Someone will badmouth anything (education edition)

Spoon - My Mathematical Mind

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, someone in the Women's Studies program there had a pretty drastic prescription: Stop educating girls in developing countries. Her argument was basically that girls and women would be happier if they didn't know any better.

(This is the exact opposite of what I believe. It is entirely possible, IMO, that educating woman and providing contraception may well be the best thing we can do.)

I remembered this (from back in the 1980s - I'm old) when I heard that California (through overly-educated and well-off Stanford professors) is basically proposing to stop teaching math in an attempt to achieve "equity" - "If no one learns math, we'll all* be equally ignorant. Problem solved." 

Oy.

* Except, of course, well-off kids sent to private school. (Duh.)

Luckily, the world is going in the opposite direction, if imperfectly. From the latest issue of Asterisk:

The last half-century has been pretty good for children. A child born today is likely to live a longer, healthier life than her forebears, and unlike them, she will probably go to school — and not just for a year or two before returning to a life of manual labor. In 1960 an average adult in a developing country had just 1.6 years of education, but by 2000 it was 5.4 years. A child born today, even in one of the poorest countries in the world, can expect to attend nearly nine years of school.

Where her grandparents were often illiterate, she will learn to read and write. Where accessing information was once impossible in poor and remote regions, she will be able to use the internet and better integrate into a global economy. Where a generation before struggled to access the labor market beyond their hometown, many of today’s youth will seek greater opportunities in the world beyond.

This is an accomplishment for which the world can be justly proud. There are still failings — 60 million students who should be in primary school are not — but by and large the fight for universal education has been won. A world in which only a privileged few received an education has become, in half a century, a world in which almost everyone does.