PRESS CONFERENCE ON ‘POPULATION, EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT’

Not to be able to read and write was a tremendous “unfreedom”, and removing that obstacle in a way that broadened the individual, rather than narrowed his or her outlook, was critically important to personal satisfaction and to harmonious societies, Professor Amartya Sen, 1998 Prize Winner in Economics and Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, said today at a Headquarters press conference.

Professor Amartya Sen was joined today by Dr. Paul Demeny, distinguished scholar at the Population Council, New York.  Both had delivered keynote addresses earlier this week to the 2003 session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development.  The session, which began on 31 March and is due to conclude tomorrow, has as its theme “Population, education and development”.  The Director of the United Nations Population Division, Joseph Chamie, moderated today’s briefing.

Mr. Sen said he recognized that education was dramatically important for both development and demography.  But, their different influences and interactions should be clear.  He had tried to argue before the Commission that one of the major contributions of education was to enhance individual capability, such as finding work and having a political voice in society.  Jobs had become particularly relevant in the context of the rapidly globalizing world, and production that was specific and precise was key to keeping a competitive edge.  While education had always been very important for the economic side of human life, it had become rather more import now.

Girls’ education also affected demographic issues, such as reducing child mortality and fertility rates, often quite dramatically, he said.  Those influences were among the benefits of expanding the individual capability of human beings.  In addition, developments occurred in society, not just on the basis of individual action, but based on collective decisions, by the government, State, and local administrations.  Having an education greatly sharpened the voices of the participants.  Nowhere was that more distinctly seen than in the impact of women’s education on their empowerment; they played a bigger role in society and had a greater choice within the family.

He said that education not only expanded individual and social capabilities, but also affected values.  In the Commission, he had discussed the huge impact that a broad-based education, where the humanity of a person was emphasized, had on outlook.  School education with the aim of generating a very narrow, fundamentalist position, such as on Islam, Hinduism or Christianity, could very much narrow a person’s outlook.  Quite often, the flames of violence and conflict were really kindled in school.  So, it should be ensured that schooling invariably expanded individual capability.  Often, violence was fed by generating an identity that rejected other identities.  So, education was an enormously powerful feature of human life.

Prompted by Mr. Chamie to respond to the impact of migration as a consequence of education, Mr. Sen said that if one looked at the history of the world over the last 3,000 years, nearly all of the major changes in society, literature and mathematics, in the way the world was understood and human

creations were engineered, had been influenced by the ideas of people moving from one part of the world to another.  So, education had the effect of globalizing the world in a positive way.  That was not a new phenomenon, but one that had gone on for millenniums.  In general, he could not take a very anti-migration view.  There were instances, of course, where migration abroad had not led to jobs and that had caused dissatisfaction.  If, however, that dissatisfaction led to rethinking about the nature of society, then that was not a bad thing. 

He added that much social change in the world had come from people who had had time to reflect on what they wanted to do with their lives.  That was progress.  If one were to decide not to provide people with an education, because of the difficulty of absorbing more educated people into the work force -- that would be a very bad idea.  Education broadened one’s horizons and enabled a person to lead a certain satisfying life.  A lack of education, such as for women who could not read or write, compromised their ability to exercise their human rights. 

Asked if figures were available about the effect of education on women’s participation in the politics of diplomacy and peace, Mr. Sen said that the statistics varied greatly among countries, but there was enormous evidence that participation was greater for women within the family if they were educated, although one could still debate the question of whether they had more autonomy or not.  In terms of the effect of women’s education on local administration, that varied a lot and depended on the nature of the politics.  The situation was greatly enhanced in the case of a democratic country with elections.  In India, for example, even women from the deprived lower class had become leaders and engines of political change, owing to education. 

Responding to a question about the importance of higher education, he said that educational activity at every level made a difference.  Education should be thought of, not just in terms of what was actually learned, but in terms of the act of schooling itself.  In situations where there was enormous gender inequality within the family, for example, going outside to school and facing the world was a remarkably freeing experience.  The sociological role played by schools was crucial and enabled a person to re-examine their lives.  So, it was wrong to think that only a high level of education made a difference.  Education, even at the lowest levels, began to bear fruit.

At the same time, he added, there was no question that continued schooling increased a person’s ability to successfully integrate what they were learning formally into their lives.

Returning to the question of migration, Mr. Demeny agreed with Mr. Sen that migration was a positive force and a very important process for transmitting knowledge.  But, the basic demographic facts were pretty clear, namely, that the dominant element in world demography was population growth, and migration was a very marginal element in the big picture.  So, the basic connection between population as a subject and education as a subject was that the countries themselves had the very large task of educating very large numbers of people.

In the United States, he continued, education was a massive industry, vastly larger than agriculture.  Developing countries that did not have luxury

of being able to spend as generously on education faced the problem of immigrants needing to be educated.  So, in developing countries, the problem was that that huge industry -– education -- was a very backward and traditionally organized one.  For example, it was understood now that the best learning took place when teachers interacted with students, but that was a very expensive process.  The general pattern had been to model educational systems on those traditional models of the more advanced countries, but there was now a kind of crying out for rethinking that model.

Asked about his views of education via satellite, especially in rural communities, he said that was a technological innovation that could be done at a relatively lost cost.  The question itself had highlighted the fact that the standard model of education, as the world knew it, should draw on experiments with new technologies, which moved away form the limitations of the standard of one teacher per 20 or so students.  At the same time, he underscored the importance of starting up a system with some commonality, as a way of ensuring that a kind of tribal education systems, where people put forth only their own values, did not emerge.  That could cause separatism and serve to cluster people, leading to all kinds of society disharmony.

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