Education for whom?

Says an old knowneconomic strategy that if a country wants to bet on growth must educate its population. It means start increasing coverage. The problem is that in developing countries such as Mozambique, public policy should be consistent with the social, cultural and even physical conditions.

Why am I saying this? Well, because the number of teachers is insufficient for the demand. To give an example, in primary education there are on average 58.49 students per teacher  by 2010 and 34.95 in secondary education according to UNESCO data. These same teachers had a poor primary and secondary education and the tertiary education in pedagogy is limited to less than 3 years in institutions that do not always get to be classified as colleges.

So they do not have sufficient technical training or pedagogical methods known to optimize the learning of children who in most cases simply repeat the lessons and copy what's on the board without learning. While most children with great effort, got notebooks and pencils to study only a minority has books, which in some cases are in disrepair. I really admire these teachers who teach with limited resources to children that are not well fed.

 

I am currently working with several groups of orphaned children with severe learning difficulties, for example there are 14-year olds in sixth grade who can not complete a dictation, the situation is worse in younger children who can not even read or write and therefore do not reach the minimum standards for their age.

Perhaps one explanation for this situation is that they are taught in the official language (Portuguese) that is different from their mother tongue. If so, the educational policy should value and include the cultural tradition of the nation.

Another aspect to consider is to ensure the necessary infrastructure to get over this challenge, in some of the most remote communities I visited, I saw that teachers hanging the board on the trees to give their classes, classrooms made of caniço or cane, classrooms made of wooden sticks and tiling without chairs for children, sometimes even for the teacher.


So if you ask me a strategy to achieve economic development I would say that the first step is to ensure not only education but also coverage in the minimum conditions including physical, human resources and material so that people learn effectively, bring new ideas and work in the development process.