Read the quotes concerning education and choose one that you find interesting. Discuss your views with a partner and then discuss with the rest of the class.

1 If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
– Chinese proverb

2 I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
– Alexander of Macedon, Great king living from 356 – 323 B.C.

3 An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know; it's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
– Anatole France, French 19th and 20th century writer

4 I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
– Wilson Mizner, American dramatist, 1876 -1933

5 Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, and teach them to think straight.
– Robert M. Hutchins, 20th century American educator

1. the terms are self-evidently useful and neutral; they do not offend the self-esteem of the people discussed or the reputation of those who use them. ??? a b c

2. the terms can be helpful but should be used with care, because they are social and scientific judgements. ??? a b c

3. the terms are best avoided, because they risk oversimplifying or distorting8 complex issues and relationships; they may in effect be euphemisms for distinction of social class, appearing in some contexts to be stereotypical and patronizing.  ??? a b c

A “You uneducated people! You have allowed patriotism to be defined as waving a flag! … You apparently don’t know much about democracy! Your fake American patriotism has turned America into a dictatorship! What a surprise! It’s not like this hasn’t happened in history before, where a corrupt government exploits the public’s ignorance and turns a relative democracy into an autocracy.”
American citizen reacting to the U.S. plans to invade Iraq, February 2003. Http://www.sootch.com

B The quality of raising children in Brazil has a lot to do with their family life. Children that are raised in a family with uneducated parents tend to have a problematic childhood. A child's survival is closely associated with the mother's education (Lam and Daryea, 1999). Not only do uneducated parents affect their children, but they also affect Brazil's fertility (Lam and Daryea, 1999). Uneducated families form the majority of those in poverty in Brazil.
Adapted from Http://www.tulane.edu

C “Uneducated Workforce Threatens Growth”
Ireland’s future economic growth is threatened by inflexible and inadequate educational opportunities for adults, a new report warns. Actions for a Learning Society states that education levels among our workforce are inadequate for future economic growth. Adult literacy is the biggest challenge to be overcome and is a barrier to industrial development in this country. The latest figures show that over half of the workers in this country are functionally illiterate – meaning they cannot even follow the instructions on an aspirin box.

Adapted from The Irish Examiner, May, 31, 2001

Due to the large number of impoverished children on the streets, Brazilian children have very little contact if any with school and education (Dimenstein, 1991). Illiteracy is a growing problem amongst Brazilian children (Jubilee, 1998). Statistics show that 76% of the children do not attend school, which leads to the cause of one million illiterate children between the ages of fifteen to nineteen in Brazil. Children who can read and write have a better chance of succeeding and getting off the streets.
The first solution to end child labor and to get Brazilian children off the streets is education (Diderich, 1999; Jubilee, 1998). The International Labor Office says that 16.1% of children ten to fourteen years old are working (Jubilee, 1998). This percentage represents the fact that 3.5 million children are working when they should be in school. However, children are on the streets because they are forced to work and help provide for their families.
Illiteracy is not only a problem for children in Brazil but for many adults as well. This makes it difficult to teach children to read without the help of the government (Lam & Daryea, 1999). To combat this problem, President Cordoso began a program to get children back in school. For each child a parent sends back to school, the government will give the family twenty-five reals ($22.30 US) a month. This will hopefully eliminate the large number of children working on the streets. It will also give children the opportunity for a better future.

1 Before starting their morning lessons, children in public schools across the U.S. recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The familiar words echo in perfectly clean suburban buildings with bright classrooms and labs where children study art and languages, learn on the latest computers, and play sports in well-equipped gyms. They also ring out in overcrowded inner-city schools where sewage backs up in the washroom and where students share used textbooks and practice typing on handmade, fake keyboards. Whatever the setting, the pledge ends the same: “…with liberty and justice for all.”
2 The notion of equal opportunity is central to the American ideal. To have any meaning, it must be rooted in an educational system that gives every child a chance to succeed. But for decades, the gap has been widening between the quality of public schooling for children of privilege and that for those born into poverty. By relying on local property taxes as a crucial source of funds, the U.S. has created a caste system of public education that is increasingly separate and unequal.
3 However, since the 1970s, 10 states have decided – or have been forced by courts – to overhaul their methods of funding some of their school districts. “It is a conflict between equity and excellence,” says Tony Rollins, director of a teachers union active in the funding wars. These forces have now been joined by a powerful voice: education critic Jonathan Kozol, who has written Savage Inequalities, a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system.
4 Kozol observes that inner city schools are depressing places with rotting classrooms and few amenities to inspire or motivate the young. One history teacher notes that he has 110 students in four classes, and only 26 books. “Every year,” says another, “there’s one more toilet that doesn’t flush, one more drinking fountain that doesn’t work, one more classroom without texts.” Kozol compares these images with descriptions of luxurious facilities in nearby wealthy suburbs where one school has seven gyms, rooms for fencing, wrestling and dance, and an Olympic-size pool.
5 For Kozol and many activists, the main problem of the education tragedy is “local control,” America’s decentralized system of school administration and its heavy reliance on property taxation. In most cases, about 6% of the money in any district comes from Washington, 47% from the state government, and 47% from locally generated property taxes. Kozol believes that the best way to improve schools – all schools – would be to do away with property tax as a source of revenue. In its place he suggests a progressive income tax to raise money that would then be distributed fairly among districts. For reformers, the chief ally has been state courts, which have ruled in many cases that the inequalities are unconstitutional.
6 The reform movement is already producing some results. Under a plan in Kentucky, almost every school district now has at least $3,200 (up from $1700) to spend per student; decreasing the gap between rich and poor districts. Children from low-income families now have new preschool programs, and there is a wide range of Saturday and after-school projects for students with special needs.
7 It is easy to condemn the self-protective actions as selfishness, but as Kozol points out, in most cases, better-off Americans simply have a narrower view of what they are doing. “They do not want poor children to be harmed; they simply want the best for their own children.” Those thoughts are echoed by superintendent Timothy Brennan, whose district spends $7,450 per pupil, vs. $3,068 in the state’s poorest area: “The point of reform was to make all schools quality schools, but I fear that everything will settle into “mediocrity”.
8 Yet anyone who has seen the shameful disparities between public schools in rich and poor areas, or who has read Kozol’s book, will find it difficult to deny that the differences in funding make a mockery of the nation’s ideal. – by Emily Mitchell

I: Dennis, let me ask you a different question and that is, do you think that a child’s economic and maybe social background makes a difference in school performance?
D: Yeah, you know, there is a pattern. The (1)__________ school where I had most of my teaching experience and where I eventually became (2)__________, was an interesting one, because it sat between two very different parts of this community. One part is a very (3)__________ neighborhood built around a world-class golf course and then the other part of the community is (4)__________ housing, including a complex where families where the mother has just been released from the local women’s prison, so, you know, I really saw a wide economic and social (5)__________ and I have seen low-income families that just do a great job of getting their kids to school and supporting them in their education. But, you know, I think the (6)__________ cliché there is true. That those kids who are supported do better, kids whose parents (7)__________ education do better.
And you know, another big economic issue is technology. (8)__________ to computers. The kids who have multimedia computers at home, in their bedrooms, they just do better. With computers, there is a (9)__________ starting to develop, that it’s not just technological skills, but there are also some thinking skills that improve with being able to organize your information that way, you know.

D: Some of these kids can really turn out some (10)__________ work and the content has improved, too. Not just the presentation. So I think there are some real differences based on economic (11)__________ and they just compound with each generation. That’s been my experience.

D: But you know, there is no (12)__________ because you have all this support at home that you’re gonna do well, too. I mean I’ve seen some kids, pretty wealthy kids, just totally blow it and not be productive and not even (13)__________ in school. Or there are the cases where you’ve got, you know, one kid who does great and then the other (14)__________ in the same environment is just totally, totally out of control.

I: Does that happen?
D: Well, it’s kind of like a movie (15)__________ again. But, yeah, it does sometime happen.

I: Speaking of families, do siblings usually (16)__________ at about the same level in school?
D: Yeah, in families usually there (17)__________ to be a pattern, I think.