Education is not prepartion for life: education is life itself

By Francesca Clixby

As the endless stream of charity fundraisers remind me morning and night on entry and exit of my local train station, there are thousands of children in desperate need of access to education. And frankly, these exist in much greater numbers than merely thousands.  UNESCO figures highlight that a massive 115 million children are excluded from primary school education worldwide. When one considers the enormity of these statistics in light of John Dewey’s words above, it is a sobering thought to realise the disadvantaged start to life which millions of boys and girls around the world are experiencing. Indeed Jeffrey Sachs told the latest World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar, that ‘without even a primary education, anybody is condemned to poverty in this world today’.

Yet as begrudging commuters often argue to defend their lack of interest to the flocking fundraisers, haven’t we been trying to do something about this for years? Are we doing someone wrong? In 2000, the United Nations Millennium Summit led to states agreeing on 8 commitments for international development: goal 2 was to achieve universal primary education. The objective of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was to have achieved the measurable aims by 2015. So in terms of the target for education, this should mean that by 2015 all boys and girls will be in a position to enjoy a full course of primary school education by 2015. Specifically, that requires gender disparities to be eliminated from primary education by 2015. That target deadline is moving every closer and it is clear that we, the international community, have far to go before celebrating success. 94 countries, for example, missed the goal of getting an equal number of girls as boys into school by 2005.

So why is action taken to date not kept us on course for achieving our 2015 target? Many criticisms can be levelled at the MDGs and a great proportion ought to be given serious consideration. However, there are a growing number of voices calling for an approach based on the realisation of human rights – a concept noticeably absent in the language drafted in the Millennium Declaration’s goals. Relating to education, numerous widely ratified human rights treaties provide for universal education as a right. Enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this right has been echoed in the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. These obligations all require states - who have committed themselves to these treaties - to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education for all. The leading advocate of the Global Campaign for Education operates with the fundamental argument that universal education is a right which must, and can, be realised.

 But states need resources and financial backing in order to fulfil their obligations to all individuals of the right to education. And in the reality of a fragile global economy recovering from recession, these resources and financial support are even harder to secure for funding education programmes.  The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) reported a US $12 billion donor aid shortfall in 2010 and those countries in the most desperate need for aid did not receive it. The GCE then called on the Education For All High Level Group (monitoring body for the Education for All Goals published at the 2000 Dakar World Education Forum) to ensure urgent international measures were taken to move closer towards the goal of universal primary education.

 One of the most effective strategies employed in leveraging pressure onto states to act and international institutions to financially support them has been to make arguments based on economics. Plan International’s published its ‘Paying the Price’ report in 2008, as part of the ‘Because I am A Girl’ campaign, which highlighted the economic cost to states of failing to educate girls to the same standard as boys. The report put this cost as US$ 92 billion each year for 65 low and middle income states. The sheer scale of the cost –thus money lost – cannot fail but to engage states to take notice of a problem which is digging deep into their pockets. Plan International urges states that investment in girls’ education as a result ‘will deliver real returns’.

Some may be critical of arguments which rely on the economics of taking action to persuade states to fulfil their obligations of universal primary education. They believe that as parties to treaties which provide for such rights, states have legal obligations to fulfil and shouldn’t only do so when it makes financial sense. However, in acknowledging the reality of states’ slow progress to date of realising their obligations, shouldn’t we be pursuing the arguments which encourage states to take action? In highlighting the financial returns of investing in girls, we are not disregarding their rights to education but instead using the most effective leverage tool possible to ensure their rights are fulfilled. This pragmatism does not lose sight of the right of every child to education but is a vehicle to ensure that we can move more quickly than before to reducing the vast number of children for whom the right to education is a dream only written on paper in words they cannot read. Education is life itself: if we want to ensure this for all children we must persuade states using arguments to which they will listen and act on.

Francesca Clixby is a student at the Institute of Commonweath Studies (School of Advanced Study, University of London) studying for a Masters in Human Rights. She comes to London having graduated from Durham with a LLB (Law). She can be contacted at Francesca.Clixby@postgrad.sas.ac.uk