Educating Children is Valuable

Education is a fundamental right in many developed nations, but many world citizens miss out entirely, due to a lack of a world school.

A report from the ‘Global Campaign for Education’ (https://www.campaignforeducation.org/en/)  in 2010, claimed that there are 70 Million Children that miss out on an Education.

Why Child Education is valuable 

Educating all of the worlds children would benefit the world.

Reducing Exploitation

The lack of an education does not just effect these children economically.

Lack of knowledge, could also potentially make them vulnerable to exploitation, and disease.

Reducing Migration of People

Increasing Opportunities, self esteem, and making a better place

Greater Self Sufficiency for nations

In recent years there has been an increase in nations enacting protective trade policies.

This could possibly be linked to the increase in the increased focus on nationalism, by some leading nations.

Brexit & also Donald Trumps ‘America First’ policies of recent years, are examples of this increased focus on the nation state.

It could be argued that this tendency to replace internationalism with a greater focus on the nation state, has rapidly accelerated with Covid19.

So what has this got to do with educating every child in the world you may well ask.

Well you can reduce the need to import goods from an international market.

This could be achieved by the increasingly educated population, being more economically productive.

How to create a world school

My suggestion is that we leverage the latest technologies to eliminate ‘education poverty’.

 

My concept of a world school would have regional teachers, connected to remote villages via the Internet, and delivering lessons. A bit like the way they used to deliver education to remote communities in Australia, over two-way radio.

Local Resistance

Of course humans being humans means that there could be some local resistance to educating every child.

Resistance could potentially come from local leaders, who may themselves not be educated.

Other forms of resistance might come from vested interests, such as those who wish to continue to exploit child workers.

The third issue could be resistance to the education of girls.

In many cultures girls are discriminated against, when it comes to being educated.

To be fair, it was like that the in the UK not that long ago in history. However that certainly doesn’t make it right.

A solution might be the involvement of local government partners (National Governments), to ‘sell the benefits’ of upskilling the countries population.

Benefits such as the potential for higher living standards, would temp resisters to change.

 

Why Knowledge Can save Lives

Some years ago I read a report on an health campaign in Africa.

The campaign had the aim to reduce unwanted pregnancies among young women, and to help reduce the spread of HIV / Aids (among both Women & Men).

It was realised that the Condoms were being received in damaged condition by those who would benefit from using them.

What was happening was that the Condoms were being ‘stapled’ to a piece of paper, before being handed out.

The staff responsible for distribution had not realised this was a problem, through lack of appropriate education & training.

Technology Challenges & Solutions

The Internet is currently only available to 56.8% of the world population (Source:https://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm).

Whilst this is rapidly increasing, we still have much work to do, to enable a ‘World School’ service.

Companies such as Google have announced that they are planning to provide worldwide Internet coverage in the near future https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/2/5771322/google-reportedly-launching-180-satellites-for-worldwide-internet

LEO Satellites

LEO Satellites could be the technical answer that finally facilitates education for all.

LEO is short for Low Earth Orbit, and refers to the distance of satellites from the earth.

A number of companies are starting to put LEO satellites into space.

Examples of companies involved include Amazon, and OneWeb.

These new LEO satellites will allow worldwide internet access for the first time.

 

This blog post is a work in progress…tbc.

 

Last updated: 22nd August 2021

 

United Nations Millennium Development Goals