The State of the World’s Children 2011 – Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity

Jean's story: An adolescent girl’s belief in education provides hope in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 25 February 2011 – When we met Jean Bernite just six weeks after the January 2010 earthquake here, she was living in a tent with four family members. She was no longer attending school but was eager to return to the classroom.

Africa's First Elected Female Leader

Journal #12: "Femocracy": Best Medicine for Africa - Gbemisola Olujobi

Abstract: This was a very hopeful story for someone like me who thinks the education for women is the most solution because - although it will take some time to realize "femocrats" and universalize it across the continent of Africa - the education changes women's thought and let them more actively face numerous problems from which women have suffered. Olujobi introduces such optimistic cases that are happening in Africa.

A recent World Bank reserach submits that numerous behavioral studies have found women to be more trust-worthy and public-spirited than men. Consistent with this hypothesis, it has been found that the greater the representation of women in parliament, the lower the level of corruption.

-> Would this be a biological difference between women and men? Or is this a temporal phenomenon only because women have not yet enjoyed obtaining political control as men have? 

The world's parliamentary body with the biggest share of women is found in Rwanda, where women hold 48.8% of the seats. 

Corruption reduces national budget resources. It also reduces the amount of public spening on health and social security, for instance, which affects women disproportionately. 

Many say it is the dawn of the new day for Africa' democracy and governance. 

"Femocracy" - democracy headed by women - nurtures, mothers, wives, sister,s daughters and granmothers like Mama Ellen Sirleaf (the current president of Republic of Liberia)

Liberia is Africa's oldest republic.  

Journal #11: Human Rights: Promoting gender equality in and through education

Abstract: Behind what is being shown regarding the gender inequality in education, Duncan clarifies what could be the causal factors for it and several terms that should be considered to approach this problem more accurately and uniformly.

Achieving gender 'equality' is equally important as promoting gender parity. Parity is a quantitative concept; equality is a qualitative one.

UN Speicial Rapporteur shows that availability, accessibility, and adaptability of education are important. 

Availability: (surprisingly) includes the single sex schools 

Acceptability: boys and girls should be treated as same, without any stereotype of women as "unsuited to academic achievement". 

Adabtability: Education should not reinforce extant societal patterns that discriminate certain groups

Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest group of countries that do not have compulsory educational legislation. (DRC is one of the 40 countries which do have no compulsory education)

Some suggestion: it is important to keep this 'gender equality' in selecting teachers. 

In all regions of the world the proportion of female teachers at secondary and higher education levels is lower than that at the primary level. This can explain for lower enrollment of girls in education, where parents refuse to allow their female children to be taught by male teachers, as Egypt has reported. 

Raise the wage of teachers.

Studeis of earnings have revealed that in some major cities around the world (Lagos, Jakarta, and Sao Paulo), bus drivers earn more than teachers. 

  

Ensure security of girls at school: Abused at school

Sexual abuse and physical violence against girls are particularly invidious dangers. 

Girl students are dropping out because of excessive bullying and terrorizing - and rape (Ohsako, 1997, p.36). 

Protect pregnant girls from being excluded in education 

In many countries pregnant girls face expulsion from formal education. Even unmarried teachers can be fired owing to pregnancy. 

Define the minimum age of marriage to protect girls 

Marriage is repeatedly asserted as one of the principal reasons for female desertion, or exclusion, from education. Egypt and Morocco report that female drop-out in rural areas can be attributed in significant degree to early marriage. 

       

Journal #10: Mass Education as a Determinant of the Timing of Fertility Decline

* The greatest impact of education is through the restructuring of family relationships and, hence, family economies and the direction of the net wealth flow. Education has its impact on fertility through five mechanisms:

1)  Reduces the child's potential for work inside and outside the home 

2) Education increases the cost of children; the school's authority is the new authority, which is not traditional. New morality from school can be gained. 

3) Schooling creates dependency both within family and within society; society regard a child as a future rather than a present producer

4) Schooling speeds up cultural change and creates new cultures 

5) School serves as a major instrument for propagatin the values of the Western middle class. 

* Portant engine of demographic change seems to be formal schooling rather than the widespread attainment of literacy 

** The first generation of mass schooling appears to be enough to initiate fertility decline. 

* The 2 major strains in developing-world education

1) Instilling moral values 

2) Importation of these values from Western culture 

* In Burma the object of education is not in doubt (p.238):

Educaiton is to serve as one of the means of social transformation from a raw material producing society where the bulk of the people had a narrow, peasant, traditional view to a diversified, somewhat industralized society able to absorb and use the most modern of scientific knowledge: It is to build a modern nation of responsible citizens.

 

Africans fear of:

- The education may destroy the moral system that alone can guarantee the older generation alrge and continuing returns

- School destroys the corporate identityof the family (submissive, limited sphere of parental influence)

* In the textbook, however, [no support for such basic African traditional institutions as polygyny, unstable marriage, the condemnation of sterile women or women who repeatedly lose children, bewitchment, and the attitude that the needs of the family have priority over those of the community] has been found. 

*** Girls' education was especially abhorred because that implied turning them into town-women, immoral and unsuited for marriage. 

* Ghana over 20 years ago, found that 1% of girls desired a traditional marriage while 86% thought polygamy definitely backward.

* High fertility may continue in spite of a major decline in nondomestic family production, as long as family morality does not decay 

 

Journal #9: Structural Problems in Education in the Congo (Leopoldville)

Abstract: In the Congo, the expansino of one educational level is heavily dependent on the next higher level's ability to feed back teachers. The traditional values and cultures in tribalization remain a potent negative force blocking any central authority irrespective of its ideology. They usually show strong oppositions to missionary's attempt to educate children in regarding that the education is Western tool to inject Western idea that is often conflicting with traditional practices. 

Problems:

- Lack of teachers and facilities 

- High drop-out rates

- Only a few years of schooling may create more socio-economic and political problems than are solved by acquiring elementray literacy. 

- Congolese statesman, doctors, lawyers, engineers and business leaders are required.

Journal #8: Gender, poverty, family structure, and investments in children's education in Kinshasa, Congo

* Improved economic status does not necessarily resutl in reduced gender difference.
* Family structure (the # of children in the household in different age groups) and a child's relationship to the head of the household are very important influences on investmetns in children's education.
  
 - Greater responsiveness of female enrollement rates to changes in income and prices over time within countries (Schultz, 1989)
 - Children have to go to school, do market work, and help home production.
 - Birth-order effects on educational investments
 - **INT**: gender differences are widest not in the poorest segment of the population but rather in the next poorest group.
 - Female heads of household spend a larger percentage of the household budget on    children than do male heads.
 - More children avilable at home, lower opportunity cost of schooling
 - Among 6-14 ages: 22% and 15-19 ages: 27% children are not the children of the household   head --> Fostering rural children in urban environments
 -  In 1995, 85% of women aged 20 in Kinshasa had never been to school (compared to only 45% of men)
 -  It is still possible that the fostered children are achieving higher levels of schooling than if     they had remained in thier family 
 -  Education of the household head has been found to be a significant determinant of children's schooling --> Circulating Effect
 -  Gender differneces in reaching in 4th grade among children 10-14 are the greatest among the poor 
 -  School enrollment rates have dropped as the economy has continued to deteriorate