So it was no wonder that the several thousand delegates from 180 countries who gathered last week in Dakar, Senegal, for the World Education Forum received only a bit of good news and lots more bad news. On the positive side, since 1990, the number of children in primary school has increased by 100 million to 700 million. In particular, East Asia, the Pacific states and much of the Caribbean and Latin America had achieved virtually universal primary education. Why? Because countries in these regions had made a spirited effort to channel funds into training teachers and also fashioning imaginative, socially relevant education programs that are also culturally sensitive. The disheartening news, according to World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn: nearly 115 million children–mostly in Africa and South Asia–have no access to primary education.
The Dakar delegates–who included several heads of state and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan–went home at the end of the week with yet another resolution to achieve “Education for All.” They vowed to meet again in 15 years to assess countries’ actions. But absent an implementable mechanism to accelerate political will in developing countries, the next education talkfest is certain to be just that. In view of the growing cohort of the global illiterate, what specific steps might developing countries and their donor-nation patrons take? Here are some pointers:
Funding. The 29 industrialized countries currently donate around $40 billion annually for development purposes, much of it for infrastructure projects; only 15 percent of the aid is allocated for education. The multilateral aid organizations give barely $1.2 billion, down from $2 billion in 1994. In developing countries hit by economic problems, expenditures for education and social projects are usually the first to be trimmed. Globally, about 63 percent of the cost of education is met by national governments, according to the United Nations, and 35 percent comes from the private sector; overseas aid accounts for barely 2 percent. Foreign donors should channel more aid into education projects, and also set up monitoring structures to ensure that the money is spent as it’s been meant to.
Mechanisms. Nongovernmental organizations can play a significant role in participating more in education. And instead of corrupt and inept agencies such as UNESCO “managing” global education, perhaps its Paris neighbor, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, can establish a global education fund. The OECD can spawn more workable education programs in cooperation with local educational organizations in developing countries, which would surely welcome such international participation.
Teachers. In much of the developing world, low salaries and poor facilities make teaching unattractive. International organizations and bilateral donors could set up a global teachers’ corps that would enable young professionals from industrialized countries not only to teach in poor nations but also train a new generation of indigenous tutors. Businesses in developing countries, which stand to gain by increased literacy, can surely contribute both money and equipment.
Technology. The development community needs to focus on how to adapt new technology to specific needs of developing societies. This would mean, of course, trying to bring to them some of the advantages of the Internet but also, as Djibril Diallo, spokesman for the World Education Forum, puts it, using a “mixture of appropriate technologies, including radio and television, which tend to be less costly.” At the same time, students in poor countries must be brought up to speed concerning new technology so that as citizens they can help their countries better compete in the global economy.
Finally, no global movement concerning education can ignore the devastating impact of AIDS on the developing world. Piot Piot, the United Nations’ AIDS czar, said last week that in Zambia, for example, nearly two thirds of newly trained teachers die from AIDS-related causes each year; in Cote d’Ivoire, five teachers die each week from complications associated with AIDS. “In the age of AIDS, life-skills education is far from a luxury,” Dr. Piot said. And so, education must focus on much more than literacy; health issues need to be woven more sharply into school curriculums.
The essence of development aid is to enhance the capacity of the poor to create better lives for themselves. Lyndon B. Johnson put it quite perceptively when he said, speaking of education in what was then called the Third World: “We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip people to walk through those doors.”
