To Build a Country, Build a Schoolhouse

May 27, 2002
By AMARTYA SEN
CAMBRIDGE, England

Isaiah Berlin has argued: "Men do not live only by fighting
evils. They live by positive goals." The advice was not
aimed at the leaders of the war on terror: Berlin was
speaking more than 40 years ago. But his idea is worth the
attention of current world leaders. And one of the most
important positive goals has already been identified by the
United Nations: universal primary education by 2015.
I am aware that when I argue that basic education for all
can transform the miserable world in which we live, I sound
a little like a Victorian gentlewoman delivering her
favorite recipe for progress. As it happens, however,
extensive empirical studies have demonstrated the critical
role of basic education in economic and social development
in Europe and North America as well as in Asia, Africa and
Latin America.
When Japan set out in the 19th century to catch up with the
Western nations, its Fundamental Code of Education, issued
in 1872, expressed the public commitment to make sure that
there must be "no community with an illiterate family, nor
a family with an illiterate person." Kido Takayoshi, one of
the leaders of Japanese reform, explained the basic idea:
"Our people are no different from the Americans or
Europeans of today; it is all a matter of education or lack
of education." By 1910 Japan was almost fully literate, at
least for the young, and by 1913, though still very much
poorer than Britain or America, Japan was publishing more
books than Britain and more than twice as many as the
United States. The concentration on education was
responsible, to a large extent, for the nature and speed of
Japan's economic and social progress.
Later on, China, Taiwan, South Korea and other economies in
East Asia followed similar routes. Explanations of their
rapid economic progress often cite their willingness to
make good use of the global market economy, and rightly so.
But that process was greatly helped by the emphasis all of
these countries placed on basic education. Widespread
participation in a global economy would have been hard to
accomplish if people could not read or write - or produce
according to specifications or instructions.
The contribution of basic education to development is not,
however, confined to economic progress. Education has
intrinsic importance; the capability to read and write can
deeply influence one's quality of life. Also, an educated
population can make better use of democratic opportunities
than an illiterate one. Further, an ability to read
documents and legal provisions can help subjugated women
and other oppressed groups make use of their rights and
demand more fairness. And female literacy can enhance
women's voices in family affairs and reduce gender
inequality in other fields, a benefit to men as well as
women, since women's empowerment through literacy tends to
reduce child mortality and very significantly decrease
fertility rates.
The lives that are most burdened and impoverished by
over-frequent bearing and rearing of children are those of
young women. A greater voice of young women in family
decisions tends, therefore, to cut down birth rates
sharply. For example, the fertility rates in the different
districts that make up India vary extremely widely, from
almost 5 (roughly, five children per couple) in some
districts to less than 1.7 in some others. Empirical
investigations by Mamta Murthi and Jean Drèze indicate that
only two general variables significantly help to explain
these differences: female literacy and female economic
participation.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 percent of primary-age children
have no opportunity for schooling. Around the world, there
are currently 125 million children who have never, at any
time, seen the inside of a classroom. A well coordinated
global initiative on basic education is crucial. To be
sure, it is also important that the priority of basic
education be fully accepted and pursued by the developing
countries themselves. But a global approach to schooling
can inspire initiatives and bring ongoing efforts together,
as well as help with resources.
The need for a new kind of partnership - a global alliance
- on schooling is hard to exaggerate. The time to live by
positive goals has certainly come - not least for the
leaders of G-8 countries who meet at a summit next month in
Canada.


Amartya Sen, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, is

honorary president of Oxfam. He received the Nobel Prize in
economics in 1998.

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