Blog 1:UNESCO warns of global learning crisis

Summary

A United Nations recently released a study focusing on the lack of formal learning going on in more poverty-ridden countries, specifically South and West Asia. Governments are spending $129 billion a year on education-10% of that money is going to waste due to a poor quality of education. The article states that about 175 million young people in these poor countries can’t read even part of a sentence. This is about one quarter of the younger population. At this rate, it is predicted that it will be 2072 by the time all of the young women to become literate. This problem is amplified by the lack of trained teachers. The article suggests that 5.2 million teachers need to be recruited by 2015 to make a dent in this global learning crisis.

Analysis

This article highlights the importance of education throughout all of the social classes and how the poor are not receiving their fair share of quality education. The poor do not have as many opportunities as the wealthy to receive a good education because of the different responsibilities. Poor men and women must focus more on survival versus focusing on becoming literate. Just because society says they are less doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a fair shot to learn. The deadline for the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) is only a year away. This program entailed implementing a universally effective primary education for all children in the hopes to lessen the education gap between the rich and the poor. By the looks of it this goal will not be met by the predetermined deadline though some improvements have been made. One major factor as to why these countries are receiving a poor education has to do with the amount of resources. On average there is about 2.2 teachers for every 100 students. This is not a sufficient amount of manpower to teach. Even in the U.S there is a push for smaller classes, this is what is occurring overseas on a much grander scale. Before the goal was to just get children in school, now the goal is to go above and beyond in teaching the material so that children no matter their gender or social class can have basic skills and be literate.

The article can be found at this link: http://www.aljazeera.com/video/asia/2014/01/unesco-warns-global-learning-crisis-201412944010320493.html