new internationalist
issue 180 - February 1988
The
Great Brain Robbery
In
the Third World it is poverty that prevents people from developing their intelligence
and imagination. Even the education that is available is distributed unequally,
favouring young urban males. In rich countries imagination and intelligence
are also threatened by mass entertainment which encourages people to spend their
time passively watching television. And it is the poor who are most vulnerable
to its effects. Worse still, the mass entertainment of the rich countries is
now being exported to the Third World where many children can expect no more
than a couple of hours of primary school a day. Many children watch TV while
parents work.
Between 1965 and 1978 spending on education rose fivefold in the industrialized countries and sevenfold in the developing world. Since then, however, despite large increases in the population of children, there has been a slowdown. Expenditure on education per head has declined in one third of African countries and in nearly two thirds of Latin American countries.1
Of the 1,500 million children in the developing world, 715 million are without places in school. If they all held hands they could encirlce the earth four times. |
Children drop out of school for many reasons, including:
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In
poor countries children may enrol in primary school but they often don't
complete their courses.
Both rich and poor countries spend more on arms than on education.
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In poor countries fewer girls than boys enrol in primary school. In some African and Arab countries eight out of ten women are illiterate.7 Yet it has been shown that the maternal education is related to lower infant morality. This may be because literacy enhances a woman's status and employment prospects, or that it gives her greater access to information which will help her protect her health and that of her children. |
Of the world's 3,223 million adults, 893 million cannot read or write.3 Some of these people have never had any opportunity to learn to read and write. The elderly women are most often left out of education. Others may have been part of a mass literacy campaign which was imported without regard to the language, needs or interests of the people. The impact of such campaigns is brief.
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(%)
Despite sophisticated education systems and materials, the majority of people in the rich world fail to develpo their intellectual potential. Failure in school is very common among the under-priviledged, reading outside school hours is a very rare activity and the amount people read declines with age. In many rich countries children spend more time watching TV than they do on any other activity.
There are good libraries in the UK, but they are used less as children grow older, and by boys less than girls. One survey found that reading is seen as girlish.
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The TV habit is spreading rapidly to developing countries too. And the available programmes come mainly from the US, which dominates world trade in TV programme exports.
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In rich and poor countries alike girls are channelled towards school subjects which bar them from the well-paid scientific and technical professions.
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1.
Philip Coombs, The world in crisis in education, 1985.
2. UNICEF, The State of the World's Children, 1987.
3. David Morley and Hermione Lovel, My name is Today, Institute of
Child Health, London, 1986.
4. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1986.
5. W. H. Smith Reading Survey, 1986
6. Book Marketing Council Symposium, 1987.
7. AC Neilson & Co., Survey 1984-5, Ontario, Canada.
8. Marie Wynn, The plug-in drug - Television, children and the family,
1977.
9. World survey on the role of women in development: United Nations'
Conference on the State of the World's Women, Equality, Development and Peace,
Nairobi, Kenya, 1985.
