A most important topic!
One of the most important ways of getting people and countries out of poverty is through education, be that basic education academic education or learning a crafts - that should go without saying.
Yet, even in highly developed countries we often see that education is often one of the areas where cuts, often very deep cuts, take place or it is in other ways eroded. Usually because tax cuts sell better or because parading cannons around is so much more spectacular than parading teachers.
For those who are into conspiracy theories, there is the corporate slave theory: You educate people just enough to enable them to perform their function: be that at a factory or office. And little else. Then work them hard so they won't have time or energy to think about their situation in life.
In my not at all unbiased political opinion, that theory doesn't seem as far out today as it used to be.
Anyway, that was just to illustrate why education everywhere is so important. So back to the poor countries.
The first to suffer from poor education are of course the poor - it's their own fault, you know. All they need to do is to earn some money and they wouldn't be poor - (Yes, that was sarcasm.) Which means they remain poor.
The next to suffer, and that pretty much overlap with the poor, are girls and women. Oppression through ignorance.
There is a YouTube channel I sometimes watch about villagers from a remote part of the world being presented with various information, very interesting actually. And sometimes they include a couple of housewives and it is obvious that they genuinely have next to no clue about what goes on outside their village. Very little schooling if any, they believe what they are told, can hardly go anywhere without being escorted by a male relative and they are kept busy from dawn to dusk looking after the home, children and husband, so very little time for thinking.
So they are ignorant, not because they are stupid, in fact a couple of the women are very sharp and inquisitive!
- It is sometimes so frustrating to watch!
Imagine the resources that are wasted because these people, be they men or women, only got a very basic education.
It is depressing to think about how many worldwide who are right now herding goats or slaving away in a kitchen, where E=MC2 would be elementary.
So when I hear people belittle education, and that happens way too often IMO, I want to hit them on the head with a shovel!
So I can only applaud what Mary is doing here.
Mary was fifteen minutes early. - Guess the traffic was light and instead of circling around the area as I understand is normal procedure, she just arrived and took her time posing for the photographers.
