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the-south-asian.com November 2003 |
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November
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- Access, Inclusion and Achievement. by Amartya Sen 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (15CCEM) 27-30 October 2003, Edinburgh
It is a great privilege for me to have the opportunity of speaking at this meeting of Commonwealth countries on education. I am also very happy that you have chosen Edinburgh as the venue of this important conference. I am very proud of my own association with Edinburgh, through being an alumnus of two universities here, Edinburgh University and Heriot-Watt University (admittedly my connections are only through honorary degrees but they generate a sense of closeness to the real students here), and also through belonging to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and having other associations with this great city. So I welcome you to beautiful Edinburgh and to its wonderful intellectual community, of which I am privileged to be a nomadic member, as something of an academic gypsy. But to this welcome I must add my belief that there could not be a better place for a meeting on "closing the gap" in education than the city of Adam Smith and David Hume, the earliest and greatest champions of education for all. Why is it so important to close the educational gaps, and to remove the enormous disparities in educational access, inclusion and achievement? One reason, among others, is the importance of this for making the world more secure as well as more fair. HG Wells was not exaggerating when he said, in his Outline of History: "human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." If we continue to leave vast sections of the people of the world outside the orbit of education, we make the world not only less just, but also less secure. The precariousness of the world is now greater than it already was in HG Wells' time in early twentieth century. Indeed, since the terrible events of September 11, 2001 - and what followed after that - the world has been very aware of problems of physical insecurity. But human insecurity comes in many different ways - not just though terrorism and violence. Indeed, even on the very day of September 11, 2001, more people died from Aids than from physical violence including the atrocity in New York. Human insecurity can develop in many different ways, and physical violence is only one of them. While it is important to fight terrorism and genocide (and in this too, education can have a big role, as I will presently discuss), we must also recognise the plural nature of human insecurity and its diverse manifestations. As it happens, widening the coverage and effectiveness of basic education can have a powerfully preventive role in reducing human insecurity of nearly every kind. It is useful to consider briefly the different ways in which removing discrepancies and neglects in education can contribute to reducing human insecurity across the world. The most basic issue relates to the elementary fact that illiteracy and innumeracy are forms of insecurity in themselves. Not to be able to read or write or count or communicate is a tremendous deprivation. The extreme case of insecurity is the certainty of deprivation, and the absence of any chance of avoiding that fate. The first and most immediate contribution of successful school education is a direct reduction of this basic deprivation - this extreme insecurity - which continues to ruin the lives of a large part of the global population, not least in the Commonwealth. The difference that basic education can make to human life is easy to see. It is also readily appreciated even by the poorest of families. Speaking personally, it has been wonderful for me to observe how easily the importance of education is perceived even by the poorest and the most deprived of families. This emerges from some studies on primary education in India that we are currently undertaking (through the "Pratichi Trust" - a trust aimed at basic education and gender equity that I have been privileged to set up in India and Bangladesh through using my Nobel Prize money from 1998). As the results of our studies come in, it is remarkable to find how the parents from even the poorest and most depressed families long to give basic education to their children, to make them grow up without the terrible handicaps from which they - the parents - had themselves suffered. Indeed, contrary to claims often made, we have not observed any basic reluctance by parents to send their children - daughters as well as boys - to school, provided affordable, effective and safe schooling opportunities actually exist in their neighbourhood. Of course, there are many obstacles in giving shape tto the dreams of parents. Theeconomic circumstances of the families often make it very hard for them to send their children to school, particularly when there are fees to be paid. The obstacle of unaffordability must be firmly removed across the Commonwealth - indeed the world. I am, of course, aware that some champions of the market system want to leave school fees to the market forces. But this cannot but be a mistake given the social obligation to give the essential opportunity of schooling to all children. Indeed, Adam Smith, who provided the classic analysis of the power and reach of the market mechanism two and quarter centuries ago, wrote eloquently, sitting in Kirkcaldy (not far from here), why it would be wrong to leave this to the market: For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. There are other obstacles too. Sometimes the schools are very thinly staffed (many primary schools in developing countries have only one teacher), and parents are often worried about the safety of children, specially girl children (particularly in case the teacher fails to turn up, which seems to happen often enough in many of the poorer countries). Quite often, the parents' reluctance has a rational basis, and these gaps too need to be addressed. There are other barriers as well. Very poor families often rely on labour contributions from everyone, even the children, and this can compete with the demands of schooling. This unfortunate practice, though generated out of hardship, must also be removed, through regulation as well as by making the economic benefits of schooling clearer to all. This brings us to the second issue in understanding the contribution of schooling in removing human insecurity. Basic education can be very important in helping people to get jobs and gainful employment. This economic connection, while always present, is particularly critical in a rapidly globalising world in which quality control and production according to strict specification can be crucial.
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