Education Opens The Door To Tomorrow

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 2

Education Opens The Door To Tomorrow

Education Week is now being held in New Zealand as part of the United Nations International Education Year. In this article, Ellen Lukas looks at the new educational opportunities for children in Latin America.

The contrast between the lives of the world’s poor children and their richer neighbours is particularly vivid at the beginning of a school year. In the developed countries, millions of children troop back to class, most of tfyem healthy, well-dressed and proudly equipped with new ballpoint pens, notebooks and pencils en. graved with their own names.

In deprived areas, where 75 per cent of the world’s children live, those lucky enough to be spared by their parents from chores on the family farm, or basket-weav-ing, begging, or even ragpicking, go barefoot and wan to makeshift classes. Often they get their meagre learning wherever they can: seated on a fallen log in Togo, in a Buddhist temple in

Thailand, in a mosque or tent in nomadic Arab lands, or squatting on the bare ground under a tree in a village square in Latin America,

In most cases the children do not have a slate to write on, much less a notebook or a desk. Many feel persistent hunger pangs that distract them from studying. A few drop helplessly off to sleep in class, not because they are laxy or uninterested, but because they have had to walk several miles in tropical heat to get to school, or because they have been up all night long working.

Several Latin American teachers were recently startled to discover that their small pupils “moonlight” as bricklayers’ helpers. But for ’ these underprivileged youngsters the mere chance to try to get an education, even a poor or partial one, is a wonder. Half Illiterate A United Nations statistician shows that 810,000,000 persons (nearly half the world’s adult population) are illiterate, an increase of 60,000,000 in the decade of the 19605.

This is in spite of an energetic world-wide campaign to abolish illiteracy, which is bringing the magic of the written word to millions of people whose parents never dreamed of the luxury of owning a book or reading a newspaper.

Mothers’ clubs, youth groups and community centres in developing countries are now providing, among other attractions, education in many different subjects: reading, writing, arithmetic, nutrition, and health education.

Why is illiteracy increasing despite these efforts to abolish it? Because high birth rates have 'outstripped expanding educational programmes. In 24 Latin American countries, for example, where illiteracy is as high as

i 89 per cent in some areas, . the population has doubled in the last 40 years and is ex- ' pected to double again in • the next 40. Mr H. Moore Phillips, an educator who has worked ' with both U.N-E.S.C.O. and U.N.I.C;E.F„ wrote in 1968: "The urgency of the problem i can be seen from the fact that the number of children ;at present outside • edu--1 cational systems must number round 150,000,000, spread over Africa, Asia and in some epuntrles of Latin America. Of those who are in the school system, the majority drop out before completion of a full six-year course." In Latin America another educator, Dr Ivan Tllich, recently estimated that no more than 1 per cent of the population will ever graduate from a university. Statistics such as these have compelled United Nations delegates to plead for an “irreversible movement to wipe from the surface of the earth, in a single generation, the scandal and shame of illiteracy,” Education Year In December, 1968, the General Assembly unanimously called for an International Education Year to be observed throughout 1970. . The resolution formally recognised the belief that “education in a broad sense Is an indispensable factor in the development of human resources which is essential to insure the attainment of the goals of the second United Nations development decade.”

Implementation of this resolution lies mainly in the hands of experts who are helping governments plan and up-date national educational systems, arranging scholarships for gifted students, and organising teacher-training institutes. The United Nations Children's Fund works with U.N.E.S.C.O. in assisting school programmes. To improve both the quality and quantity of education, it provides audiovisual equipment to schools, and stipends to teachers and school administrators.

In aiding Latin American governments, which have

been expanding primaryschool education rapidly since 1957, U.N.I.C.E.F. also helps equip the many new schools that are being built. By January, 1969, U.N.I.C.E.F. had supplied equipment to 10,262 primary schools, 44 secondary schools, 861 teacher training institutions, and 81 pre-vocational training institutions in 21 Latin American countries. Drop-out Rate Although 91 per cent of Latin American children go to primary school, only 22 per cent go to secondary school. This high drop-oiit rate is caused by a number of factors, mainly because of families’ dependence on child labour.

Also, a large number of rural schools only go to third grade. In some such schools teachers deliberately “fail” their brighter pupils to keep them at school longer. By doing this the teacher can give the child an extra year of learning. Vocational training, provided with the help of U.N.I.C.E.F, and 1.L.0., varies from continent to continent and from country to country. Trades taught depend on areaneeds.

In Latin America, because the vast majority of the region’s 95,000,000 children live in rural zones, tourses include horticulture, animal husbandry and home economics. Rewards To most United Nations educational experts the rewards of their efforts come simply from knowing that by opening the door to education they are leading children to new opportunities and greater freedom. But once in a while more tangible evidence of the gratitude of their pupils comes their way. One such proof came at a baby's naming ceremony. The infant’s mother, just before giving birth to the child, had attended a four-week U.N.E.S.C.O. ■ sponsored “refresher course” in proper maternity care. The course was all the young mother might have hoped for, and she came away determined that she and her child would live by what she had absorbed from her teachers. In appreciation, when she was asked what name her son would bear, she.proudly replied: "Name him Unesco.”