According to a Brookings Institution report released this month, the global education crisis in developing countries could be addressed through a coordinated effort undertaken by businesses through a special coalition.
In “The Case for A Global Business Coalition for Education”, Dr. Justin W. Van Fleet argues that “as direct stakeholders in the quality of education of the world’s children and youth, the business community has tremendous assets to bring to bear on the global learning crisis.” However, he argues, at the moment these assets are so inefficiently deployed that they are rendered barely effective.
The answer? A Global Business Coalition for Education. A similar model already exists in the form of the Global Business Coalition for Health (GBC Health), a 200-member organization formed in the last decade, and now an influential voice in the global health arena. Dr. Fleet points out that GBC Health has yielded significant benefits not just for society but for the business community.
As cited by the report, there are currently 127 emerging-market companies in the Financial Times Global 500 (compared with only 32 in 2002). Meanwhile, the report also highlights some harrowing global education statics. Consider, for example that in the developing world there are 67 million children out of primary school and 72 million more without access to junior/lower secondary education opportunities.
As more and more companies bring their business to emerging economies, the grave education shortfall in the developing world poses a serious threat to business “irrespective of location or industry.”
For more information about how the global education crisis affects the business community and what private sector companies can do to help, read The Case for A Global Business Coalition for Education.
One Response
When we launch “I am Africa. This is my story…” we met with a series of leading educators and many youth organizations. As we did our workshops what unfolded was how disconnected to the needs on the ground curriculums like STEM really are. Not only in lacking an understanding of Adult learning but in the real problem of unemployment. We ask ourselve how come a country like Zambia have 79% under employment of its college graduates.
Perhaps we need to completely change our strategy to educating youth who will build new companies rather than be employed by jobs that are not there. Perhaps they should be working and in school at the same time. This would infuse the use of web technologies into current businesses.
This would completely change the curriculum. Math would be for building and accounting. Social studies would be urban development. Shop would be home building. Bio would be farming. Technology would be to support it all. Each time I read a STEM type report I see academia repeating the drill and kill techniques of the 1,200 century church….
We were at a graduation in San Jose this spring and the school only graduated 55% of its class. At what point do the alarms go off on how cell and internet learning have changed everything.
Industrial learning is Assess > Learn > Test. This is a complete disconnect to our daily collaborative world that we live in that is: Problem > Discovery > Adopt > Collaborate > Publish.
We must wake up to the relation of Internet and how it dismantle the patterns of poverty and then leverage it.