by Alexandra Trotter
Any time several problems appear simultaneously, it is difficult to know which to fix first. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has hurt Colombia in so many ways that before the government can debate how to fix a problem, they have to debate which one to fix first. There is an argument to be made for focusing on each of several issues. For example, is the worst problem education access or the peace process? It is hard to say whether decreased access to education or a slowdown of the peace process is worse overall, especially when their causes and effects are related. An educated population is essential to a peaceful society, but it is also difficult to maintain a good education system without peaceful surroundings. Uninterrupted access to education, however, is more important than an entirely peaceful climate for ongoing societal development.
Even long before the pandemic, education was inaccessible to many Colombians, whether because they had to work to help support their families or because they were recruited by armed groups before finishing school.[1] In rural areas, less than 80% of children between ages three and five attend school.[2] Furthermore, the Colombian government spends only about 4.5% of its GDP on education,[3] as opposed to Norway’s 8%[4] and Sweden’s 7.7%.[5] At the moment, the situation is much worse than these statistics depict, because the pandemic forced most schools online and only 64.1% of Colombians use the internet.[6] Under current conditions, a significant portion of the country is without access to education, and may be so for the foreseeable future.
Education is the foundation of everything else in a society and interruptions to education cause damage to a generation that is difficult to ever recover from. Khan Academy’s founder, Salman Khan, gave an interview in which he offered advice for schools:
Focus on the basics and do those things really, really well. The basics are reading, writing and math. If kids are able to progress in those, or at a minimum not atrophy in those, they’re going to be able to pick up where they left off in other subjects. But if those things really degrade, everything is going to suffer. Those very fundamental things are hard to fill in later, and that puts you on a slower track, frankly for the rest of your life. [7]
The importance of these three basic subjects cannot be overstated.
Reading, writing, and elementary math are so commonly mentioned together that “reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic” is a standard phrase, and they are considered the core school subjects for a reason. Writing is necessary for many jobs and for communication in general. Reading is so important that literacy is one of the measures of how developed a country is, and I cannot imagine how I would get through life without it. It is essential for reading signs, staying informed, nearly all jobs, and so much more. Math is often dismissed as less critical than reading and writing, but it would be difficult to deal with money, for example, without an understanding of basic mathematics. Furthermore, logic is often associated with math and incorporated into math curricula. Critical thinking skills, which are an extension of logical thinking, are necessary for a stable society.
Individuals learn countless helpful skills in school and at home that would be severely missed if they went completely neglected. If nobody ever learned to cook, we would have a problem. However, someone who has never cooked a single meal can still become a good cook as an adult; there is no magic “cut-off” for learning this skill. Younger people might have an easier time memorizing the names of ingredients, but this kind of delay is not dangerous. Similarly, a study of history is important, but it can be interrupted and resumed later without doing any real damage. Most skills share this quality, and are similarly achievable at any age.
Reading, writing, and math, on the other hand, are well known to be much more difficult to learn for older children or adults than for younger children. Young children learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with so little effort that most of us cannot remember how we learned, whereas there are teachers, classes, and entire organizations dedicated to teaching adults to read. Clearly, then, these are subjects that should not be interrupted if at all possible, lest children leave this critical phase of development without these skills.
Other issues clamor for attention alongside education. Shouldn’t the government focus on reducing unemployment, or hastening the peace process? The answer is yes, of course, but education should be a higher priority because improvements in education will help solve other social problems like these. Additionally, solutions to either one would be ineffective or unsustainable without an improvement in education.
Unemployment problems come in three main forms: insufficient income from one’s work; lack of unemployment opportunities, whether from inability to find a job at all or from inability to work as much as desired; and a potential workforce the market is failing to take advantage of. These problems may arise for two distinct reasons: it may simply be that more people want work than there are available jobs; alternatively, there may be enough total jobs, but they are not well-suited for the available workers. For the most part, education can only mitigate the latter problem, and it can do so either by providing training (the basic skills) or by altering the general mindset people have toward work.[8] Better educated people are more likely to create new jobs for others as well, but as this is an indirect result of education and takes place further in the future, it is not as relevant to this discussion. Both primary and secondary education can give people necessary occupational training or the foundation thereof, but individual mindsets are shaped more by primary education, so early education emerges again as a necessary feature of a society. When there are more people who want work than there are jobs, the government can specifically work to create more opportunities, but this situation may be improved much more readily once the workforce is a better match for the existing jobs.
As for the peace process, there is no point in trying to bring about a peaceful society without establishing a good education system first, because the social fabric will simply disintegrate in its absence. It has been proven throughout history that without an educated populace, a stable society is unlikely. Better education leads to better wellbeing, mental health, and problem-solving skills, which all enhance a society’s ability to address conflict without resorting to violence. Furthermore, children who consistently attend school are exposed to people of various backgrounds and mindsets, which prepares them for life’s interactions much better than education provided by a small group of similar people (a family, for example) is able to.[9]
Countries often address short-term economic crises by reducing investment in public education and infrastructure, which is a quick way to save money at the time, and may even be without short term consequences. However, this method of reducing budget obligations is incredibly short-sighted and even dangerous. It starts a cycle of inadequate education access, unemployment, and lack of progress, which only causes even less money to be available for public education spending. The results of this cycle range from economic instability to rampant social instability and even violence, as inequity in education engenders resentment and conflict. Preventing this perilous feedback cycle, or stopping it as soon as possible if it has already begun, is one of the best ways to provide a peaceful environment.[10]
In the modern world, expansive access to the internet is essential to education. In light of the ongoing pandemic, which has closed many schools and may permanently change attitudes towards education, internet availability is even more critical. In Colombia, internet access has increased rapidly in recent years, but this growth has begun to slacken. While about 65% of Colombians are connected to the internet (as previously mentioned), in the lowest income group this drops to only around one in five people. The problem worsens in the nation’s many rural areas, where it is difficult to run cables or construct mobile cell towers; only about 10 percent of people in rural communities have any internet access. Even for those in rural areas who have it, average download speed is among the slowest in the region.[11]
Furthermore, even if the infrastructure is there, internet access is expensive for Colombians. In 2019, most Colombians used mobile devices, not computers, and accessed the internet with mobile data. At the time, 1 GB of mobile data cost about $6.50. When compared to the minimum wage in Colombia, about $260 per month, it is not surprising that the internet was and continues to be inaccessible for so much of Colombia.[12] All these factors limit the viability of delivering education over the internet, especially for poor or rural families.
There are dozens of critically important issues demanding attention from the Colombian government and people. The question here, though, is which of these needs focus most urgently. Employment troubles and the peace process have taken years and may well take years more to address properly, so in the grand scheme of things, a few more months or even years will not be particularly noticeable. In other words, since these are broad longer-term goals, it is possible for them to take a little longer without doing major damage, although of course that is far from ideal. On the other hand, early education has been established as something where every month matters, so a gap of several months induced by a pandemic is a big deal. In a situation where every problem is urgent and there is insufficient money for any full solution, a nation must calculate which issues are most urgent, focusing their energy and funds there first. In this case, early education is most urgent and everything else is slightly less so; it follows that the government should focus time and money there right away. Education is a constant necessity, and even a tiny interruption does long-lasting and irrevocable damage.
What can be done? Education access and quality are persistent problems throughout the world, and several possible solutions have been suggested. Normally, education is either public or private. Public education is usually accessible to everyone, barring problems like transportation, but its quality often suffers because there is no incentive for any one school to offer a better education than the other schools nearby. Especially in low income countries like
Colombia, public schools fail to deliver the services that residents of wealthy countries have come to expect. Private education partially solves the problem of quality by forcing schools to do their best to keep students and parents happy, lest they lose enrollment and therefore tuition money, but these schools are usually only accessible by the highest-income families due to their high price tag.
There is a third option part way between public and private schooling, which Colombia has employed in the past: the voucher system. Ideally, this is a way of combining certain benefits of private and public education, potentially achieving the best of both worlds. In one proposed implementation, the government funds education, but instead of funding school systems directly, it gives out vouchers to parents. These may then be redeemed to partially or fully cover a child’s tuition at the private school of the parents’ choice. This allows everyone to access education, but leaves schools with an incentive to provide good education, as parents are likely to pursue enrollment for their children at the best school possible. This is intended to foster competition between schools, each aiming to offer the best education and thus gather the most voucher money. In a slightly different formulation of the model, schools can be reimbursed directly by the government based on how many students they have enrolled. One version might be more efficient and easier to set up than the other version for a government, depending on how its education funding is organized internally, but since they accomplish the same thing in almost the same way, there is no real reason to advocate one over another when encouraging a government to implement a voucher system.[13]
In Colombia, an educational voucher system, called the PACES program, was implemented in 1991 and ran for the bulk of the decade. This remains one of the largest school voucher pilot programs in recent history, and showed promising results. Over 125,000 students were provided with vouchers for more than half the cost of private secondary school, many of which were distributed via lottery. A study of outcomes for participating students found that they repeated fewer grades, attended more school, and had generally better test scores. This program brought the superior quality of private education into reach for many families, and reduced education expenditures for many more who would have sent children to private schools regardless. Participation was projected to significantly increase future wages for students, exceeding the cost of the program to the government and families.[14] It is reasonable that restarting such a program on a larger scale in Colombia today would have similarly positive effects.
This method has not been tried extensively, so there is a limit to the statistical validity of the data, but many large scale voucher programs, including PACES and several examples in Europe, have shown positive outcomes. Even so, it would be important not to take too much funding away from public schools just in case the option fails. If public schools were completely abandoned, it would likely be prohibitively difficult to reinstate them later. With careful planning, however, the voucher method could certainly improve the state of education in
Colombia. As another example, Chile has had a universal school voucher system for decades. Outcomes there have improved significantly since the program began controlling for income by offering larger vouchers to low income families; this is one possible improvement to naive or simply designed voucher distribution. This improvement is also an effective argument against those who say that a voucher would fail to solve anything because private schools could just raise their prices, for example.[15]
An educational voucher program will likely help the education system serve students more effectively in general, and investment in teacher training could help as well,[16] especially with transparency about how exactly that money is spent, but there is more that can be done right now to solve the specific problems the pandemic caused. The government can and should invest in making internet access broadly available throughout the country. Such an improvement would reduce the number of Colombian children who are locked out of education entirely, simply because of where they live or their socioeconomic status.
Many possible methods exist to broaden internet access around the world, such as government investment in cell towers or government regulation of internet service providers’ prices. Education is one of the most important uses for the internet worldwide; improving internet connectivity will be instrumental to enhancing education in Colombia. It will help Colombia in countless other ways as well, from encouraging freedom of expression to assisting the spread of information, both of which are important for a stable society.
These solutions are not quick, easy, or cheap, but they will be worth it. It is impossible to overstate the importance of education in a healthy society, and in order for Colombia to work through its struggles and progress in the future, the problems with its education system must be addressed as soon as possible.
[1] Luke Taylor, “How Colombia’s armed groups are exploiting COVID-19 to recruit children,” The New Humanitarian, The New Humanitarian, September 10, 2020, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/09/10/Colombia-conflict-armed-groups-child-recruitment.
[2] “Education,” Colombia Reports, Colombia Reports, September 24, 2019, https://colombiareports.com/education-statistics/.
[3] “Colombia,” UNData, United Nations, Published 2020, Accessed December 9, 2020, http://data.un.org/en/iso/co.html.
[4] “Norway,” UNData, United Nations, Published 2020, Accessed December 9, 2020, http://data.un.org/en/iso/no.html.
[5] “Sweden,” UNData, United Nations, Published 2020, Accessed December 9, 2020, http://data.un.org/en/iso/se.html.
[6] “Colombia,” UNData.
[7] Salman Khan, “Khan Academy’s Sal Khan shares advice for online learning: Do less, and turn off the camera,” interview by Heather Kelly, The Washington Post, August 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/31/khan-academy-remote-learning/.
[8] Louis Emmerij, “Some Reflections on the Link between Education and Employment,” Higher Education 1, no. 4 (1972): 483-95, accessed October 27, 2020, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3446043.
[9] Lana Khattab, School for Stability: Examining the role of education in fostering social stability in Lebanon (International Alert, 2017), https://www.international-alert.org/publications/school-for-stability.
[10] Miemie Winn Byrd, Education, Economic Growth and Social Stability: Why the Three Are Inseparable (Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2012), 102, https://apcss.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Chapter8.pdf.
[11] “New ICT laws and attention to innovation increase Colombia's internet coverage,” Oxford Business Group, Oxford Business Group, 2019, accessed December 11, 2020, https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/overview/public-and-private-sector-initiatives-have-seen-positive-results-increasin g-internet-coverage-and.
[12] Sebastian Erb, “Colombia is becoming an online country, but a digital divide still separates cities from the countryside,” DW Akademie, Deutsche Welle, February 18, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/colombia-is-becoming-an-online-country-but-a-digital-divide-still-separates-cities-from-the -countryside/a-47563079.
[13] Varun Gauri and Ayesha Vawda, “Vouchers for Basic Education in Developing Economies: An Accountability Perspective,” The World Bank Research Observer 19, no. 2 (2004): 259-80, Accessed October 27, 2020, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3986560.
[14] Joshua Angrist et al., "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," The American Economic Review 92, no. 5 (2002): 1537, accessed December 18, 2020, https://economics.mit.edu/files/24.
[15] Richard J. Murnane et al, “The Consequences of Educational Voucher Reform in Chile,” NBER, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2017, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23550/w23550.pdf.
[16] Constance Berry Newman, Equipping Africa’s Primary School Learners for the Future , Report, Atlantic Council, 2017, 18-22, accessed October 27, 2020, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep16765.9.
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