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this page Newsletters - Education and the Famiily
Editorial
This newsletter starts with a plea from Sudan for the lost treasure of education – lost through war and poverty. Other children lose out because of family breakdown, or, in parts of the world, because they are girls.
The importance of the family in providing a secure basis for educational development is emphasised in many of the articles. Where the family is not strong, some of the projects in the Western world seek to help and encourage parents as well as children, aiming to give confidence and new skills. Important too, is the involvement of parents in school and the benefits this can have for the children and the older members – fathers as well as mothers.
But it is in the developing world that the problem is most acute. Lack of government resources to provide schools and equipment, with the poverty of parents meaning the gap is not filled, result in the heart-rending letters from individuals begging for funds to enable them to stay at school to further their education. Many statistics show the fallacy of the view, traditional in some countries, that the education of girls is of lesser importance than that of boys. The results in unwanted pregnancies, increased child mortality and a cycle of poverty are clear. Work is being done by churches and other organisations: a Mothers’ Union project seeks to empower women through literacy; many dioceses fund schools for girls and boys and have vigorous educational outreach. The need was made clear by an Anglican Bishop writing of his work in Zambia. He states “For the first time this year we had printed service sheets, and often in a congregation of over two hundred adults and youth, I was surprised to see that less than ten were able to use them.“ He goes on to describe how “in some villages we stayed in school classrooms, and it was common to see windows without glass, broken doors, and occasionally only two teachers struggling to teach in schools of some 200 children in seven classes.”
A recent announcement by the UK Government that it will provide funds to speed the introduction of universal primary education in Commonwealth countries is welcome, so is the international campaign to relieve international debt and so release more funds for educational provision in the poorest countries. The importance of education can be partly forgotten by those for whom there is adequate government provision, or who can afford alternatives: we need to hear the voices of those for whom it is more important than gold and listen to the plea that Churches should place education higher on their agenda.
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