Making basic education work for the poor: experiences from the south

摘要

We live in a world of unprecedented opulence, of a kind that would have been hard even to imagine a century or two ago. And yet we also live in a world with remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression. There are many new problems as well as old ones, including persistence of poverty and unfulfilled elementary needs. Overcoming these problems is a central part of the exercise of development (Sen 1999). That children bear the major burden of poverty affecting every aspect of their physical, cognitive, social and emotional development does not need special evidence. Discourses on poverty articulated in the last ten years of the twentieth century have significantly changed the understanding of relationship between education and development. Further, interpretation of poverty in terms of capability deprivation has brought the role of education into sharper focus, not just in its instrumental role in alleviating poverty, but also as a core constituent of development and human well-being.