Hunger to Learn

As many as 115 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.

Millions of children around the world don’t have access to education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In most cases, these children would do anything to learn, for they know it’s the only way to better yourself and climb out of their desperate way of life.

In Bengal, India, one schoolboy is trying to change that. I saw Babar Ali for the first time in BBC's Hunger to Learn series. He is first one in his family to get a formal education -- he travels over an hour each way to school and on his return, presides over a school he put together for children in his economically deprived village. Today, he holds classes for over 800 students who don’t have access to any form of education. His amazing project is transforming their lives.

Read the full BBC story and watch a short video about Babar Ali and his school here: The Youngest Headmaster in the World

Source: BBC

Geographically Challenged

Antarctica is actually a desert, receiving the same amount of rain as the Sahara Desert

My husband teaches political science and one of his classes covers the politics of a particular region of the world. So, on the first day of class he hands out a map to his class – a group of accomplished college coeds. For the most part, they are a smart bunch, having worked hard to get into this esteemed institution. The map is blank, besides the outlines of a series of countries, and the students have fifteen minutes to fill out the country names. At the end he collects them, and that night we sit at home, having tea, looking them over. 

Approximately 10% of the kids do pretty well, the remainder either sends us into gales of laughter (no, Spain is not in South America…) or into horrified silence. It reinforces the fact that we Americans are woefully geographically challenged – it’s a sad fact that Jay Leno got away with doing a hilarious segment where he asked people on the street answer simple geography questions, and lord I was embarrassed for the contestants. Most didn’t know which states bordered their own. But it’s not JUST embarrassing – it’s a national crisis – kids are unprepared for an increasingly global future. Fewer than 3 in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries that appear in the news, and just 14% believe speaking another language is a necessary skill. The National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs Geographic Literacy Study, done a few years ago, paints a dismal picture of the geographic knowledge of the most recent graduates of the U.S. education system.

-- Even through Hurricane Katrina had recently swept through the south, causing death and destruction, 33% of respondents couldn't pinpoint Louisiana on a map.

-- Two-thirds didn't know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.

-- 6 in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East – and HOW long have we been at war there?

-- 47% could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia (It’s the most prominent bit, sticking out)

-- 75% were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East. (Okay, granted it’s pretty tiny, while flying over it George W. Bush stated that his driveway in Texas was bigger…)

Do we not care because most of the world lies at the end of two huge oceans – the Atlantic and the Pacific? Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t seem that relevant - the nightly news no longer covers the rest of the world since Brittany’s latest meltdown and Farmer Buford's ginormous pumpkin are far more important. But, how are we to understand, work and play with others if we don’t know where they are and what language they speak? It really is something to ponder… As the world shrinks before us, how will we continue to grow and prosper when we lack even the most basic skills for navigating the international economy or understanding the relationships among people and places that provide critical context for world events? Time to open an atlas...

One Girl at a Time

There are more than 2700 languages in the world

I’ve taken the ability to read and write for granted -- the benefits it affords me are immeasurable… but in the back of my mind lurks a number – 33%. Nearly one out of every three girls and women in the world cannot read and write. After hearing Tererai Trent’s phenomenal story, I was again reminded of the number. As a girl living in Zimbabwe, Tererai was denied an education and married off at 11 – sadly not an uncommon fate. But Terarai had a passionate desire to pursue an education, and she wrote her dreams of attaining a PhD on a piece of paper and buried it in a tin box. And in the end she did. Her story has been told in the book HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

I’ve always know that when you educate girls, you improve the prospects of an entire community – fertility rates drop and women have fewer, healthier children; infant mortality rates decline as knowledgeable women have better healthcare practices; maternal mortality rates are reduced as women have fewer children and pursue pre and post natal care; increased participation in the labor force yields benefits for the society at large; educated women are more likely to send their children to school; education is also protection against HIV/AIDS infection. So education is not only the key to a brighter future, it is also a key to survival.

Sadly, we have a lot to do to increase educational opportunities for boys, and especially girls. Although the worldwide number of children not in school has declined from about 100 million to 75 million, girls still constitute 55% of all out-of-school children. Worldwide, for every 100 boys out-of-school there are 122 girls. In some countries the gender gap is much wider. For example, for every 100 boys out of school in Yemen there are 270 girls, in Iraq 316 girls, in India 426 girls, and in Benin 257 girls (UNESCO GMR, 2007).

So, when you educate a girl, the benefits are passed forward and multiplied to the nth degree – let us all hope for millions of Terarais in the future. Check out Half the Sky Movement.