Top of the Class

In chapter 4 of poor economics, the authors discuss the educational systems in the developing countries that they are studying.  There are two theories about the poor quality of the education in these places. One is a supply-side theory of tackling the problem with the education system and the other is demand-side oriented.  The supply-siders say that government needs to regulate and make sure that there are good teachers in the classroom actually teaching the students.  One of the big problems they find is that the teachers are often absent or when they are there they aren't teaching the students. The demand-siders say that since there is a high rate of absenteeism and many parents don't send their children to school, why bother trying to intervene and regulate.  If people want education then a good system will come about through a strong demand.  If the public schooling isn't good enough for the parents then a demand for private schooling will emerge and the system will essentially remedy itself. 

The article that I found was about schooling in Africa in the after math of a long civil war.  The authors state that both attendance among students and the quality of the education provided have fallen drastically since the war ended.  Though the reasons for the low quality of education that the book talks about are different than that of the article, they each raise some interesting concepts.  For example, the book talks about how in the United States education is something that is highly valued and the government forces parents to send their children to school.  In the book the authors state that in some places parents keep their children home to help them work around the house or in their shops.  In the article it says that only 10% of students were in attendance during the first week of school.  Although the reasons for low attendance is different (one cause by a war and the other by a need for additional help at home), it makes you think about how people in different parts of the world value education and how it is regarded in society.  It is hard to imagine in America a child just not attending schooling because their parents need them to go to work on their farm or in their business. However, this is what happens in many parts of the world.  And, although we haven't experienced a war in our own country in a long time, even after something as tragic as 9/11 did not really cause us to miss much school.  These examples may not be comparable but I did find it interesting to read and think about how people view education and how important attendance in school is in different parts of the world.

Another thing that both the book and the article bring up is low quality of education.  The article states that pass rates dropped as much as 13% following the end of the civil war.  In the book the authors state that the teachers in school are not performing as well as they should be and as a result students do not know how to do simple mathematics or read simple paragraphs.  The reading levels of the students in the countries the authors studied was very low.  Though the article and the book provide the same issues but in very different contexts, they raise the same fundamental issues of education quality and attendance which I found interesting to think about especially in relation to our own educational system. 

Here is the article that I read:  http://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2011/11/03/low-school-attendance-marks-slow-recovery-for-ivory-coast/