“Education is the art of making man ethical.”
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
A child’s right to education entails the right to learn. Yet, for too many children across the globe, schooling does not lead to learning. Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to education.” Today, however, 57 million children remain out of school. Education is not only a right, but a passport to human development that opens doors and expands opportunities and freedoms.
Why is Education necessary?
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”
– B.B King
From the very beginning, we taught the importance of Education. But why Education is important?
Education means studying to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of a variety of subjects as well as apply them in regular life. Education is not limited to just knowledge from books, but can also be obtained through practical experiences outside of the classroom. However, education goes so much beyond just getting a job and making our parents happy. It’s one of the most powerful tools out there.
- Education provides knowledge.
- It provides financial security.
- Education allows for self-dependency.
- Education tends to teach people the difference between right and wrong.
- Education creates confidence.
- Education provides economic growth on a national level.
- Education is the most powerful weapon which can help you to achieve your dream.
Education For All ( EFA)
Education for All (EFA) is an international initiative first launched in Jomtien in 1990 to bring a change in the world’s education system. The main motive of this initiative is to provide the benefits of education to every man in every society. Around the world, children are deprived of education and learning for various reasons.
Poverty remains one of the most obstinate barriers. Children living through economic fragility, political instability, conflict, or natural disaster are more likely to be cut off from schooling – as are those with disabilities, or from ethnic minorities. In some countries, education opportunities for girls remain severely limited.
This entails not only the Department of Education but the involvement of the entire society, including national and local government agencies and civil society organizations as providers of basic learning needs. After a decade of slow progress, the international community reaffirmed its commitment to EFA in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000 and again in September of that year.
At the latter meeting, 189 countries and their partners adopted the two EFA goals which are also Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Goals of Education For All (EFA)
According to the declaration they identified six key education goals. These aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youth, and adults by 2015. The six goals are:
- Early childhood care and education.
- Free and compulsory basic education.
- Ensuring learning opportunities for young and adults.
- Achieving 50% improvement in adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.
- Elimination of gender disparities.
- Ensuring quality education.
EFA and Bangladesh
Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation through an intense war of liberation in 1971. The seeds of freedom were sown in the Language Movement of 1952 when
students and people rose as one, and many of them laid down their lives on the 21st of February of the year to protect the dignity of the mother tongue, Bengali, and establish it as a state language. Nearly 98 percent of the population speaks Bangla. It is a rich language, but the large majority of people did not have the skills to read and write in their mother tongue. At liberation in December 1971 the literacy rate was only 16.8 percent and has been quite slow to grow, taking 20 years to rise to only 24.8 percent in 1991.
However, focused initiatives taken during the decade of the 1990s, following the World Declaration on Education for All, have resulted in remarkable progress in basic education, both in formal primary education (PE) and non-formal education (NFE).
Bangladeshi constitution guarantees free and compulsory education as per Article 17.
It says that the state shall adopt effective measures for
(a) establishing a uniform mass-oriented and universal system of education and extending free and compulsory education to all children to such a stage as may be determined by law.
(b) relating education to the needs of society and producing properly trained and motivated citizens to serve these needs.
(c) removing literacy within such time as may be determined by law.
The government continues to be the main provider and financier of primary education. Improving the overall quality of schooling is a pressing task to substantially raise enrollment and help more children complete primary school with the appropriate skills in literacy and numeracy. Bangladesh has made progress towards increasing both primary and secondary enrollment and has already reached gender parity in both education levels.
Barriers while ensuring the policy of EFA –
The ultimate aim of ‘Education for All’ means sustainable development. Bangladesh has a constitutional obligation to ensure education for all. Global Monitoring Report 2012 reveals that about 200 million young people in developing countries including Bangladesh have not even completed primary education, and lack any skills for work. Now let’s take a look at some of the reasons behind that.
- Even in schools, a lack of trained teachers, inadequate education materials, and poor infrastructure make learning difficult for many students.
- Others come to class too hungry, ill, or exhausted from work or household tasks to benefit from their lessons.
- Some of the students have no available access to the internet.
- A recent DPE internal report shows that around 70 percent of children are unable to read or write properly or perform basic mathematical calculations even after five years at primary school.
- Most teachers feel uncomfortable in adopting innovative educational approaches as they fear that using other approaches may result in poor performances in examinations. As a result, though the pass rates in public examinations are getting higher, a huge number of students are failing to master the desired competencies due to a flawed teaching system.
- Our secondary and higher secondary curriculum doesn’t reflect market demand or job-oriented syllabuses.
- Our traditional primary, secondary, and higher secondary studies are not producing quality or skilled persons to climb the ladder of poverty.
- The budgetary allocation for education in our country is not adequate compared with those of other South Asian and developing countries that put education at the top of the policy agenda.
Education is a major driving force of development in any modern society. It is very necessary for each and everyone to improve knowledge, way of living as well as social and economic status throughout life. Getting proper education is the birthright of everyone, which is a crime.
It is not just a duty of the government, we the general people must show respect and prior our opinion in order to fulfill all the goals of EFA.
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Writer
Intern
Lutfur Nahar
Content writing department
YSSE.