UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) regarded education as the “catalyst to human development.” It is said to be the solution to poverty and to all other socioeconomic shortcomings that every nation of the world deems to have been suffering to – in which UNESCO stresses the importance of education in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). The MDG’s, are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. Supposedly, according to the MDG’s, the United Nations, should have achieved these goals by 2015 – in which the UN was seen to have fell short. This catalyst to human development needs to have been reinvigorated.
According to UNESCO’s official website (http://www.unesco.org/) the reasons why education is important in reaching the MDG’s are: more people would grow and develop, more people would learn and know, more people would be equal and just, more children would survive and live, more mothers would be healthier, more people would be able to combat illness, more people would think of the future, and more people would work together. The world average literacy rate for ages 15 – 24, as of 2010 is 90.618 %. However, the spread is not even, in which majority of the brackets 90% above are found in high and upper middle income status, thus, leaving the lower rates for the impoverished, such as in Africa and in Central and South America. The effect of a lower literacy rate is highly traceable, for these regions have been experiencing political and economic shortcomings, and therefore classified as low and lower middle income status, based on their Gross Domestic Product or GDP.
The UN is likely to have been missing the point and the emphasis to those countries that needs even more attention when it comes to advancement in education, which leads to the MDG’s not being fully achieved by 2015, which is already two years ago. There is progress, but a faster pace is required. The UN should boost and increase its funding from donors, in order to finance more for educational advancement. In that way, the literacy rates, particularly of the youth in the aforementioned areas, would increase – to prepare the youth for their role as the future contributors in their country’s economy, contributors of a forward-moving economy. Then, everything will surely follow, all of the specified goals mentioned in the MDG’s will be fulfilled and surpassed.
Education is indeed the catalyst to human development. It is not just a way to gain technical expertise that will get the economy running. It is also a way to raise awareness of the vast grasp of socioeconomic issues that every nation faces, therefore, education must be advanced. This awareness is the path towards the action of supplementing solution to the deficiencies, not just mere deliverance from life of surviving, but also a path to a life of thriving. Education is not just a catalyst to human development, but also a catalyst to human accomplishment.
By: Joyner KerseyS. Bagtas
