“Ancora Imparo” (I am learning) said Michelangelo while working on St Peter’s Basilica. He was 87, and by then had a repertoire as a maestro with an unprecedented body of work. His statement is a testimony for his humility, and above all, his hunger for learning; a trajectory that education should carve and direct its members towards.
To celebrate the role of education and its impact in bringing peace and sustainable development, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2018 adopted January 24, as International Day of Education. As a call to action for the stakeholders of society, this move by UNGA encourages global access and investment in quality education.
The key focus over the years have been several including education for the COVID generation, investing in people, learning for lasting peace etc.
Despite ground-breaking innovations in technology and turning the world into a global village, the need to celebrate education and emphasise on the importance of the same has become imperative. Leave alone learning, to a large part of the world education has become a reclusive entity, depriving them of their rights to read, write and learn. The number of children without an access to education still runs in millions.
Why?
In the days of yore, education was wielded as a weapon to establish power and control by the crème-de-la-crème of the society against the masses, germinating a socio-economic disparity and an intellectual elitism. It was seen as a threat in the process of creating a subservient population, hence access to the same was cut-off through gender, class and economic discrimination. This backhanded strategy created by the elite back then has come back to haunt policymakers today, stymieing the progress towards a developed society and world. While we’ve made headway to resolve these issues, ongoing and newly emerging conflicts have exacerbated the situation as well.
Due to poverty, social inequality and gender discrimination, 250 million children have been deprived of their right to education.
While gender discrimination for girls has always been a barrier to access education, poverty has come in the way of many boys to chase the dreams of belonging to a school and graduating from universities.
The pandemic created a dependency on technology that left millions of children in the dark for whom accessing basic necessities forms a daily struggle. Economic pressure made girls forsake education so that they could turn into care-givers while boys had to sacrifice their educational aspirations to add an extra earning hand for the family.
As a result child labour increased, child marriages became rampant and the mental well-being of children was put at a risk, subjecting them to gender based violence too.
Post COVID, the numbers look scarier and more so the pitiable state that it has pushed children into.
According to UNICEF, 24 million children were at a risk of never returning to schools post-pandemic.
5 million boys dropped out of schools due to financial problems. Child labour added another 8.4 million unauthorised workforce, bringing the number up to 160 million worldwide.
A learning loss equivalent to 1.5 years of schooling was indicated by the World Bank for children who were kept away from schools. Technological challenges and dwindling passion due to distant learning made some children lose interest in a structured education.
First World Problems
While a part of the world struggles to make ends meet, another is resistant to change. Almost half of the world is yet to reinvent and significantly improve its educational system. The rote learning method, excess importance on STEM education, overload of technology, standardisation of tests, burgeoning extra-curricular activities, and lack of practical skills has made education a robotic exercise. Sadly, gaining a degree has been equated to learning and gaining knowledge, yet the number of educated people displaying hunger or humility like Michelangelo are fewer.
While the world was busy incorporating structured methodology to create schools, it missed out on essential human values such as kindness, sympathy and empathy. Inclusion; is it being practiced or just preached? Despite bridging gaps between borders, the disparity between the privileged and the underprivileged seems to be growing.
Paths Forward
The problems have for long existed and so have the solutions, yet the only way forward is to take several paths together as stakeholders of the society so that our collective journey culminates at the same arrival point of success. Those of us with a privilege to access education should extend it to those who can’t. Nations, policy makers and conglomerates should connect their hinterlands to the world through practical solutions and development. We should create a safe space in our society for every single child irrespective of race and colour, and socio-economic strata. Education should not be a degree on a piece of paper but a key to unlock doors of hope and opportunity.
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