ISS (Statistical Services) English: Questions 76 - 76 of 260

Describe in Detail

Make a precis of the following passage in about one-third of the original length, using your own words: (30 Mark)

Why is it so important to close the educational gaps, and to remove the‎enormous disparities in educational access, inclusion and achievement? One reason, among others, is the importance of this for making the world more secure as well as more fair. H. G. Wells was not exaggerating when he said, in his Outline of History : “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”. If we continue to leave vast sections of the £ people of the world outside the orbit of education, we make the world not only less just, but also less secure.

The precariousness of the world is now greater than it already was in H. G. Wells’s time in the early twentieth century. Indeed, since the terrible events of September 11,2001— and what followed after that—the world has been very aware of problems of physical insecurity. But human insecurity comes in many different ways—not just through terrorism and violence. Indeed, even on the very day of September 11,2001, more people died from AIDS than from physical violence including the atrocity in New York. Human insecurity can develop in many different ways, and physical violence is only one of them. While it is important to fight terrorism and genocide, we must also recognize the plural nature of human insecurity and its diverse manifestations. ‎As it happens, widening the coverage and effectiveness of basic education can have a powerfully preventive role in reducing human insecurity of nearly every kind. It is useful to consider briefly the different ways in which‎removing discrepancies and neglects in education can contribute to reducing human insecurity across the world.

The most basic issue relates to the elementary fact that illiteracy and innumeracy are forms of insecurity in themselves. Not to be able to read or write or count or communicate is a tremendous deprivation. The extreme case of insecurity is the certainty of deprivation and the absence of any chance of avoiding that fate. The first and the most immediate contribution of successful school education is a direct reduction of this basic deprivation— this extreme insecurity. The difference that basic education can make to human life is easy to see. It is also readily appreciated even by the poorest of families. The parents of even the most depressed families long to give basic education to their children, to make them grow up without the terrible handicaps from which they—the parents—had themselves suffered.

Of course, there are many obstacles in giving shape to the dreams of parents. The economic circumstances of the families often make it very hard for them, particularly when there are fees to be paid. This obstacle of unaffordability must be firmly removed.

There are other obstacles too like schools being thinly staffed and parents often worried about the safety of children, especially girl children. Then there are other barriers as well. Very poor families often rely on labour contributions from everyone, even the children, and this can compete with the demands of schooling. This unfortunate practice, though generated out of hardship, must also be removed, through regulation as well as by making the economic benefits of schooling clearer to all. This brings us to the second issue in understanding the contribution of schooling in removing human insecurity. Basic education can be very important in helping people to get jobs and gainful employment. This economic connection, while always present, is particularly critical in a rapidly globalizing world in which quality control and production according to strict specification can be crucial.

Also, when people are illiterate, their ability to understand and invoke their legal rights can be very limited, and educational neglect can also lead to other kinds of deprivation. Indeed, this tends to be a persistent problem for people at the bottom of the ladder, whose rights are often effectively alienated because of their inability to read and see what they are entitled to demand and how. The educational gap clearly has a class connection. It also has a gender connection since it can be very important for women’s security. Women are often deprived of their due, thanks to illiteracy. There are often legal rights that are not used because the aggrieved cannot read. This distances them from the ways and means of fighting against gender discrimination.

Empirical work in recent years has brought out very clearly how the relative respect and regard for women’s well-being is strongly influenced by women’s literacy and educated participation in decisions within and outside the family. Even the survival disadvantage of women compared with men seems to go down sharply—and may even get eliminated— with progress in women’s empowerment, for which literacy is a basic ingredient. (780 words)