Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle

Posted on | November 18, 2009 | 2 Comments

Kathy Lette has penned a sharp and pertinent piece for the Guardian on the education of girls across the developing world. In School wasn’t for me. But how lucky I was to have a choice, she writes of:

….the Herculean obstacles that girls face in the developing world as they struggle to get even a basic education. Altogether, more than 43 million of them are currently out of school. Girls are at the back of the queue when it comes to schooling; and as a result they are forced to endure a lifetime of missed opportunities and lost potential.

Educating girls is a critical investment in determining the future prosperity of any country. Whether or not a country educates its girls will have profound effects across a broad range of basic measures: nutrition, family planning, children’s health and, of course, women’s rights. For example, “….just a one per cent rise in the number of girls attending secondary school boosts a country’s annual per capita income growth by 0.3 per cent….” (quoted from Kathy Lette’s own site). And it has been accepted for many years now that the strongest measure a developing country can take to improve children’s health generally is to educate mothers!

Of course, internationally it is right that we should be seeking to tackle the worst problems, the most obdurate examples of inequality, wherever they exist. But it’s worth pondering the conclusion of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in their recent superb and closely argued book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, that:

….the evidence strongly suggests that narrowing income differences within rich countries will make them more responsive to the needs of poor countries….

So, perhaps we all need to look to the continuing, even growing, inequalities in the developed world if we really want to help make inroads in the longer term into the glaring disparities that exist across the world.

Kathy Lette has been working with the Plan-UK organization on tackling the issues she raises in the Guardian piece.

Technorati Tags: kathy lette, plan uk, education, women, girls, gender

Category: children, development, economics, education, emerging regions, government, health, literacy

Comments

2 Responses to “Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle”

Twitter Trackbacks for Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle : John Connell: The Blog [johnconnell.co.uk] on Topsy.com
November 18th, 2009 @ 5:15 pm

[...] Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle : John Connell: The Blog http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2305 – view page – cached Kathy Lette has penned a sharp and pertinent piece for the Guardian on the education of girls across the developing world. In School wasn’t for me. But how lucky I was to have a choice, she writes… Read moreKathy Lette has penned a sharp and pertinent piece for the Guardian on the education of girls across the developing world. In School wasn’t for me. But how lucky I was to have a choice, she writes of: Read less [...]
Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle | LatNet.BIZ Internet Business News
November 18th, 2009 @ 5:34 pm

[...] original post here: Education Breaks a Vicious Cycle News, income [...]