From a leading youth correspondent of Sustaining Bangladeshi Villagers
| From celebrations of global education summit in Korea.... Sir Fazle Abed (BRAC - home, fans) writes:Beyond Universal Education DHAKA – As the World Education Forum meets in Incheon, South Korea, it is time to confront some unsettling facts about the state of education in the world today. More than 91% of children of primary school age are now enrolled in school, but progress on educating the remaining 9% has slowed to a near standstill. The numbers have barely moved since 2005, and girls are still disproportionately left behind.
Worse, the headline figures do not describe the true depth of the problem. In poorer countries, even children privileged enough to have access to a classroom often do not receive a good education. According to UNESCO, of some 650 million primary-school-age boys and girls, an estimated 250 million will not learn to read or count, regardless of whether they have gone to school.
It is time for the United Nations and other international bodies to move beyond a singular focus on enrollment numbers and grapple with the problem of quality in education. In September, my organization, BRAC, joined a collaborative effort, led by Hillary Clinton and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, that puts more girls in school while addressing the problem of quality for both genders.
As part of that effort, BRAC, which is already the world’s largest private secular education provider, plans to invest at least $280 million to reach 2.7 million additional girls and train 75,000 teachers by 2019. We call on others to make similar investments.
All too often, poor countries’ approach to education remains stuck in the colonial era, favoring rote memorization over true learning. Schools do little to impart the life and work skills needed to prepare young people for the twenty-first-century knowledge economy. Children are awarded higher grades for writing sentences exactly like the ones they see in textbooks than for coming up with ideas of their own.
This is an approach that fails to foster curiosity, self-confidence, and independent thinking. It is also especially ill-suited for children from poor backgrounds, who find much of what they are taught in the classroom to be irrelevant to their daily lives.
I was pleased when, in May, a panel tasked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came up with a post-2015 development agenda that included quality education, not just universal access, as one of its recommendations. Setting targets based on quality rather than quantity will be difficult but not impossible.
Basic outcomes of literacy and numeracy are imperative. But so are standards for social and emotional learning, which stresses the importance of recognizing our emotions, learning how to deal with them, and fostering empathy for others. These skills, known as “emotional intelligence,” are just as important for children in poor countries as they are for children in rich countries.
In conflict and post-conflict environments like Afghanistan or South Sudan, a safe and peaceful future will depend on a new generation being able to heal its emotional and psychological wounds, just as it did in my native Bangladesh after our Liberation War in 1971. Even in countries not scarred by war, navigating one’s way out poverty requires emotional intelligence, in addition to problem-solving skills and critical thinking.
Given recent cuts in aid for education, some might object that focusing on quality and emotional intelligence are luxuries that we cannot afford. This is not the case. In Bangladesh, we have found a way to bring quality education to the poor, with schools that cost just $36 per student per year. With community support, local women are trained to teach children to think for themselves. One-room schools operate out of rented and borrowed spaces to save costs. A majority of the students in every classroom are girls.
We need to promote universal standards for education, not just universal access, for both girls and boys. A child’s potential is truly unleashed only when he or she learns to spot and seize the opportunities that his or her parents never had. This is the standard we should set, and it will be a great moment indeed when it is universally adopted.
possibly related current references
May 19, 2015 — At the World Education Forum, World Bank Group Pres Kim urged development partners, policymakers to be bold and ensure all children have access to quality education and learning opportunities regardless of where they are born, their gender, or their family’s income. Read More »
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Purpose Questions from Friends20.com regarding.***Mass Collaborations to UN future summit 2023- are you tech wizard who can help us linkin New York & any other place where citizens demand sustainability for their children? rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk Educators needed to help with any of 30 collaborations making alumni of fazle abed the world's largest partnership in future of civil society and womens sustainability goals www.economistwomen.com do you have any connections with the netherlands- this is where abed's ideas on how bangladesh can share solutions/rural adaptations world needs on climate, and many ways of leapfrog social-business models 1 2 with technology both to end poverty, empower women, maximise middle class, progress both urban and rural youth can find optimal global partners if you are interested in future of technology - look at this OECD paper -any questions? ** university graduate collaborations are the way to scale futures we need - do you work on 1) ultra poor, 2 playschool 3 anything else brac university and barcelona global university are celebrating worldwide 2022 |
| povertyuni at facebook - fazle abed world record jobs---pro-youth educators ----.HOW DO YOU BUILD ONE DOLLAR HOMES? IN BANGLADESH 1972 FAZLE ABED COMMUNITIES BUILT 16000 HOMES AT COST OF around A DOLLAR EACH- HERE'S HOW AND HOW ONE MAGICAL ECONOMIC TRICK LED TO ANOTHER UNTIL AN ECONOMIC MODEL SUSTAINING BILLION POOREST WOMEN AND A UNIVERSITY COALITION SHARING THIS KNOWHOW GAVE 2021 YOUTH THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE THE FIRST SUSTAINABILITY GENERATION- how shell ceo applied business to society's greatest needs and socety's values to business' most excitingly human purposes | ...macrae family arranged 15 student journalists trip ro bangladesh between xmas 2007 and 2018- our notes were shared with 7 states staging social business competitions in usa, economist editors, adam smith scholars and glasgow u journals - our first visit was to the extraordinary dr yunus so we have logged up notes we have verified in a special section corresponding to 2008 in this blog- we discussed yunus knowhow with 2000 mainly students we gave his book to-- however over our 13 years of visits we became ever more interested in the networks of sir fazle abed which after 50 years of relentless empowerment were at his time of death the world's largest ngo partnership and around which he spent his last 10 years asking his friends to make his legacy the largest open university coalition (30 and counting as of summer 2020) of poverty Thanks to Sir Fazle Abed of BRAC .. bkash (largest cashless bank) 1 .. and largest partnership NGO In the world: Bangladesh celebrates one of girls and sustainability world's top 3 job creators -BRUN |
At BRAC we never met banker for the poor- we met 100000+ educators for poor- see 80th birthday note to Abed: his co-workers thanks SIR FAZLE ABED BA University Glasgow Naval Architect; 2014 – Honorary Doctor of Laws, Princeton University, US .. 2012 – Doctor of Laws honori causa, University of Manchester, UK … 2010– Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, University of Bath, UK ...2009 – Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of Oxford, UK ...2009 – Honorary Doctorate in Humane letters, Rikkyo University, Japan...2008 – Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Columbia University, US...2007 – Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Yale University, US...2003 – Honorary Doctorate of Education, University of Manchester, UK...1994 – Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Queen's University, Canadaother partnerships - with berkeley us's first research of bangladeshi-american diaspora …. books on brac -Quiet Revolution (Marty Chen 1983); Freedom From Want (smiley 2009); Driving Development (2016): - downloadable papers 1 | Oral Rehydration (Health) Crafts theatre university Best news we free scots have ever heard -48 hours just changed world1000days.world April 2018 is sir fazle abed's 82nd birthday and 1000 days to 2021 - the year china ends poverty, the last decade the UN values human sustainability as possible and how can your will peoples you trust celebrate 2021? China.Japan. Korea. Asean. India. Arctic. Africa. America..1 2 3 4 5 If you can celebrate millennials linking together these 5 Bangladesh-born alumni networks, anything can be possible including economists celebrating how to end poverty,, here are some alumni testimonies brac2.ppt of BRAC @ Bangla - to add rsvp isabella@unacknowledgedgiant.com
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Saturday, May 23, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Fazle Abed at Project Syndicate
Beyond Universal Education
It is time for the UN and other international bodies to move beyond a singular focus on enrollment numbers and grapple with the problem of quality in education. A child’s potential is truly unleashed only when he or she learns to spot and seize the opportunities his or her parents never had.
Monday, May 4, 2015
NEPAL breaking news at www.economistbangla.com and yunus city nepal -- thru relief and development from the earthquake we will be aiming to link in asian millennials- our guide is a nepalese and leading student in japan's medical schools- hes on the ground now- if you have life-saving info to share please tell me chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk your mobile number for bhim to call -and if you have a bookmark explaining your unique actions please send that too -support to date from women4empowerment, yazmi elearning satellite, batras grassroots network, ... our bangladesh www.economistbangla.com millennials bureau with its youth correspondents at brac and grameen
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DHAKA – As the World Education Forum meets in Incheon, South Korea, it is time to confront some unsettling facts about the state of education in the world today. More than 91% of children of primary school age are now enrolled in school, but progress on educating the remaining 9% has slowed to a near standstill. The numbers have barely moved since 2005, and girls are still disproportionately left behind.
Worse, the headline figures do not describe the true depth of the problem. In poorer countries, even children privileged enough to have access to a classroom often do not receive a good education. According to UNESCO, of some 650 million primary-school-age boys and girls, an estimated 250 million will not learn to read or count, regardless of whether they have gone to school.
Moreover, in many parts of the developing world, state school systems are leaving tens of millions of children behind because of poverty and discrimination. These children’s true education will be that of the soil or the streets. They will grow up working as smallholder farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers, and will struggle to send their own children to school.
It is time for the United Nations and other international bodies to move beyond a singular focus on enrollment numbers and grapple with the problem of quality in education. In September, my organization, BRAC, joined a collaborative effort, led by Hillary Clinton and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, that puts more girls in school while addressing the problem of quality for both genders.
As part of that effort, BRAC, which is already the world’s largest private secular education provider, plans to invest at least $280 million to reach 2.7 million additional girls and train 75,000 teachers by 2019. We call on others to make similar investments.
All too often, poor countries’ approach to education remains stuck in the colonial era, favoring rote memorization over true learning. Schools do little to impart the life and work skills needed to prepare young people for the twenty-first-century knowledge economy. Children are awarded higher grades for writing sentences exactly like the ones they see in textbooks than for coming up with ideas of their own.
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This is an approach that fails to foster curiosity, self-confidence, and independent thinking. It is also especially ill-suited for children from poor backgrounds, who find much of what they are taught in the classroom to be irrelevant to their daily lives.
I was pleased when, in May, a panel tasked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came up with a post-2015 development agenda that included quality education, not just universal access, as one of its recommendations. Setting targets based on quality rather than quantity will be difficult but not impossible.
Basic outcomes of literacy and numeracy are imperative. But so are standards for social and emotional learning, which stresses the importance of recognizing our emotions, learning how to deal with them, and fostering empathy for others. These skills, known as “emotional intelligence,” are just as important for children in poor countries as they are for children in rich countries.
In conflict and post-conflict environments like Afghanistan or South Sudan, a safe and peaceful future will depend on a new generation being able to heal its emotional and psychological wounds, just as it did in my native Bangladesh after our Liberation War in 1971. Even in countries not scarred by war, navigating one’s way out poverty requires emotional intelligence, in addition to problem-solving skills and critical thinking.
Given recent cuts in aid for education, some might object that focusing on quality and emotional intelligence are luxuries that we cannot afford. This is not the case. In Bangladesh, we have found a way to bring quality education to the poor, with schools that cost just $36 per student per year. With community support, local women are trained to teach children to think for themselves. One-room schools operate out of rented and borrowed spaces to save costs. A majority of the students in every classroom are girls.
We need to promote universal standards for education, not just universal access, for both girls and boys. A child’s potential is truly unleashed only when he or she learns to spot and seize the opportunities that his or her parents never had. This is the standard we should set, and it will be a great moment indeed when it is universally adopted.