Mr Brown thinks it is awful that many people in Africa have a limited amount of education. Without entering the truth or otherwise of that, his assumption that he should therefore subsidise state-provided education is wholly wrong. State education in Africa, as elsewhere around the world, is inferior to private and charitable education.
On a personal note, I know a young Zimbabwean woman who does what we in Britain would consider low-paid work. I asked her whether her young child in Zimbabwe would be going to a private or a state school.
She said the child would be going to a private school. She had no doubt that the state schools were to be avoided if at all possible. This is like the experience I had in Miami, visiting a religious school where the children wanted to be there because of the guns, knives and drugs at their previous government-run school. And here in Britain, it is like the religious school where I interviewed two boys who said that if their mothers had not moved them from their comprehensive school in Westminster, they would have become criminals.
For Mr Brown to promote state schooling in Africa is to visit on that Continent the same mistake that has been perpetrated in Britain.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education • Politics
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So, given the choice between the present situation, with many African children having no school to go to, and one where they have a state-run, aid-funded one to go to, you would prefer the first?
Posted by: Jim at June 6, 2005 01:58 PM
Jim,
With respect you have drawn the wrong conclusion from correct evidence. I agree with you that African children need mroe schooling. But the answer is not to impose a system on them, especially one that is clearly failing. We would not tolerate it if another country told us how to organise our schooling. What they need is help with enabling parents to set up their own schools that give them what they need, but in the way they want to do it. Gordon Brown is using our money in a way that many of us disagree with (reference the UGOV poll a few days ago). It makes him look benevolent and caring, but it is demeaning and condescending to Africans, who really just want the same things as us - to be in control of their own lives, and to build a system that works for them.
Posted by: Ricky at June 6, 2005 08:00 PM
Ricky, I don't agree that we're imposing anything on Africa - we're just giving them money. It looks like the best way of getting as many African children as possible into education is for the state to provide it free using the money from aid, and I'm quite certain that the kids who are getting to go to school for the first time (and their parents) as a result don't feel demeaned as a result.
Parents in Africa are probably just as involved in their children's schools as parents anywhere (if they have time, and if the kids aren't AIDS orphans for that matter), but the main problem there is a simple lack of funding for things we take for granted like school buildings and basic materials. I'm very pleased that we in the UK are providing some of that funding, and I think James's opposition is the product more of ideological antipathy to anything that smakes of 'welfarism' rather than genuine concern for education in Africa. Which is rather sad.
Posted by: Jim at June 7, 2005 12:55 PM
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And Shirley Williams still sleeps soundly at night, having, with that other imbecile, Roy Jenkins, destroyed what was, a reasonable, although somewhat shoddy, education system. They can both roundly be blamed for the cult of thuggery in todays teenagers, by effectively removing any worthwhile semblance of education from State schools.
Posted by: ernest young at June 4, 2005 10:54 PM