Horrible Schools for the Whole World

Public education has been a slowly degenerating disaster throughout the West, and now it seems we're exporting it to the rest.

October 12 • Mike Reid

At a United Nations meeting in the year 2000, the world's governments agreed on the goal of enrolling every child on the planet in primary schooling by 2015.  Strangely, this lofty plan does not say anything about the quality of schooling; the whole idea is to get children into government-approved classrooms, apparently regardless of what happens there.  The reports of UN agencies like Education for All (EFA) are full of ideas on how to get kids to come to school in third-world countries: making education entirely taxpayer funded (commonly by taxpayers from richer countries), providing free medication or food to students who show up, or even just paying cash to the parents in return for kids' attendance.

But are the pupils who spend more time at these schools actually learning more as a result? MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel reports, "Several programs which have raised participation, from providing worm medicine to free meals, show no evidence that children are learning more as a result." And EFA's Fast Track Initiative admits that… To Read More……..