 33 percent in the past two decades. In terms of enrollment, 62 percent of Chileans from the upper 20th percentile in income attend institutions of higher education. By contrast, only 21 percent attend from the lower 20th percentile.

While Chile has developed rapidly, due in large part to social spending in education, it has left many of its poorest behind. With the current president Michelle Bachelet planning further tax increases to provide free education to all Chileans, it is possible that another miracle may be on the horizon.

– Andrew Logan

Sources: BBC, Bloomberg, Brandeis University, Brookings Institute, Forbes, IFPRI, MIT Poverty Action Lab, University of Hawaii
Photo: SnipView

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Improvements in Vietnamese Education System

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Vietnam has been making strides in its development over the past few decades; the country has seen a reduction in poverty and an increase in the standard of living. The Vietnamese government has invested heavily in its reformed education system, especially when it comes to literacy. Ninety percent of the working-age population is now literate and 98% of primary-school-age children are enrolled in school. The gender gap in education that plagues many other countries is nearly nonexistent in Vietnam, as the enrollment rates are comparable for boys and girls. Furthermore, 25% of college-age adults are enrolled in tertiary education.

These numbers are the product of many years of change in the Vietnamese education system. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the French colonized Vietnam, and very few citizens were able to attend school. With French considered the dominant language of the country at the time, nearly the entire population was illiterate. After Vietnam gained independence in 1945, the government began focusing on improving literacy rates and reforming the education system. Violent conflicts and economic crises made this difficult for many years, but the most recent decade has seen steady progress.

Vietnam first entered the PISA test in 2012. This test measured how 500,000 students from schools in 65 countries answered written and multiple-choice questions. Vietnam ranked 17th in math, eighth in science, and 19th in reading, thus outranking some developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. These results were a positive surprise worldwide.

There has been much discussion about the reasons behind Vietnam’s recent success. The government has been focused on investing in the education system — 21% of all government expenditure is devoted to education. Furthermore, teachers have been traditionally highly respected in Vietnamese culture and they are expected to meet high standards and stay committed to professional development. However, there is concern that strong PISA performance does not tell the whole story.

While the enrollment rates are high for primary school, only 65% of secondary school-age students attend school. Poor or disadvantaged students often drop out, and their scholastic abilities (or lack thereof) were not reflected in the PISA scores. While more privileged students scored high, students who may have lowered the scores were left out of the picture entirely.

Some Vietnamese schools have the resources to focus on creativity and critical problem solving, but most encourage rote learning and memorization. These methods can result in impressive test scores, but do not serve students well once they are out of school. Sadly, corruption is also an issue in Vietnamese schools, particularly elite schools, which sometimes sell students places for extremely high prices.

Although the Vietnamese education system has a long way to go, the recent PISA scores are positive signs of things to come. In the long process of recovering from years of conflict, these reforms in the school system have brought about progress and a more educated populace. As Vietnam develops, schools can continue to improve and effectively serve students of all economic backgrounds.

– Jane Harkness

Sources: BBC, The Economist, World Education News and Reviews, World Bank
Photo: Global Playground

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The Global Education Gap Remains Despite Education Numbers Surging

Education Numbers Surge, but Global Education Gaps RemainThe number of children across the globe attending primary school at the beginning of the 1800s: 2.3 million. This number has surged to 700 million today. But despite this gigantic increase, primary school children across the developing world still face one major problem: a global education gap between developed and developing countries.

A new Brookings Institution report details just what this problem is: a 100-year gap in the quality of education between developed and developing regions of the world. This means that the average level of education in many poor countries today is the same as the levels of education in places like Europe and North America were in 1900.

Not only is there a 100-year gap between global education in the developed world and the developing world, but the developing world also lags 85 years behind when it comes to educational attainment. It will take average-scoring students in the developing world six generations to catch up to the same scoring students in the developed world today.

Ninety percent of primary school-aged children are enrolled in school around the world – that success should not go unnoticed or without applause. At the end of World War II, only 1 million children attended primary school. In 65 years, this has increased to 7 million. This “going to scale” of education across the world is incredible. The next step, however, is catching the developing world up to the education levels the developed world enjoys today.

How did it get behind in the first place? The idea of mass schooling is available to all young people and not only those with the resources to access it became a mainstream idea in the middle of the 1800s in areas like North America and Europe. Only in 1948, almost 100 years later, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did this become a concept applied to children across the whole world.

Even with the large enrollment number victory, if the data is broken down in specific regions, the picture is not as pretty. In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than 80 percent of school-aged children attend school.

Another way to examine the gap is by looking at the average number of years of schooling adults have. In 1870, adults in the developed world completed an average of 2.8 years of schooling, while adults in the developing world completed under half that time – 0.5 years.

The average lagged behind, usually with adults in the developing world completing under half the years of education that their counterparts in the developing world did until 2010. For every 12 years that adults in the developed world completed on average, adults in the developing world complete an average of 6.5 years – just over half.

It is imperative that this gap is reduced and eventually banished for good. Besides the idea that morally all children deserve the opportunity to develop in order to thrive in the modern age, there are a couple of other reasons why action should be taken immediately. First, ending the 100-year gap holds the possibility for reform and improved global education. New ways of thinking about education in the developing world have the potential to be helpful to education systems in the developed world and benefit all young people.

Second, there is a skills deficit that has already started – between 2010 and 2030, 360 million people over the age of 55 will retire. At the same time, a 60 percent increase in the global labor force will come from places like Africa, India and other South Asian countries, all places in the developing world. These young people should not be affected by the global education gap, so they can seize their place in the world economy left by the well-educated retirees that came before them. If nothing is done, the 100-year gap will continue into eternity. Changes must be made to ensure this does not happen, for the sake of the world’s children and perhaps the world’s economy as well.

– Greg Baker

Sources: Brookings, BBC MG Africa
Photo: Africa Business Conference

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How the SHEVA Company is Helping Girls Stay in School

How the SHEVA Company is Helping Girls Stay in School
In developing countries, girls often miss school or drop out entirely when they begin menstruating. Many are reluctant to tackle this issue because of the taboo that still surrounds menstruation, but it is a widespread problem that affects the education of millions of girls worldwide. In India, girls’ schools often lack functioning toilets, and in Burkina Faso and Niger, there are usually no places at schools for girls to change sanitary pads or dispose of waste. In Ghana, inadequate sanitation facilities, lack of access to sanitary products and physical discomforts related to menstruation, such as cramps, cause girls to miss an average of five days of school over the course of any given month.

Girls who drop out of school continue to struggle throughout their lives. They are more likely to marry and engage in sexual activity earlier. Because they are also less likely to use contraception, they typically have more children than girls who complete their schooling. This can trap them in the cycle of poverty. When girls miss school because of menstruation, they are held back from many opportunities by a completely natural physical process that should never have to interfere with their education.

That’s why SHEVA, a company launched in October 2014 by Marisabel Ruiz, is currently working in Guatemala to provide girls with sanitary hygiene products. Ruiz, who was born in Guatemala, decided to start these efforts in her native country because she already had connections there that could help SHEVA to reach more girls. Women can go to SHEVA’s website to purchase a variety of products, such as pads from familiar brands like Kotex and Playtex, or other items related to sexual health like condoms and pregnancy tests. With every purchase, SHEVA donates a month’s supply of sanitary pads to a girl in need.

SHEVA has also partnered with the organization Abriendo Oportunidades to provide health education to girls. They have created a two-year program that primarily focuses on what menstruation is, personal hygiene and women’s rights.

So far, SHEVA has provided sanitary pads to 300 girls, and 25 girls have enrolled in the educational program. A total of 5 million people have accessed free educational information on their website. Their next goal is to teach girls to make sanitary pads on their own, using biodegradable, locally available materials such as banana fibers.

Currently, only people in the U.S. can order from SHEVA’s website, but they plan to expand both their shipping and on-the-ground services to other countries in order to help as many girls as possible. SHEVA’s support for girls has helped them continue pursuing their education and has taught many that menstruation is nothing to be ashamed of.

– Jane Harkness

Sources: Girl Effect, Mashable, Menstrual Hygiene Day, SHEVA