Contraception

Shahida Rubab

2-28-2013

Discussion Question #3

Education is an extremely crucial element of one’s life. Mahatma Gandhi stated, ““Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Education is not only important for boys it is also very significant for girls. Brigham Young defined the importance of education for women by saying ““You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”  Even though the school enrollment has increased dramatically in the last few decades, but many argue that it does not necessarily contribute to faster economic growth. In Banerjee’s and Duflo’s reading, Poor Economics, as well as William Easterly’s reading Elusive Quest for Growth, the answer to the above argument is given in a very logical detailed way.

According to Benerjee and Duflo, many young children who are enrolled in schools do not want to go to school. In 2009, they conducted a small survey and met Shantarama, a widow and a mother of eight children who lives in India. She explained that two of her children were out of school because they refused to go and had run away from school many times, therefore she has no hope that they can remain in school and learn. In many other areas of their argument they have showed that Demand for education is not very strong. Banerjee and Duflo argue that even though in the third MGD, their goal was to ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, girls and boys, should be able to complete primary school, but nowhere does it say anything about quality of education provided. They discuss a survey that is called “World Absenteeism Survey, which was done in 2002 and 2003 led by the World Bank. The findings of the survey were very unfavorable. The results showed that teachers in many countries, such as Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda miss at least one day of work out of five. They also found that teachers who are in school and are supposed to be taking classes, are...