Education Equality

“Education is a right, like the right to have proper food or a roof over your head. Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to education”. Education is not only a right but passport to human development. It opens doors and expands opportunities and freedoms. It contributes to fostering peace, democracy, in economic growth as well as improving health and reducing poverty. The ultimate aim of Education for All is sustainable development.” (Education Counts, September-November 2010)

Every child should have the basic right to education and Mr Ban Ki-Moon from the United Nations says it best “ Education must do more than produce individuals who can read write and count must nurture global citizens who can rise to the 21st century”

These two UN quotes may be true but there are a lot of barriers out there that keep a child from education. According to UNESCO, in 2000 there were 102 million children that i not have the chance to go to school. (UNESCO Global Monitoring, 2015)There are a lot of reasons why children don’t have the opportunity to go to school, some which include poverty, especially girls living in poverty, disabilities, social aspects that prevent a child from education could be child labor, child marriages, or child soldiers, and children living in war torn or natural disaster zones. These children are young and capable and the world leaders took notice and said enough is enough. They have come together to use the resources of UNESCO: United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to create the Education for All Movement.

I found statistics on  the education for all from UNESCO, in 2008 the number of out of school children dropped from 102 to 60 million, that’s around 59%. But the number pretty much stayed there. As of 2013 there are 57 million children out of school, and of those 57 million 49% will never go to school, 28% will start late, 23% will drop out (UNESCO Global Monitoring, 2015). These children are denied the basic human right to education. Statistics similar to these are one reason UNESCO came together in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar. Where country leaders came together to create the Dakar Framework for Action. They also developed 6 international action goals for countries to meet these are 1. Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. 2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls,children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free, compulsory primary education of good quality. 3. Ensuring that learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.4. Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults. 5. Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, with a focus on ensuring girls full and equal access to achievement in basic education of good quality. 6. Improving all aspects of the quality to education and ensuring excellence of all so that  recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

Reading about the 6 goals I was impressed that they didn’t just state that the individuals need education, but needing “quality” education that is globally recognized and measurable. I know that even in a single school the concept of what quality education could be varied and I wanted to see what UNESCO defined as “quality” After reading the EFA Global Monitoring Report from 2005, I came across this quoted text “Although opinions about quality in education are by no means unified, at the level of international debate and action three principles tend to be broadly shared. They can be summarized as the need for more relevance, for greater equity of access and outcome and for proper observance of individual rights. In much current international thinking, these principles guide and inform educational content and processes and represent more general social goals to which education itself should contribute.” So they agree that quality is hard to define but yet it’s crucial to a childs education. For how they measure if the students are learning, they have laid out standards, measures and methods, as well as implementation, which if you want a good long read can access it here (UNESCO, 2013)  . The good news about how they decide these standards, methods, and implementation is to look at the existing global policies and dialogues in the UN conventions as well as the EFA. They also consult with 40 countries to make sure that it is a well rounded assessment method.

After reading all about UNESCO I was curious to see how they will push forward. UNESCO had set pretty high goals and expectations for Education Equality but how will they move forward if they didn’t fully meet their goal for 2015. On April 9th, 2015 in Paris UNESCO met to talk about the unmet goal, that only one half of the countries actually achieved the goals that were set out in 2000. They have set a new target for 2030.(UNESCO, 2015)

But the world doesn’t just rely on UNESCO, even though they are the leading organization to push Education Equality. Another leading organization that pushes for Education Equality is UNICEF. Which also follow the 6 goals for Education that the world leaders have set forth. (UNICEF, 2016) In Hong Kong we see and hear a lot about UNICEF, it even feels like there is a fund raising every weekend by them in our neighborhood sometimes. But I never knew that they were partners with UNESCO. I knew that they wanted to give education to all, but that’s as far as my knowledge of them went. UNICEF is working towards equitable access to education, innovations in education,education in emergencies and post-crisis transitions, as well as girls education and gender equality. Two of their biggest focuses are focused on the education of girls and narrowing the gender gap (UNICEF, 2015)  as well as the education in the aftermath of a crisis.Unicef has estimated that there are around 31 million girls ages 7-11 and 32 million of girls ages 12-18 were out of school in the year 2013. The most shocking information was that in South and West Asia, where 80% of girls vs 16%  of boys that are  out of school  will never go to school. I wanted to learn more about UNICEF so I decided  to follow UNICEF on twitter. Following them on twitter I found a tweet by UNICEF EDUCATION that state that “there are 462 million school aged children and youth living in countries affected by crisis”#LearningforPeace. Following the #on twitter #learningforpeace I found a lot of articles, .orgs, and blogs that talk about UNICEF’s great work that they do with children in crisis. To learn more about UNICEF you can access a lot following them on twitter or Youtube.

There are a few other organizations that also work towards education equality as a goal some of these are Global Partnerships  http://www.globalpartnership.org/. What they do is Financing at scale, harnessing skills and talent, funding for results, and sharing best practice. And another organization is Global Campaign for education  http://www.campaignforeducation.org/en/about-us/about-education-for-all, who also hold to the same 6 goals of UNESCO.

After looking into these organizations for information on Education Equality, I did come away with a few things I never really knew. 1. I knew that education quality was a necessity but I didn't realize how much we as part of a global community were missing the target goal.  That even though it went down by ½ there is still a long way to go. 2. I learned how big the gender equality gap was for boys and girls who go to school. And that if girls were able to go to school or continue in school. Especially for secondary schools, that the poverty rate could go down, child marriages would go down, potential involvement in economic activity and the encouragement of the next generation to go to school.  (Irina Bokova,2011) 3. That I actually could find out more about the different organizations through twitter and youtube than just on their website.

If you want to check out some cool statistics about Education and Equality, you could access this website for more information:

http://datatopics.worldbank.org/education/wTools/Visualtool.aspx

Citations:

UNESCO [GEM Report UNESCO].(Published on Apr 8, 2015). Global Monitoring Report 2015 - Animated launch video [Video File] http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/efa/)

Education Counts (September-November 2010) UN Headquarters, New York. http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/efa/

UNESCO Institute of Statistics (July, 2013) Toward Universal Learning A Global Framework for Measuring Learning. Retrieved from http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/towards-universal-learning-a-global-framework-for-measuring-learning-metrics-task-force-education-2013-en.pdf

UNESCO (April, 2015) Education for All 2000-2015: Only a third of countries reached global education goals http://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/Press_release_global_en_0.pdf

UNICEF (2015) Introduction http://www.unicef.org/agenda2030/

UNICEF (23 July 2015) Girls' education and gender equality

http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_70640.html

euronews learning world [euronews ] Apr 15, 2011.  - UNESCO targets education https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxZ-g7l3uU

My Reflection on reasons for thinking teaching is a profession or not a profession

My reflection on reasons for thinking teaching is a profession or not a profession. 

I got a chance this week to do some reading on teaching as a profession. Out of all my reading my idea if teaching is viewed as a profession was really shaken by reading " Past as prologue: A historical overview of teaching in America". 
The idea of teaching has really changed over the years, during the school house days of yore, when a teacher usually wasn't educated and the only expectation of the teacher was to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, I might have been on the side arguing that teaching wasn't much of a profession, and that it would be a great job for young women to do before they got married, which was the practice during the time. But times have changed. And now if you were to ask me if teaching is a profession I would say yes. When once you didn't need much training, now you need at least a Bachelors degree in Education or the equivalent. You then need to take several examinations to get your license to teach, you have to have criminal background check, and sometimes even a little more than that. After all that, you still need to take classes on a regular basis, go to conferences, professional development. My students are always shocked to know that I have "Homework" too and that I go to "classes" to keep getting trained in new techniques to present material, new concepts on how children brains work and the best way to engage them, the best way to make sure your student is learning, and how to know if you should suggest they get external help. And that's before getting a masters. I am not sure if things are the same in the States right now. But at the school I teach at most teachers hold a masters or are studying for their masters, and in Finland, where my husband comes from, if I ever want to pursue a job there I would need at least a masters. 

So yes, once upon a time, teaching was not a profession. But, the winds, they are a changing. And it has become a profession. Are some people slow to change with the wind? Yes. Are there teachers out there who don't want to study more and get more from the career, sure. But, I would defiantly say that the amount of education needed for me to teach at the schools I want to teach at would make me and my fellow educators professionals.