Providing Minimal Levels of Education, Especially for Women
Discussion
There is fairly convincing evidence that female education
especially of 4th grade and above correlates strongly with
reduced desired family size, although it is unclear the extent to
which the female education causes reductions in desired family
size or whether it is a faster pace of development which leads
both to increased demand for female education and to reduction in
desired family size. There is also a relatively widely held
theory -- though not statistically validated -- that improved
levels of literacy contribute to reduction in desired family size
both through greater knowledge of family planning information and
increasing motivational factors related to reductions in family
size. Unfortunately, AID's experience with mass literacy
programs over the past 15 years has yielded the sobering
conclusion that such programs generally failed (i.e. were not
cost-effective) unless the population sees practical benefits to
themselves from learning how to read -- e.g., a requirement for
literacy to acquire easier access to information about new
agricultural technologies or to jobs that require literacy.
Now, however, AID has recently revised its education strategy, in
line with the mandate of its legislation, to place emphasis on
the spread of education to poor people, particularly in rural
areas, and relatively less on higher levels of education. This
approach is focused on use of formal and "non-formal" education
(i.e., organized education outside the schoolroom setting) to
assist in meeting the human resource requirements of the
development process, including such things as rural literacy
programs aimed at agriculture, family planning, or other
development goals.
Recommendations
1. Integrated basic education (including applied literacy) and
family planning programs should be developed whenever they appear
to be effective, of high priority, and acceptable to the
individual country. AID should continue its emphasis on basic
education, for women as well as men.
2. A major effort should be made in LDCs seeking to reduce birth
rates to assure at least an elementary school education for
virtually all children, girls as well as boys, as soon as the
country can afford it (which would be quite soon for all but the
poorest countries). Simplified, practical education programs
should be developed. These programs should, where feasible,
include specific curricula to motivate the next generation toward
a two-child family average to assure that level of fertility in
two or three decades. AID should encourage and respond to
requests for assistance in extending basic education and in
introducing family planning into curricula. Expenditures for
such emphasis on increased practical education should come from
general AID funds, not population funds.
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