People like to talk up new technology in education, but there is a catch...

On Wednesday, the third plenary session of the DW Global Media Forum focused on education as the milestone for sustainable development. Denis Goldberg, a social activist from Cape Town, South Africa, argued, “The focus of education should shift to sustainability because we depend on it.” Doing so requires taking action on issues including overpopulation. One of his suggestions for limiting population growth was expanding social safety nets. By doing so, people move away from the idea that having children is the only way to ensure a stable future.

I thought to myself that he was right. However, the entire debate seems to be missing something. The other speakers at the plenary each discussed how to get young people – teenagers and children – more interested in education, in terms of everything from reading habits to new media and new technologies applied to education. That is all well and good, but from my point of view, we must not forget the basics of personal development. In a poverty-stricken region, if a child does not go to school and is not getting an education anywhere else, it is probably because he is also not well fed.

Aside from the basics, we need to consider what kinds of opportunities we are providing people. Professor Barbara Ischinger (Director, OECD Directorate for Education), presented three stages in maximizing the use of skills educators try to impart: in the short term, putting skills to use; in the mid-term, training in different skills; and in the long term, developing relevant skills according to each country’s economy. Her presentation was very relevant to the NGO where I work. We are developing a new online platform aimed at vocational education. The objective is to provide information on different career paths with a focus on science and the energy industry. One of the discussions we have is whether or not to include training programs for specific skills, since we want teenagers to feel encouraged to take the university path.

Traditional educational outlets, like libraries, got less attention at the conference

The truth is, though, young people these days often need to start working at an earlier age in light of their lacking economic stability (if they have any at all). Another presenter spoke about permeability –the idea that a person could start in a vocational training program and then later be given the chance to continue their studies in a university. Employing people, giving them skills, is the foundation of economic security, and these prospects must be in place for higher education to work.

We have a tendency to overlook some elementary problems when thinking about educational strategies. One of the conference speakers, Verashni Pillay (Online Deputy Editor, Mail & Guardian, South Africa) nailed the main problem in clear words: “Let us get the basics down before we bring in another futuristic view of education.”

Talented young people are leaving small cities for the big and promising urban centers

The closer my graduation comes, the more I’ve been thinking about education in my country. And mostly Im worried. During the 3.5 years I’ve spent at my second university, I’ve talked with dozens of students about their views of the future, and I’ve heard their opinions about the situation today. I did the same at my former university, and I would say it’s like this: Many students who study in big cities and well-known universities (at least in Russia) are aiming to apply for positions in international companies so that they “get out of the country.” Just a few of them added “… and come back after having gained some experience there.”
Those in regional universities (like my fellow students here) are either confused about their future (I touched upon the young’ expectations here) or want to leave for big cities to get a second education there (having one degree doesn’t always mean getting a job as Emmy wrote) and eventually follow the same path of emigration.

Russia is the largest country by size in the world, but young brains get concentrated in just several points on the map. So what about the rest of the country? I think many local universities are underestimated. Their curricula are pulled up to modern standards, but there is a lack of young staff able to operate modern technical devices.  Many regions don’t develop as much as they could because the youth is moving to better places.

I have often wondered: is our minister of education in the government qualified enough? Doesn’t he notice this trend? Russia could offer so many opportunities to encourage active citizens to develop the country, to increase the standard of living and to make its economy stronger. Right now, our economy depends far too much on oil, wood and natural gas. Having a lot in stock, the country (among the top ten countries by oil reserves in 2009; among the top five by gas reserves in 2010) gets the biggest part of its GDP from them. Easy money often does little good. Instead, it corrupts.

So what do we end up with?

Deep contrasts emerge between Russia's urban and rural areas

1. A dominant industry that’s in need of regulation. In some cases, industry can dictate its conditions to the market. Entire regions in the North and East have oil wells as their main source of work. A number of small towns live from oil alone, and a crisis can be deadly for them.

2. A lot of applicants for majors in economics and state governance as it’s the easiest way to make a career in that sphere (but that has nothing to do with flexibility, which is vital and was covered by Kathrin.

3. Local and municipal authorities who don’t put enough effort into developing their regions.

As a result, most money is thrown into the oil hole, rather than being spent on scholarships or stimulating science or small businesses. The bureaucracy that remained from the former epoch slows Russia down, and it’s a burden. That all doesn’t sound typical for a democratic state, but it’s a common situation in authoritarian states.

However, I feel really hopeful as I see that my generation doesn’t want to accept the situation. Civil society is making itself heard in Russia now much more than 10 years ago. I believe that, with so many opportunities and an enormous country here, we shouldn’t seek some land of dreams abroad. Living as an au pair is not the top career abroad that you deserve. Job markets in Europe, America and Australia don’t have enough positions for everyone, and qualified specialists are preferred. We should try to create something similar here.

Mobile phones - literacy not required...

The recent history of education in Iraq is full of ups and downs, and illiteracy, especially for women, remains a problem.

I’d like to imagine seeing life and the world like through the eyes of an uneducated person. But I think this is much harder than imagining it through a genius’ eyes. I know so many uneducated people – the only thing they can read and understand is the clock. I wonder how they can use mobile phones…? They can use their contacts to dial, and they seem to know who is calling them! Maybe after lots of mistakes, they just figure out how to use their phones. In fact, it could even be a kind of adventure for them!
Maybe when you get tired of what you’re doing or when your tendency to think too much makes you unhappy, you wish you were one of the uneducated people – that you knew nothing. I think sometimes you’re luckier to have less knowledge. I would say, “Less knowledge means more comfort.” That is why I think that the less educated do enjoy life much more than those with an academic background.

On average, the most uneducated people are among the seniors, especially among older women. Men always had a better and more comfortable life in the Middle East because of their unlimited freedoms. In my third entry, I talked about education for girls starting with the very young and showed connections between our system and problems within our society.

Some have to take out a loan to cover monthly expenses - even for basics

At the moment, we have obvious educational gaps among young people. Many of them have not been to school for various reasons. Many had to work for their families from an early age, and some of the families did not enroll their kids in school because they did not think that the school would teach their children what they needed to learn. Or they thought that the government wouldn’t be able to give them a job in the future anyway.

Another issue is that many in the young generation leave school and start doing another job because they can’t earn enough money monthly even if they were to get a job after graduating. An obvious example is that new teachers earn about $500 a month, but if you work as a freelance worker, you would earn$25 per day, totaling $750 per month. Many people think that they are right to quit school because the salary system for government jobs is not fair. Your salary does not depend on how many hours of work you do per week, but, rather, depends on what role you have or where you work. There are fears of getting old and realizing that you have spent your whole life on a governmental assignment, but you’re still dreaming of life’s basic necessaries like having a car, a normal house and enough money to get by. Some have to take out loans just for living expenses, so it’s clear that saving money doesn’t even come into question.

"The world is my classroom"

When I returned home after my two-year master’s course, the only things of any value I had were my laptop and my camera. Before I got too worried about having to start life all over again, I quickly reminded myself of the non-material possessions that I came back with. One of those was living and learning with people from different cultures – almost like learning in the classroom of the world! I wish this was an experience everyone could have, especially those from my own country.
The 2007-2008 post-election violence is four or five years behind us, although images of that dreadful period are still fresh in some people’s lives. During the violence, education for scores of children was disrupted as communities fought against each other and people fled from their homes. Most schoolchildren, including my younger siblings, began to ask questions about which groups their classmates and their teachers came from as the situation deteriorated.

When I went to school as a child, I could not differentiate between my friends on the basis of which community they came from. In fact, because I attended a primary school in the country where majority of the population is from my ethnic group, I was always excited to meet and interact with classmates from other groups. In secondary school, which I attended in the capital, Nairobi, the mix of communities was very diverse. Learning in such environments was always every enriching.

Of course, this was not without the usual stereotypes. Some groups are well-known for certain skills and as a result are almost expected to take on a certain career. Some people do study according to their stereotypes, but not always. These stereotypes are because of their cultures, their economic activities or even how they interacted with the colonialists. For example, most of the people from my community are best known for being athletes, watchmen and police officers.

Wearing patriotism proudly

Our gift in athletics is probably first of all genetic. Second, our location in the highlands is said to be the best for athletes to train. As for being police officers and guards, this stems from the years of the former president Daniel Moi, who is said to have favored his own community. Most of those employed as police went through basic education and were assured of having jobs.

Other communities are known to be agile business people and traders, while others still are known to be academics. And some are known to be good farmers. Some teachers and even parents may also treat students differently especially if they strongly believe in the stereotypes and thus reinforce these while teaching or while at home. This may or may not affect one’s education. However, this is not a common practice – especially as our generation strives to steer away from tribalism.

My friends and me - on different paths than our parents

Emmy wrote that people increasingly need to be better qualified to find jobs in Kenya. The situation in Kenya is different from that in Germany, of course. But here we young people also need more and more qualifications to get a good job – and many of us actually have these credentials. I talked with my girlfriends about how our educational training and our lives as a whole have changed compared with our parents’. We have been friends for years. Some of us even went to the same kindergarten, so we were educated in the German school system at the same time.
Five of us finished Gymnasium with an Abitur, a diploma that allowed us to study at a university afterwards. And two of my friends first finished at a Realschule and then did their Abitur at a Gymnasium specializing in economics (here I wrote more about the German school system). Afterwards, they finished vocational training. One of them now studies on the weekends alongside her job.

The majority of our parents, in contrast, didn’t study at university. Four of us are the first ones in their families to go on to college. But this is not the rule in Germany. If you take 100 children whose parents didn’t go to college, 24 will go on to university themselves. But when you look at 100 children of academics, statistics show that 71 of them will attend university.

But our academic degrees aren’t the only difference between our education and that of our parents. Six of us have studied abroad or worked while travelling in another country (Pavel wrote more here about gap years). No wonder that all of us speak English decently. That is a contrast to our parents: Most of them know only a little English. But, after all, they didn’t need it for being successful in their jobs anyway. Often our fathers earned enough money to support their families. Thus, our mothers didn’t have to work full time and could care for us children.

While we learn, live abroad, and make plans for our free time, our parents had very different worries at our age − particularly the ones who didn’t study. My father had already bought a house when he was my age. My mother had just had her second child; her first one − me − was already four years old. None of us seven friends bear that much responsibility. All of us are unmarried, and no one of has a child or a house.

Our generation has been taught to be flexible and mobile

After all, why should we plan on building a house? We, the young work force, are supposed to be flexible and willing to move. One of my friends, for instance, was told at the beginning of her training for becoming a teacher that, after finishing their training, the future teachers wouldn’t be able to choose where they work. The state would appoint them to schools they would be needed at. Whether they had a house in another city wouldn’t play a role. Of course, things aren’t very different when it comes to the private sector, but at least you can choose your employer more freely.

I don’t want to say that this is negative. We are enjoying these freedoms that have also been made possible by our parents. It is great to speak English fluently and to have lived in different places worldwide. At the same time, it’s amazing how much our way of planning our future has changed from that of our parents, how many more unknown variables we must deal with. While our parents thought already in their mid-20s that they would become old in the town they had been born in, some of us don’t even know what the five next years will bring.

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s just more qualifications that the job market demands – but also more flexibility.