Education... Make it a Right!

  

Pantoja, Julia."Children attend school near Manaus" 2008

   

 In our class 'SDGs and you' which teaches about various goals set out to help guide humanity to a better future. We have been learning about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This course taught us about a way in which our needs can be organized by how immediately vital they are to a person starting with physiological needs such as food and water and ending with find self-actualization and a sense of realization of your potentials as a person. In addition to this, we learned about the importance of foreign aid which includes what foreign aid is and the different ways its provided such as developmental aid and humanitarian aid which differ by the nature and scale of the issues they tackle. While humanitarian aid helps tackle things like providing education to deprived peoples or helping during emergencies, whereas developmental aid is geared towards building infrastructure. To help us better understand this we did a field experience where we made food for the homeless, we voted on a meal that is extremely low cost and easy to prepare all the while considering people who don't eat meat or who have allergies - veggie burritos. We went to Wholefoods to get ingredients and then we cooked it all up in our kitchen (I made the rice) and the next day we walked all the burritos to the Lincoln Park Community Center. This experience was very eye-opening since we got to see how it's like to live on such a small sum around $2. using our newly procured knowledge on these topics we wrote an essay about SDG's 1(No poverty), 2. (No hunger), and 4(Quality education) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our prompt was to pose an argument on whether we think one of these SDGs should be considered a right. Below is my argument on why Education should undoubtedly become a right.

    The global literacy rate across the world is 86.3%. This seems a good number but when you consider that this means out of the entire population of about 7,830,400,000 then around 1,072,764,800 people are unable to read and write, once it’s put in perspective that number is incredibly significant. Because education is necessary to find work, grow to their full potential, and because it provides a way out of poverty it should be not only a human need but a human right.
    

    If good education for all is not made into a right then those people who are stuck deprived of the need of education will lose many future job opportunities, meaning job security is completely lost and quality of life lessens to an extent. This falls under safety in Maslow’s hierarchy since having job security provides the person a feeling of safety knowing that they and their family with all their resources are safe and are not going to be taken away. According to The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization About 258 million children and youth are out of school currently. This statistic paired with an unemployment rate of 17.71% in Sudan.

    Another reason why education should be a human right is that there are many benefits to making equitable education a right. One example that is commonly observed is that providing education to those on the poverty line provides many people with the opportunity and the ability to rise out of poverty and live decent, prosperous lives. According to Oxfam international what works best is called Poverty-focused development aid. (PFDA) A large part of what makes this form of aid as effective as it is, is providing education. This is shown in Oxfams Foreign Aid 101 guide they say this. “For example, this aid helps increase maize farmers’ yields in Kenya, prevents famine in Ethiopia, and improves girls’ access to primary school in Bangladesh.” In these ways, Oxfam is showing that by offering the proper educational aid many of these impoverished people are provided the necessary tool to make a good life for themselves and their families.

    What could we do to make sure that peole receive the right of education that they deserve? 
The need of education could be tackled in many ways some of which include simply making it a right. This is pointed out in a podcast featuring Chris Jochnick a director at Oxfam international, and Author Raj Patel. In the interview Chis Jocknich says this. “What rights do is they inspire action on the part of civil society. Take the U.S. second ammendment right of guns. It has energized enormous debates.” What this quote shows us is that the act of making a certain human need a human right can spur the people to see these issues more clearly, and could finally get people like you and me to debate and fight over these issues; to quite literally fight for our rights.

    In conclusion education should be a right because it is an essential resource for any person to be able to lead a good life because access to it allows for for decent work and an income to live from meaning they could potentially gain the opportunity to pull themselves form poverty. If its not made into a right then it could mean that many deprived of education lose many future job opportunities.  Together if do make this a right it could mean people are spurred to action and something can finally be done so that people can get the education they deserve.

  I decided to write about SDG 4 (Quality Education) because I firmly believe that all people should have access to decent education since having one is such a simple need but by having it, it opens up so many opportunities for a person that without it, you could be stuck and never move up in life. All together I greatly enjoyed this unit and I had gotten to experience a lot from it. I feel as though I have a whole new understanding of what exactly poverty is and what it means for a lot of people I got a grasp of what the poverty line is like and how difficult a life it is and how fortunate I am. Lastly, I really felt challenged by this becausethere was a lot I hadn't considered until I had seen the real numbers for myself and I fully encourage others to research this for themselves.

Works Cited:

“Out-Of-School Children and Youth”. UNESCO UIS, 16 January 2020. http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/out-school-children-and-youth. accessed 22 September 2021

“Sudan - unemployment rate 1999-2020”. Statista, 20 July 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/727151/unemployment-rate-in-sudan/. accessed 25 September 2021

“Poverty 101”. Oxfam International, 22 march 2021https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/ForeignAid_5thedition_FINAL.pdf?_gl=1*cah6z6*_ga*MTA4Nzk3NzA1NS4xNjMxMTU0NTUy*_ga_R58YETD6XK*MTYzMjYzNDE5NC4zLjEuMTYzMjYzNDIzMy4w. Accessed 25 September 2021

“Education in the Developing World”. The Human Journey, 16 April 2019. https://humanjourney.us/health-and-education-in-the-modern-world/education-in-the-developing-world/. Accessed 26 September 2021,

Effron, Mark. “Is access to food a human right”. The World from PRX, 13 August 2021. https://www.pri.org/stories/2010-08-13/access-food-human-right. Accessed 28 September 2021