One afternoon about a week ago, I was walking with a colleague through some of the communities of the Za’atari refugee camp, going from one Save the Children activity center to another. As we walked along the dirt path, passing the tents and pre-fabricated containers that many Syrian families call home, I spied two little boys. As the sun burnished their bright United Nations-issued backpacks, I could tell that these boys, like most, were in no hurry to get to school. I picked up my pace, hoping to coax these boys into picking up theirs. I caught up to them and urged them to hurry on. I then turned to walk away, only to find that one of these adorable cherubs had taken my hand. It seemed we were now both walking to school.
My Save the Children colleague later told me that she thought that the boy took my hand because I looked safe. I was doing child protection work without even knowing it. At the heart of that work is empowering children. And at the heart of children’s empowerment is access to education.
According to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, all children have a right to a primary education. This Convention, a defining human rights treaty, “places a high value on education.” Yet, almost 30,000 refugee children in Jordan who should be in school are not. Some 22% of eligible students are not in school because of insufficient space, insecure transportation, unsafe or discriminatory conditions in school, and an increasing incidence of child labor. Of these concerns, children residing in the camp cite the “dire security situation” as the main reason that they do not attend school.
I suspect no one here is at peace with that 22% statistic. Why, then, can we not draw more children into schools?
Lesson No. 3: To make things happen, context needs to take a backseat.
The challenges are many, stubborn, and complex. The social and environmental factors, political obstacles, security hurdles, cultural norms, resource constraints are the context. They bedevil the best-laid intentions of policy-makers and educators. Context demands attention; ignore it at your peril.
But, still, I cling to the UN’s simplistic notion that the global expectation is that all school-age children should be in school. We should all start here.
Is it possible, though, to be so wary of context that one loses sight of that elegantly simple starting place? Can one be so wary that creative solutions prematurely die at the altar of context?
When we start with context, we risk getting mired in why we cannot, as opposed to how we can. At Za’atari, Syrian adults are not permitted to work; children marry young; young boys hover at the entrance of the camp hoping to earn a dinar or two for their families; and girls fear traveling the distance to school. Context, in all its vastness, can suppress creativity, suffocate moxie, and extinguish hope.
We, the humanitarian community, embark on “back to school” and related educational campaigns imploring parents to send their children to school; we establish safe, child-friendly spaces for those unable or unwilling to attend school; and, most of all, we lay out the case for empowerment through school at every opportunity. These solutions, though necessary, may not be sufficient.
Could legislative advocacy devise a way to capture revenue while permitting adult Syrians to work? Might the carrot approach to school attendance also benefit from a stick? Can we increase security to make the walk to school safer?
If our starting place is that all school-age children ought to go to school, context—though critical—should take a back seat to that universally-accepted norm. Regardless of country, culture, crisis, and the chicanery of politics, we will aspire to educate all children. Let’s launch headlong into conversations about how to realize that goal, and stop allowing context to thwart the possible.
As children walk to school, the casual distractions of youth should be the only distractions.
My Save the Children colleague later told me that she thought that the boy took my hand because I looked safe. I was doing child protection work without even knowing it. At the heart of that work is empowering children. And at the heart of children’s empowerment is access to education.
According to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, all children have a right to a primary education. This Convention, a defining human rights treaty, “places a high value on education.” Yet, almost 30,000 refugee children in Jordan who should be in school are not. Some 22% of eligible students are not in school because of insufficient space, insecure transportation, unsafe or discriminatory conditions in school, and an increasing incidence of child labor. Of these concerns, children residing in the camp cite the “dire security situation” as the main reason that they do not attend school.
I suspect no one here is at peace with that 22% statistic. Why, then, can we not draw more children into schools?
Lesson No. 3: To make things happen, context needs to take a backseat.
The challenges are many, stubborn, and complex. The social and environmental factors, political obstacles, security hurdles, cultural norms, resource constraints are the context. They bedevil the best-laid intentions of policy-makers and educators. Context demands attention; ignore it at your peril.
But, still, I cling to the UN’s simplistic notion that the global expectation is that all school-age children should be in school. We should all start here.
Is it possible, though, to be so wary of context that one loses sight of that elegantly simple starting place? Can one be so wary that creative solutions prematurely die at the altar of context?
When we start with context, we risk getting mired in why we cannot, as opposed to how we can. At Za’atari, Syrian adults are not permitted to work; children marry young; young boys hover at the entrance of the camp hoping to earn a dinar or two for their families; and girls fear traveling the distance to school. Context, in all its vastness, can suppress creativity, suffocate moxie, and extinguish hope.
We, the humanitarian community, embark on “back to school” and related educational campaigns imploring parents to send their children to school; we establish safe, child-friendly spaces for those unable or unwilling to attend school; and, most of all, we lay out the case for empowerment through school at every opportunity. These solutions, though necessary, may not be sufficient.
Could legislative advocacy devise a way to capture revenue while permitting adult Syrians to work? Might the carrot approach to school attendance also benefit from a stick? Can we increase security to make the walk to school safer?
If our starting place is that all school-age children ought to go to school, context—though critical—should take a back seat to that universally-accepted norm. Regardless of country, culture, crisis, and the chicanery of politics, we will aspire to educate all children. Let’s launch headlong into conversations about how to realize that goal, and stop allowing context to thwart the possible.
As children walk to school, the casual distractions of youth should be the only distractions.