Simpler than it seems

Educating every child in this world, providing basic learning to the 67 million estimated by Unesco to be out of school in 2009, sometimes seems to be an impossible task. The numbers are too high, the resources available too limited. For years we have struggled to find answers as world leaders meet and experts gather at symposiums. But could the answer be far simpler than we had thought? Teenage Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, who returned to the city of Oslo for the first time after collecting her award, has suggested this may indeed be the case. Based on calculations made by the Malala Fund, she said at a UN education summit that if all nations cut a mere eight days of defence spending, the amount raised would be $39 billion – enough to educate every child on the globe for 12 years. Malala, not yet 18, will also be discussing funding for education with the president of the World Bank and UN experts.
Of course it would be unwise to think that the formula can be replicated exactly as Malala suggests. The world’s defence machinery will never literally stop its massively lucrative work of producing weapons that kill and maim. But then this was not what Malala intended. The figures she put out are those we hear about too little. Politicians do not speak of them, and very few, if any, of us realise just how little money is involved in putting a child through school. These figures should make us think about our priorities and the kind of world we have created. In many ways almost every country is responsible for playing a part in creating the warped thinking by which we lead our lives. The problem is that we have trapped ourselves into little boxes, and refuse to look outside their narrow confines. The media and other influential sectors have helped create this state of acceptance; a refusal to look at the world differently, and consider not what is there but what could be. It is a matter of redefining priorities and weighing needs. There are many ways to bring change. Let us hope Malala’s words will make us think a little harder about these options.