Global Education

The other day I was babysitting for these two girls while their mother was off at a kindergarten tour for her five-year-old. When she came back, we talked for a little bit about the experience for her. She was pretty frustrated over the concerns and comments the other parents had made: they wanted to make sure their children would get a good snack or a nap-time. Instead, she went on the tour to see if this kindergarten would instill in her children the love for education that she had experienced as a child. How lucky are we that we get to CHOOSE which school our children can go to, basing our decision on such trivial things as afternoon snack options and the comfortableness of the nap-time set-up. How ridiculous must we sound to so many others around the world.

This really got me thinking about my own love affair with education. For me, like so many of my friends, this love affair started when I was very young. Instead of watching television, my parents read to me every night. Besides playing in the woods, books were my form of entertainment and I had bookshelves lining all the walls of my bedroom filled with the most beautiful, new, expensive children's books. Then, when I was old enough, I finally began reading on my own and my entire family celebrated this achievement. After this, I formally started school, which for me was a dream. I remember wishing for summer to end so I could go school supplies shopping and see all of my friends again. My family still reminds me about how two weeks before I started fifth grade, I had laid out my outfit for the first day of school-right down to the underwear, socks, necklace and barrette! I loved school-I loved learning, I loved my teachers, I love my classroom, I loved seeing my friends everyday, I loved doing my homework, everything.

Since this time, though, I have had the privilege of going to many countries around the globe and realize that my love affair with education is definitely shared around the world. But these children have never been given the chance to experience it the way I have. They never have had the thrill of running up to the front doors of school the first day the class list is posted to see which friends will be their classmates for the year. They never have had the excitement of picking out new Elmer's glue, Crayola crayons, spiral notebooks and scissors on a hot August day in Target. They never have had the opportunity to choose between home ec, shop, band or choir. For them, education is something they have to fight for every day.

These children will never experience these joys although, according to UNICEF, education is a basic human right. Like all the rest, it is universal and everyone is entitled to it regardless of gender, race, religion, ethnicity or economic status.

In the different countries that I have been to, I have had the opportunity to experience hands-on just how difficult the right to education is abroad and the extremes children go to just to receive a basic education. While I was in Ecuador, I interned at the Center for the Working Boy. This organization provided schooling for Ecuadorian boys that were forced to work during the day by their family and their impossibly difficult living situations. I found that if these boys did not work, poverty in Latin America would increase by 20%. Their families' survival depended on them. These 6, 7, 8 year old boys that I met at the Center for the Working Boy worked for six hours in the morning and then went to school for another six hours, commuting 2 hours each way from the slums they lived in on the far outskirts of Quito. I couldn't believe the extent they went to just to be able to learn.

Last night I finished a heartbreaking book about more boys that were willing to do whatever it took to receive an education; the Lost Boys of Sudan. One passage really hit home for me. This was written by Benjamin who was about 12 and in a refugee camp in Kenya at the time:

"Things got worse when the UN cut back the rations and I soon learned how it goes in a refugee camp. There is food and there is education. The education is fine, but the food is not enough. You have to choose between education and food. If you don't want an education you can make a business for your survival. If you want education you have to take the little bit of food that is given by UNHCR and eat only once a day. It is your choice whether you eat in the morning and sleep in the afternoon or just stay hungry for the whole day and eat later. My cousins and I managed this. We went to school and ate once a day in the evening. But reading was really difficult because when you read there was a certain cloud because of hunger. It's black when you look at the words in the book. The black covers the words and you can't see because of that color in your eyes from the hunger" (They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, page 276).

I was astonished that these children choose education over food, but similar sacrifices are made my children every day. To them, education is something precious and the more I experience around the world and read here at home, the more I am motivated to bring more education to children around the world in my lifetime.

(This picture is of a school for the Lost Boys of Sudan in a refugee camp)