DUBAI // Bill Clinton has made an impassioned plea for education to be a global concern as vital as health, poverty and climate change.
“There are still 100 million children who never go to school and at least 200 million more who go, but to schools with untrained teachers or inadequate learning materials,” the former US president told an education conference in Dubai.
“Young people with no education are twice as likely to come down with HIV Aids in countries where that’s a problem. Young people who have an education are far more likely to grow up to earn greater income, resist conflict and support democracy.
“One thing I hope will come out of this is that there will be a greater level of cooperation between the education sector, public and private, with businesses and non-governmental organisations.
“There are things that we can all do to make a real difference here. So much needs to be done, no one and no single government can do it all, given the financial constraints on donors everywhere,” Mr Clinton told an audience that included Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai.
Mr Clinton recounted examples in Haiti and Uganda in which cooperation between non-governmental organisations and government had increased enrolment and created new schools.
“Among the things I think we need to pay special attention to is equal educational opportunities for girls,” he said. “It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to spur development.”
He pointed out that women who were educated married later in life and had fewer children, who were themselves more likely to go to school. He also called for equal education opportunities for the disabled, immigrants and refugees.
“Every effort being made to equalise education opportunities is worthy of our support,” he said.
He spoke of “exciting” education initiatives in rising economies, such as Brazil and Mexico, that promoted inclusive education.
In Brazil, mothers of the poorest children are paid by the government to enrol their children in schools and have them examined every year by a doctor.
In Mexico, the government established 140 free universities from which 113,000 engineers graduated last year. In the United States, with double the population, only 120,000 engineers graduated, said Mr Clinton.
“It is not surprising that after years of Latin America being the place with the most unequal distribution of income on earth, in the last decade, while America has grown more unequal, inequality has actually declined in Brazil and Mexico in no small measure because of a commitment to education.”
Mr Clinton acknowledged that technology played a role in “universalising quality education,” but that “we haven’t worked out exactly how to do it yet.
“The one-laptop-per-child initiative is exciting but there are too many children who don’t have a laptop and won’t have one soon, or they don’t have a real connection to the internet that will give them access to all the knowledge you find there,” he said.
“On the other hand, I think it’s worth continuing to develop that.”
Mr Clinton was addressing 1,000 international delegates at the second annual Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai. He is honorary chair of the Varkey Gems Foundation, one of the sponsors of the event.
rpennington@thenational.ae
