The Answer Is Education
An article titled The Eight Commandments" appears in the July 7th issue of "The Economist". It asks the question why isn't poverty history and looks for answers by examining the Millenium Development Goals. They are as follows:
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
Drawn up in September 2000 at the UN's New York headquarters, they were meant to be reached by 2015. The sketchy progress made to date does not bode well for the targeted achievement of these goals.
The article quotes Kevin Watkins, lead author of the UN's early Human Development Report, as worrying that the promises made by the UN to make poverty history will become "debased currency". The situation in Africa alone is more than enough to cause the result Watkins fears.
The first goal, to eradicate extreme poverty should not be misunderstood. It is not meant to say that poverty will really become history. It does mean that, if achieved, this goal will see the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day halved. Looking at the methods used to track progress toward this goal illustrates one of the barriers faced, since only 57 out of 163 developing countries have counted their poor more than once since 1990. Apparently, ninety-two of those countries have not counted the poor at all. How can the UN know if the proportion is indeed halved when the governments of these countries either consider the poverty-stricken as unworthy of a head count and/or lack the infrastructure to do the counting?
The article spends time looking at Mali as an example of hope. Described as a land-locked country straddling the Sahel region and the Sahara desert, this country is headed up by Amadou Toumani Touré, a man who provides another part of the answer. Touré is a man who has a conscience, not one controlled by greed. He does not use foreign aid dollars given to his country in corrupt ways to feather his own nest. He has been so committed to his "Struggle Against Poverty" that Malians have just elected him for a second term in office. The corruption surrounding foreign aid has and will continue to be a big part of the reason why aid dollars are not accomplishing more in the fight to make poverty history.
Another reason, perhaps the very biggest one, would be addressed by goal number two. Ignorance is powerful. It can trap the unwitting in endless cycles of poverty and disease. The only way to combat it is with universal education and that is a goal that so many oppose. Think of the Taliban and others like them who oppose the teaching of anything other than religion and the techniques of terror to boys, while they oppose all teaching for girls. The article gives more than one mind-boggling example of the incredible weight of ignorance under which so many of the poor struggle. Their lack of education can prevent them from accepting the help which they need.
In Bangladesh, for instance, villagers think a labour of three or even four days is the norm for a first pregnancy. Health workers attempting to advise young mothers of the need for proper nutrition are met with resistance because village elders tell them an empty stomach gives the baby room to grow. mUntrained idwives who provide the care for expectant mothers often provide them as well with the likelihood of an otherwise preventable death. One traditional method to speed up the delivery is for the midwife to kick the labouring mother in the waist. Education is desperately needed here.
In India, the need for sanitary toileting was a hard sell to many of the villagers the governemtn sought to help. A sanitation campaign by the government saw the widespread construction of toilets with a brick cubicle, a squatting slab and two pits. As the only concrete structure in many homes, too many villagers saw the toilets instead as a good place to store grain or keep their hens. They continued to defecate under a nearby tree or in the river where they also washed and drew their drinking water. Education was desperately needed here.
The Ramakrishna Mission in Kolkata set about to provide some of this education by staging a little demostration. Pouring some water into a glass they would then add some fecal matter to the water and offer it to the people watching. When the proferred drink was refused, the mission "would point out that they imbibed such water every day from ponds and rivers where some people defecated, even as others bathed their bodies and rinsed their mouths." The fact that these people needed to have that explained to them does not mean they are stupid. It does mean that they are sadly uneducated. The need is indeed desperate.
Lest anyone indulge in a smug feeling of superiority to those struggling with the onerous burden of a lack of education, they need only remind themselves that the western world was in that same spot not so very long ago.
The "Big Stink" of 1858 - 59 in London, England for instance, led to the installation of new sewers that carried the city's effluent to the Thames, the very river from which it drew its drinking water. No less a luminary than Queem Victoria herself was so excited by the new sewer tunnels that she ordered construction of a small rail line to tranport people through the sewer. Quite the location to excite the head of state of the empire on which the sun never set.
Victoria and her thrill over the tours of sewers may be history, but the problem with doctors and nurses not being properly cautious about sanitation in hospitals is ongoing today, in many a major city of the western world. You'd think we'd know better, wouldn't you? Looking down on those less educated than ourselves is not the answer. Education is.
Without education, the problems besetting the world will never be solved. The goals of the UN will never be met unless the people of the Third World are empowered through education. Goal Two should be moved up to the primary position of importance. It should be focused on in every country on this globe. It needs to be financed right now by the wealthy countries, so that the ignorance does not come to their shores as it did in the attack of 9/11. It should be financed by those countries so that they never have to ask for whom the bell tolls. It should be financed and pushed now, so that the lives of the impoverished can be made better. They need to be made better, but not by the donated gifts of sometimes open-handed donors. They need to be empowered so that they can better their own lives. It should be regarded as the right of every person born to live a long life of health and comfort.
The goals of the UN need to be made reality. The power that is education can help bring them to fruition.
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
Drawn up in September 2000 at the UN's New York headquarters, they were meant to be reached by 2015. The sketchy progress made to date does not bode well for the targeted achievement of these goals.
The article quotes Kevin Watkins, lead author of the UN's early Human Development Report, as worrying that the promises made by the UN to make poverty history will become "debased currency". The situation in Africa alone is more than enough to cause the result Watkins fears.
The first goal, to eradicate extreme poverty should not be misunderstood. It is not meant to say that poverty will really become history. It does mean that, if achieved, this goal will see the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day halved. Looking at the methods used to track progress toward this goal illustrates one of the barriers faced, since only 57 out of 163 developing countries have counted their poor more than once since 1990. Apparently, ninety-two of those countries have not counted the poor at all. How can the UN know if the proportion is indeed halved when the governments of these countries either consider the poverty-stricken as unworthy of a head count and/or lack the infrastructure to do the counting?
The article spends time looking at Mali as an example of hope. Described as a land-locked country straddling the Sahel region and the Sahara desert, this country is headed up by Amadou Toumani Touré, a man who provides another part of the answer. Touré is a man who has a conscience, not one controlled by greed. He does not use foreign aid dollars given to his country in corrupt ways to feather his own nest. He has been so committed to his "Struggle Against Poverty" that Malians have just elected him for a second term in office. The corruption surrounding foreign aid has and will continue to be a big part of the reason why aid dollars are not accomplishing more in the fight to make poverty history.
Another reason, perhaps the very biggest one, would be addressed by goal number two. Ignorance is powerful. It can trap the unwitting in endless cycles of poverty and disease. The only way to combat it is with universal education and that is a goal that so many oppose. Think of the Taliban and others like them who oppose the teaching of anything other than religion and the techniques of terror to boys, while they oppose all teaching for girls. The article gives more than one mind-boggling example of the incredible weight of ignorance under which so many of the poor struggle. Their lack of education can prevent them from accepting the help which they need.
In Bangladesh, for instance, villagers think a labour of three or even four days is the norm for a first pregnancy. Health workers attempting to advise young mothers of the need for proper nutrition are met with resistance because village elders tell them an empty stomach gives the baby room to grow. mUntrained idwives who provide the care for expectant mothers often provide them as well with the likelihood of an otherwise preventable death. One traditional method to speed up the delivery is for the midwife to kick the labouring mother in the waist. Education is desperately needed here.
In India, the need for sanitary toileting was a hard sell to many of the villagers the governemtn sought to help. A sanitation campaign by the government saw the widespread construction of toilets with a brick cubicle, a squatting slab and two pits. As the only concrete structure in many homes, too many villagers saw the toilets instead as a good place to store grain or keep their hens. They continued to defecate under a nearby tree or in the river where they also washed and drew their drinking water. Education was desperately needed here.
The Ramakrishna Mission in Kolkata set about to provide some of this education by staging a little demostration. Pouring some water into a glass they would then add some fecal matter to the water and offer it to the people watching. When the proferred drink was refused, the mission "would point out that they imbibed such water every day from ponds and rivers where some people defecated, even as others bathed their bodies and rinsed their mouths." The fact that these people needed to have that explained to them does not mean they are stupid. It does mean that they are sadly uneducated. The need is indeed desperate.
Lest anyone indulge in a smug feeling of superiority to those struggling with the onerous burden of a lack of education, they need only remind themselves that the western world was in that same spot not so very long ago.
The "Big Stink" of 1858 - 59 in London, England for instance, led to the installation of new sewers that carried the city's effluent to the Thames, the very river from which it drew its drinking water. No less a luminary than Queem Victoria herself was so excited by the new sewer tunnels that she ordered construction of a small rail line to tranport people through the sewer. Quite the location to excite the head of state of the empire on which the sun never set.
Victoria and her thrill over the tours of sewers may be history, but the problem with doctors and nurses not being properly cautious about sanitation in hospitals is ongoing today, in many a major city of the western world. You'd think we'd know better, wouldn't you? Looking down on those less educated than ourselves is not the answer. Education is.
Without education, the problems besetting the world will never be solved. The goals of the UN will never be met unless the people of the Third World are empowered through education. Goal Two should be moved up to the primary position of importance. It should be focused on in every country on this globe. It needs to be financed right now by the wealthy countries, so that the ignorance does not come to their shores as it did in the attack of 9/11. It should be financed by those countries so that they never have to ask for whom the bell tolls. It should be financed and pushed now, so that the lives of the impoverished can be made better. They need to be made better, but not by the donated gifts of sometimes open-handed donors. They need to be empowered so that they can better their own lives. It should be regarded as the right of every person born to live a long life of health and comfort.
The goals of the UN need to be made reality. The power that is education can help bring them to fruition.
1 Comments:
I don't know much about Amadou Toumani Touré, but after a quick search, I can conclude that the world can probably use a few more like him. I'm sure he's got his faults, but for a man with a military background who took the country by coup, he's certainly done different than most of his peers.
And you're bang on about ignorance. The world's ills can only be solve if people are aware of them. Unfortunately, people are just way too ignorant and are controlled by stupids who wish to keep them so. "War on terror?" The world needs a war on ignorance.
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