Educate The World

All around the world the education system is letting kids down. It is no secret that many developing countries are far behind when it comes to educating their youth. Though not many people realize that the United States, supposedly one of the greatest countries, where education is considered a human right, is severely lacking when it comes to educating our children. This is a huge problem.

Some time in the 1800s, a French writer by the name of Victor Hugo said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” This statement still rings true today. Maybe even more so now. So many children and young adults are falling through the cracks of the education system. They are being treated like second class citizens, due mainly to their caregiver’s economical standing.

Children born into poverty are at increased risk of not getting a decent education. In turn, these same children grow up with other disadvantages and a great percentage of these, now adults, end up incarcerated. The United States holds less than five percent of the world’s total population. However, we hold almost a quarter of the world’s prison population.

Many of the young adults who end up leaving school do so to help support their struggling family. But, having dropped out of school, they struggle to find decent, or legal, work. It’s a vicious cycle that is seemingly never ending.

Other factors that prevent children from getting a proper education are learning disabilities, ethnicity, and even gender. All around the world people are looked down upon for their genitalia, skin color, or for having a handicap. It has been proven that educating women leads to economic growth. It can also reduce the instances of teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality.

Another truth to the correlation between education and incarceration is that over half of all inmates who left school had learning or speech disabilities. Educating everyone can even lead to a decrease in cases of disease such as HIV and AIDS. Believe it or not, these two things still run rampant in poorer communities and countries.

Giving kids a good education has the power to promote peace and equality. It can teach children how to better connect with their peers and adults and show them how to control their emotions. This can make life as a whole easier for them. It can even reduce cases of child marriage.

It is odd to me that two hundred years ago some people knew the importance of education, and still today, we give it a backseat to other things. How people can be ignorant to the fact that giving all children a good, and equal, education benefits everyone is seriously alarming. I hope that some time in the near future things change all over the world, and that the people in charge start putting our children and their education, their future, first.

No child should ever be denied access to education. Not because of their skin color, gender, handicap, or because the people in charge of their well-being do not make a lot of money. The first step to creating a better world and future for our children is education reform.

I, personally, would not care about paying higher taxes if that means that every child would have access to the best education. I’m sure there are many people out there who feel just as strongly about this as I do. We have to be the big voice for all of the small voices who can’t be heard. It is up to us, the adults, to change things, for the better, for these kids.

We owe it to every child to give them the best start in life. It is every adult’s duty, parent or not, to make sure all children thrive. The best way to do that is through a proper education. They are the future and the future is now.