Quantitative Problem of Education:
This is the problem mainly because of poor, unintelligent economic and political policies. Due to unequal distribution of wealth and resources across the world, children of poor population cannot afford education. Millions of children grow up sacrificing their childhood to livelihood because of such unfair economic struggle. Thankfully, a lot of work is being done on this part by many responsible governments, non-profit organizations and motivated individuals.
No Child Left Behind, Compulsory Education, Universal Education, Education for all, Right to Education, United Nations' MDGs and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (India) are some examples of various efforts to solve the “quantitative problems” of education.
However, given the sheer population (almost 80% of world is poor) of disadvantaged children – these initiatives hardly meet the purpose and much more work needs to be done.
[caption id="attachment_69" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Education faces two key problems, both needs to be addressed ASAP"]
[/caption]Qualitative Problem of Education :
If we really keep working towards solving the first problem of education with initiatives like Millennium Development Goals, we are quite hopeful to solve the problem largely in a decade or two. However, looking at what the educated lot is doing with the world and how are they living, it seems the overall problem will just get bigger.
This is why, the second – quite often neglected problem of education is “Qualitative problem of Education.” The figure summarizes the concept of two types of problem in education.
Qualitative problem deals with improving quality of education by first carefully defining “quality” itself. A wrong definition of “quality” would just make things worse. For e.g. if we mean “marks or grades” by quality, we might just do no good but more harm.
Qualitative problems in education should follow rational, scientific and unbiased newer approaches. The first step would be to identify and acknowledge the problem of quality in education and then finding innovative solutions.
Why are the so called educated lot so greedy, so unhappy and addicted to sensations ? Why are they creating products and services that harm our environment ? Why are the so called leaders creating more and more imbalance in our economy and society ? Why are we so violent, so sexual and so frustrated race of human being ? Given the current situation, can we be sure that this generation was rightly educated ?
Qualitative solutions should deal with all these questions.
World needs solution to both Qualitative and Quantitative problems of education, if we wish to create a better future.
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