Lynn takes on some of these questions and
I hope that you will watch her presentation.
>> Someone who did not grow up at a very prestigious educations background or
family and was more go to school to get a job rather than go to school to learn.
So I, myself have kind of been on a lifelong journey of actually,
really looking at the distinction between what is education?
What is learning?
What is schooling and what is it preparing us for?
And I think a lot of these issues come up when we talk about the issues of girls
education.
So I started as a teacher and started immediately asking questions about
politics of education and the politics of schooling and the role of community and
all of that, because I was a bilingual teacher.
And started working overseas at kind of the nexus of community development
an education and then came here to Stanford to do some graduate studies, and
then a masters turned into a PhD.
Turned into looking advocacy efforts to expand education and
to get MGOs involved and at the table, and
bring in their voice in terms of what they saw the importance of education.
And along the way, sitting at kind of from the grassroots as a teacher to
the global policy table, the issues that we'll talk about more today just
kept more unraveling more and more and more.
Both on one hand, the incredible importance that there is of education.
But on the other hand, all paradoxes and the problems and the limitations.
And I would say, another piece is kind of the third leg of that's tool is how
do you actually do this in an equitable way where schooling and
education actually come together?
The second question you asked me was about the importance of education and
then particularly girls education, and as it relates to health, and
all sorts of other things.
First, I should just say on a personal note there are many people who
can talk about education and the importance of girls education.
So it is humbling in some ways to sit-in this chair and talk about something that
affects every single person on this planet and every single person on this planet,
either wants the chance to go to school, has been has had some experience with it.
And so, there are myriad experts who could talk about this.
So, my vantage point has always been trying to look at
the nexus between the grassroots and the school level.
And actually, what's happening at the government and
then actually what the international discourse and dialogue is.
That's kind of the view that I carry.
So, back to why it's important for girls.
I'm not going to tread on all the statistics that we all know,
because we can read about those.
If you had education and if you're a woman and you've had education and you stay
in school into secondary school or what this country would call high school, you
have fewer children, healthier children, your children, you yourself are healthier.
There's links to your income.
There's evidence that shows that there's lower rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence for
girls who've gone to school.
And the list and the rational for why it's important and
why it's seen as the silver bullet is because of all this evidence That says,
this is the one intervention you can make that changes all these other things, and
it has an intergenerational effect, because you have fewer children,
healthier children.
Your children are more educated,
as well as all the changes that have happened to you.
We might get back to whether or not the evidence still holds
true given the massive expansion in education and
what some might say is the quality crisis, or the learning crisis.
And wonder whether or not if we're to look ahead in 30 years,
does all the evidence that we have right now that says this is a silver bullet?
Will it actually still look that way three years time?
>> And the question does arise of the actual measurement.
I mean, because at the moment,
we're all very excited about statistics that are showing that more girls and
boys, more children are having access to school all around the world.
Virtually, all regions of the world and that raises a question which I don't
necessarily want to go off on this tangent or
sub-story of how that is measured in terms of, obviously,
I know it's generally measured in terms of girls or boys being enrolled in school.
>> Yeah.
>> And the question of dropout rates of girls as they are asked to stay home and
look after younger children or whatever is not always taken into account.
But I would say, education is an invention that we feel excited about at the moment.
Because so many more children are in fact, having access to education.
I'm interested and I hope that I know you'll talk about this and
the question of not just of education, but of actual learning and
the appropriateness of that learning to people's lives.
>> The way that education is often been looked at and
what you were saying about the measurement of it has been the dialogue has been
girls education get girls into school.
And as you pointed out getting girls into school, it's the very, very,
very, very, very first step of literally someone coming and
putting their name on a school roster and saying that they have now enrolled.
Now granted, getting to that point where there is a school and
a parent who will send their girl to school and enroll them took many years and
colonial legacies and a whole bunch of expansion of the system to be able to
get to that very first step of getting a girl in the door.
But then the issues come, do they attend regularly?
Do they go to school Monday through Friday or
Monday through Saturday as they do in some countries?
How many years do they stay in school?
After they've gone through what would be completing elementary school here,
do they actually get the chance to transition onto secondary education?
Once they've completed that, do they get the chance to transition onto high school?
And then the issue that you brought up is what are they actually learning along
the way?
So before I get into what they're learning,
I just kind of want to mention the issues.
I've seen massive progress of getting girls into that very first step of
getting them in the door of primary school.
That progress is actually slowed in the mid-2000s.
So from the early 90s to the mid-2000s,
you had massive expansion of the primary school system and
a huge effort to get girls into the school doors.
And I would say not just girls, but I would say the poorest, most disadvantage,
most marginalized children through community school efforts and
through non-formal educational projects, through governments abolishing school fees
through the international development community.
Giving a lot more foreign aid to education.
Governments putting much more money into education.
So you see a system that only provided education for a few start to open up and
to provide education for many anymore, then you have girls walk through the door.
Then as I said, the issue is how much are they actually attending?
Do they actually get to complete primary school?
So just a few things on that, we know that girls dropout.
They dropout more than boys Boys.
It's about a 10% difference if you look at it at the macro.
But, all the macro level statistics,
hide what you see in terms of regional variation.
Hides what you see in terms of community variation, country to country.
So, it hides a lot of It's hard to even say what the experience is like for
a girl in a given village, unless you actually drilled down to that, and
we just don't have the cross national data to get a complete picture of that.
There's huge problems.
They go to school, it's really hard to get them to finish school, and then I think
