I am sure I was not the only American that as a child dreamed of not having to go to school any more and counted down the days to Christmas and spring break. Education is something that we take for granted here, in America. We do not realize how lucky we are to be forced to go to school. In other countries, such as Africa, children’s biggest dreams are to be able to go to school and be educated. Which is something most children in Africa do not get to experience. There are over 46 million children in Africa that have never even been in a classroom and 40% of school aged children do not attend school. How can this be you may ask, it is because a lack of classrooms, teachers, supplies, and ultimately monetary funds.
While education in Africa is not as good as it should be, it is much better than it was. Recently there has been a large initiative toward increasing the amount of children who attend school. Many countries, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have all increased aid to African countries for educational purposes. There are also many private donations, for example Oprah Winfrey has built a school for girls in South Africa.
Even with the building of school houses there is still a problem of educating the students. Since most people in past generations were not educated it can be hard to find teachers. The low amount of teachers and high amount of students makes the student to teacher ratio 44-1, on average. In some areas the student teacher ratio is as high as 126-1. The Africa Education Initiative is helping to increase the amount of teachers; in 2003 they trained over 8,000 new teachers and over 16,000 existing teachers.
The education system in Africa is not hopeless though. As Africa continues to develop the education system will develop with it and also help Africa develop from having better educated citizens.
Source Links:
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sectors/ed/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/world/africa/29iht-mali.4051275.html
If I had the opportunity to go abroad, I'd really like to go to Africa and help with schools there. I'm not a teacher, but I'd like to help build them, or pass out resources, or whatever I could help with.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be amazing to go help children in this area. The entire experience would be very eye-opening. After reading this I simply "googled" "Educate Africa" and many different organizations and different projects came up. It would be good for more to get involved, I think with more information and opportunities for fortunate countries would help out this area.
ReplyDelete