*** This is the second fortnightly digest of the e-group discussion taking
place on the Learningchannel.org website in partnership with OneWorld South
Asia and Mandate the Future.***
Education for Youth and Employment | Current Topic: Employment-Oriented
Education
Moderator - Rudy Edirisinghe <rudes@mandatethefuture.org>, Mandate the
Future
I produce below a brief summary of the main points of our discussion over
the last few days.
Olumola Shola K. from Nigeria believes that his country's education
system should be geared to make citizens more aware of the grave social
problems the nation faces :
"Nigeria alone has over 100 tertiary institutions made up of Federal and
State. Unfortunately, all these educational institutions share one thing in
common: Teaching And Learning For White Collar Jobs. For a successful
programme, however; a shift of focus is required from capital intensive to
labour intensive industrialization efforts.
There is a pressing need to productive and remunerative work for employable
people. We need quality basic education, aimed at producing graduates who
would be independent and self-employed. We need educational system that
distinguishes facts from opinion and belief but aimed at creating awareness
and identifying
solutions to serious human development problems such as
illiteracy,unemployment and rural poverty etc."
Gisele from West Africa, on the Ivory Coast says that she also believes
that secondary school programs should include professional skills and
commercial language training for students :
"From my point of view,in schools programms ,decisions makers should
include some specifics domains since secondary school such as languages
like french,spanish etc and hability for some specific or professional
skills.This action could enable every youth to know really where he can
work or not.Get a job should be a question of hability,creativity and not
be for instance doctor because parents would like it. Youth must be given
the opportunity to choose their futur work and be happy in it.The first
function is the liberation of man by which he
could be free to do what he wants in the order of the society welfare."
Shobha, a teacher from Hyderabad, India, holds the view that the need of
the moment is job oriented education :
"Today the young generation needs that kind of education which can help
them earn their living more than mere bookish knowledge. The unemployment
problem has grown globally and there is hardly any place where the term
"uneployment" does not echo.In my view the training given to them should be
self driven so that they themselves can generate employment. after the
technical raining the financial institutions must come forward to help them
to be on their own. In India our government is taking many measures to
generate mployment with the help of schemes in association with the
financial institutions,banks by advancing them loans under self
employment schemes.
Amer from Pakistan believes that too much of his nation's budget goes
towards upgrading the military, and too little toward the development of
the education sector:
"We should keep in mind that, like other departments, education sector is
also dependent mainly on government and any change or trouble in the
governance directly affects this, too. And we should not forget another
reality that employment is directly related to the development in the
country. No development, no jobs. Rising unemployment. More than two thirds
of the national budget goes to the army in the name of defense. The
education sector is the most neglected area here and so far governments
never allocated more than two percent of the national
budget for this sector. Salaries of the teachers, maintenance of school
buildings, research and.feeding the military schools etc come under this
tiny umbrella of 2% budget.
Cheers,
Rudy Edirisinghe
Mandate the Future
http://www.mandatethefuture.org
http://www.ctrlaltesc.org
http://www.moju.org
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