Education Changes Everything
It’s week 5 of writing the blog and about time I unleashed my opinions on the global justice topic I’m most passionate about. As someone who has been obsessed with academia, research and self-directed learning for as long as I can remember, it’s no surprise that working in the field of education is a factory default aspiration of mine.
Though still a student myself, I am also a qualified English teacher and spend my summers working in international environments. The photos you will find later in this post are views I have been lucky enough to see thanks to teaching or childcare summer jobs. I studied in France for a while this year (more on that in future posts) but have not yet got to witness first-hand what education systems look like outside of Europe. However, as a teenage bookworm, when I Am Malala and other texts set in the Global South fell into my hands, I became determined to learn more about girls’ educational experiences around the world, as well as other groups missing out on information that could change the course of their lives.
You may be wondering, if education is my biggest passion, why didn’t I focus the blog solely on that?
Although to me education is almost everything, it is only one of the many institutions in society. Educational inequality is not a stand-alone justice issue and cannot be improved without also improving other issues such as poverty, conflict, healthcare and gender inequality. You cannot expect children to concentrate in class when they are starving or suffering from preventable diseases and malnutrition. You cannot expect them to walk to school through an active war zone and, though Malala Yousafzai has done it, you cannot expect girls to prioritise their education when doing so risks being shot by the Taliban.
I will explore an extensive range of specific educational issues and how we might be able to solve them throughout the blog, but in this post let’s focus on why education matters so much – not just to me but to all the people in the world with access to it and more importantly all the people without.
It’s back to school season in Norway, where I’m currently writing from, and as children around the world begrudge this transition, I think it’s important to remember how lucky we are to dread something that other people dream of. While numerous countries and organisations are working to improve primary education enrolment, 273 million children worldwide are currently estimated to be out of school. Low primary-aged school attendance is particularly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia and recent conflicts are considerably undermining the progress many countries had been making towards education as basic survival has become the priority.
We all witnessed or personally experienced how the COVID pandemic impacted young people in education and at the start of their careers, even in developed countries where we had easy access to the internet so school and work became fully remote. Each year of conflict or crisis that occurs during childhood or adolescence is a key stage of development that is extremely hard for any young person to get back. Just imagine how many people’s childhoods have been destroyed because of issues completely out of their control that they are too young to comprehend.
The good news about education being interwoven with most other global issues is that efforts to improve one area of injustice usually have positive effects on other aspects. For example, the UN World Food Programme (and many charities working in line with their goals) have found that providing free school meals to children in poverty increases their motivation to learn, encourages more families to send their daughters to school and can help support local farmers, all on top of the original aim of boosting student nutrition. Similarly, charities like charity: water and Water.org have shown that as well as preventing waterborne diseases, clean water supplies can free up children’s time so that they can go to school instead of walking hours a day to collect water for their families.
When discussing education, we often assume we’re working to help primary-aged children. Though there is an abundance of data that shows the benefits of investing in early education, there are also still 739 billion illiterate adults in the world. It is imperative that we invest in providing children with quality education right from early years, when they are most vulnerable to environmental factors but still have a lot of developmental opportunity to unlock.
However, in doing so we may be neglecting the parents of these children who cannot read or write, access employment or who know very little about how to protect their children from diseases or respond to natural disasters. Moreover, what about the girls who are only allowed to attend school up until primary level? What about teenagers with almost zero career prospects in front of them? Adults risking their safety everyday for a job that barely pays enough to feed their family because they lack vocational training that would open doors to safer careers? How do we support people of all ages to progress academically and professionally so that they can escape extreme poverty and health risks?
Education changes everything because it is for everyone.
It is a life-long journey of discovery that can be immensely liberating. It opens doors, protects people from preventable harm, saving on healthcare costs down the line, and allows them to better understand themselves and the world around them. I don’t believe there is anyone in the world who wouldn’t benefit from further education, though I know academia isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea.
While much easier said than done, once we find ways to make education safer, accessible and financially sustainable for low-income countries, it has the power to solve many of the world’s wider problems. A young girl in Pakistan could grow up to invent innovative solutions to climate issues or a life-changing medical treatment but we’ll never know because she does not have access to even basic education. It deeply saddens me to think of how much potential is stifled by unfair global systems and a lack of funding or resources, but I am hopeful for the future of education and the number of new voices we will get to hear because of it.
Thank you for reading! I look forward to digging deeper into this subject and hearing your thoughts on how we can work towards achieving educational equality.
My question for you today is: how has education transformed your life?
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Until next time,
The Torn Traveller