You Can Never Be Too Educated On Anything
By: Pasha Tad
Tags: Education, Helping Others, Society, Improvement

You Can Never Be Too Educated On Anything

There are reasons to continually improve.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

If you had not taken any basic schooling sessions, you may not understand this sentence. We learn something new every day, involuntary or not, inside schools and outside. While education is a universal right, of course, there are still places in the world where children are denied school, whether conditions within have something to do with it or not. Still however whether as supplemental education knowledge or to make children get their school hours some groups wants to give out education to children either with formal school education or to fill in because they are not getting any education.

Slum areas are present in about any place in the world, what a slum area is a place where residents live in an urban area with housing that is severely damaged, inadequate and or deteriorated. In slum areas, education from outside slum areas will likely be more difficult to reach young people along with social and living conditions within may as well neglect potential educational teachings to be passed to young children. odi.org shows that in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh have slums which have children leaving school to participate in work instead of receiving education, around 15% of children aged 6 to 14 do not receive an education while two-thirds of people working on Bangladesh’s garment sector are female children. odi.org also reports that almost 50% of slum children start to become workers once they become 14 years old. From these findings, it is clear that children living in slums not just in Bangladesh will likely be partaking in activities that will have them be away from education and school time. Even if there was little to no child labor, the lower living conditions such as poverty that slums will have means that basic education may be difficult to reach outside already developed areas in a country and even if education was accessible in slums the parents who want their children to go to school or other people will not have enough money to pay for school in their slums or outside the slums.

Photo by Shafiqul Islam on Unsplash

There is however an educational project that exists which is meant to provide basic education in Dhaka slums. According to faces2hearts.eu, an organization named SUSTAIN or Support Urban Slum Children to Access Inclusive Non-Formal Education works in Dhaka slums to provide a 3-year program where children there receive basic education as well as some needed experience for them to be able to enter formal education. Along with basic education. SUSTAIN also provides a child club where students can do other non-learning activities like reading and dancing and also has SUSTAIN graduates receive vocational training where they get skills like in their case, being able to work with electronics and other trades and craft to pursue one career for students. This program existing means that it is evident the number of children in Dhaka slums potentially not having access to education due to doing work labor is an acknowledged problem and that they are taking steps to try and reduce this number of children not getting school hours. Hopefully, the SUSTAIN project will help to bring more children into getting their necessary school hours.

While not a learning organization, this education system is a learning program similar to SUSTAIN but is more broad in scope than sustain. It is called Non-Formal Education, abbreviated to NFE and it is designed to be teaching skills such as reading, basic math calculations, and some sports programs if they want. According to coe.int, NFE is defined as learning outside formal environments such as schools and usually does not need to adhere to a syllabus and does not need to be graded externally. For the students, taking part in NFE is usually their decision to do so to become better at a certain skill, ability or curricular subject, unlike environments like schools and colleges where learning is done because learners have a goal to be able to gain knowledge through a prepared syllabus. Examples of NFE include language courses, organized sports lessons, and some other online courses are that students can take. Of course, it is not a replacement for regular school education as there are a handful of universities that require graduation with a certificate or similar items to be able to enroll but to add on to your already received knowledge that you have.