China

800 million illiterates across the world

There are still 800 million illiterate people in the world and the school dropout rate in some countries is still very high, according to Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007, released by UNESCO.

Although some progress has been made in popularizing preliminary education, there is still a long way to go before the United Nations Millennium Development Goal is achieved, which was to achieve universal primary education by 2005.

The report said that the global enrollment rate for primary school is up to 86 percent. There has been a significant overall improvement in many countries. The enrollment rate in southern Saharan regions has increased by 19 percent. However, only two-thirds of the students go on to finish their education. In Latin America and the Caribbean just 83 percent of children attend primary school.

Most of the students dropping out of school come from the rural areas of poor countries. The number of students going on to receive a secondary education has grown in all developing countries, but the rate in southern Saharan regions and western Africa is still low, 30 percent and 51 percent respectively.

The enrollment gap between females and males has been narrowed from 92:100 to 94:100. Only one-third of countries have equal gender enrollment. The illiteracy rate of adults is still very high; there are 780 million illiterate people, two-thirds of whom are women.

The report attached great importance to the education of children in their early years, because this is the best time to develop the brain. However, half of the children around the world do not receive any education before the age of 3. Therefore it is important that governments regulate childhood education from birth, and increase investment in preschool education.

By People's Daily Online

Comment: There is so much to say here. Primarily it's about what people will use in their life. What's the point of knowing anything but the basics if your life is limited and going to remain limited? On the other hand, what's the point of just knowing the basics? Doesn't that bring an instant slum of the mind?

That's what the Chinese did during the Mao years. They sent anyone with an education to the countryside in hopes they could turn people into automatons. It was in the countryside that mother's taught their children and both parents preserved education no matter how hard or dangerous it was.

In America, we have a stupid idea that there is no point of knowing the finer things about the world because we are never going to use it. So from preschool on, fine arts are left on the shelf. Who cares?

Then we become a nation of artists and writers who simply never put their talents to the test. The ability to do something good should never be wasted. With creation comes a different kind of thought, an elevated thought, a thinking of angels; but it takes time and knowledge to accomplish it. It's hard to do and takes time away from jealous people who don't understand. Some people put their craft away permanently because it disrupts families and households, and that's a shame. Others find secret moments to work. Others leave the mundane in order to pursue that which is good - but that's not the answer either.

Putting off creation, putting it away for lesser things, mundane things, for trivia, for R&R is a grave sin, a sin of burying talents for a cruel master. But then I'm part of the old school, and I see the world in a different dimension, and I see the artist as especially blessed, and I don't see the master as cruel but as generous.

My husband and I are always talking about film, literature, art of some kind, and for most people who would listen in, we sound like the dullest people in the world, but the human imagination, the work of the heart and the experiment of how one thinks and how one delivers on that thinking is what has given us the culture we know as "Western." Philosophy wasn't "thunk" up in a day. A novel isn't written in a day, nor is a painting finished in a day.

What primitive people seem to think is that it all comes from daddy. Wrong. Children are educated by their mothers. The ability to do the ordinary tasks of the day is taught by the mother - it used to be called steadfastness. The ability to understand the human condition is taught by the mother. The ability to do good and to carry on in the face of adversity is taught by both parents. The role of the father is to pull the child into the world with some knowledge - from mom - and to relate to the child that he is important and contributing member of the team. Father's teach too, don't get me wrong, but what they teach is other than what mother teaches. No culture pulls a child away from his mother until he is seven or eight, and by then the seeds are sewn.

By refusing to educate a girl child, what the primitive is saying is "let's do this poorly. Let's perpetuate the idiocy yet another generation." Want to know why children drop out of school? There is no combination of what parents should s important for the future and/or no one to tell a child he is beautiful and well worth fighting for.

Being illiterate is an interesting concept. In developing nations, it's about reading at all. In America it's about reading for the larger picture. The question is, what is the larger picture?

Well, on that note, I will go back to my writing. By the way, this series of pictures/and are from Mother Theresa.