Group items tagged

Education in Cambodia was traditionally offered by the wats (Buddhist temples), thus providing education exclusively for the male population. The 1917 Law on Education passed by the French colonial government introduced a basic primary and secondary education system modelled loosely on that of France. However, that new system was fundamentally elitist, reaching only a very small per cent of the indigenous population and functioning mainly as a means of training civil servants for colonial service throughout French Indochina. After independence a universal education system was established, complemented by the development of a network of vocational colleges such as the School of Health (1953), the Royal School of Administration (1956), the College of Education (1959), the National School of Commerce (1958) and the National Institute of Judicial, Political and Economic Studies (1961). However, apart from a Buddhist University established in 1954 to provide education for monks, Cambodia had no public institution of higher education until 1960s when the Khmer Royal University was founded. In 1965 this institution became the Royal University and in the same year six more tertiary training institutions were created – the Royal Technical University, the Royal University of Fine Arts, the Royal University of Kompong Cham, the Royal University of Takeo, the Royal University of Agronomic Sciences and the Popular University. These were followed in 1968 by the Royal University of Battambang. As soon as they had come to power in 1975 the Khmer Rouge abolished education, systematically destroying teaching materials, textbooks and publishing houses. Schools and universities were closed and their buildings put to other uses. During this period large numbers of qualified teachers, researchers and technicians either fled the country or died. When the new Cambodian government came to power in 1979 it had to completely reconstruct the entire education system. Pre-school, primary and secondary schools were first to reappear, followed by non-formal education for adults and a network of colleges and universities.

Education is perhaps the best long-term solution to poverty in the developing world. Time and time again, experts say that educating children, especially girls, is the key to ending the global ‘cycle of poverty.’ Kathleen McHugh, of the non-governmental organization Save the Children says that “focusing on education is going to have ripple effects… will probably mitigate cases of HIV/AIDS… it is going to open up a lot of economic opportunities as well. I think that education is definitely a key area to focus on.”

Care2's friends at the ONE Campaign have been working on a unique way to bring their message that education is the pathway out of global poverty to President Obama. In partnership with the Global Campaign for Education, ONE asked their members around the world to submit stories supporting education, one of which would appear in a book they're delivering to President Obama. This book, titled The Big Read, is a volume of stories intended to foster literacy and inspire action on behalf of the 75 million children who are currently not in school.

As a result of the Soviet war, and the civil war which occurred shortly afterwards, many schools were destroyed and the education process as a whole in Afghanistan was negatively affected.  The destruction of the education infrastructure went to an extreme level when the Taliban conquered and ruled most of Afghanistan. 

There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.

Two M.I.T. economists, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, found that the world’s poor typically spend about 2 percent of their income educating their children, and often larger percentages on alcohol and tobacco: 4 percent in rural Papua New Guinea, 6 percent in Indonesia, 8 percent in Mexico. The indigent also spend significant sums on soft drinks, prostitution and extravagant festivals.

More than 100 countries will be taking part in this year's Global Action Week from 19-15 April 2010. The theme is Financing Quality Public Education: A Right for All, and the activities have already begun.

Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has told a UNICEF conference that gender inequity is the central moral challenge of the 21st century. VIDEO: Watch now Mr. Kristof, who together with his wife Sheryl Wudunn wrote the book ‘Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,’ said equal rights for women and girls are as big an issue today as slavery was in the 18th and 19th centuries.

OPTIONS scholarships enable girls at risk of dropping out to remain in primary and lower secondary school. In poor provinces like Prey Veng, where many families are forced to migrate to escape the impact of persistent floods and drought, the scholarships also help protect girls from being trafficked or sexually exploited.