Learning for Less, Better and for All

YARP hello from Elise! I am greatly thankful to UNICEF staff in Armenia, for inviting me to a very interesting meeting about the needs of so many children I did not know about. I hope this post greatly helps UNICEF by informing others of these issues on access to education for all.

Along with the wonderful tourist attractions and rich cultural traditions, there are also many problems in Armenia, like in every country. They are not visible on the streets of Yerevan, the capital, but, away from Yerevan, in the smaller towns and villages, poor families struggle to feed their children. In addition, there are disabled children all over Armenia who are unable to get to school. There are also children in smaller towns and villages where there are no preschools. Children in such villages often cannot get to school as well, because the roads are too dangerous, on unstable bridges and icy in the winter. One of the main problems I am going to be writing about in this blog post is education and schools in smaller towns and villages. With the help of UNICEF, an international organization that benefits children’s education around the world, solutions are flourishing.

In the small town of Atan, the kids do not have access to quality education. In fact, many of them long to live in Yerevan. Also, Atan lacks a preschool, like many other villages. This may not seem like a major problem, but without preschools, the children are poorly prepared for elementary school. In first grade, the children barely know the alphabet, or even how to count to ten. When children are inadequately prepared for the first grade, they will fall behind and may drop out. Because of this, the children will be missing out on high quality universities, and will remain poor throughout their lives. The Armenian government pays for preschools in Yerevan, along with other big towns, but small villages like Atan are left out. The reasons for this are the costs. The local government is unable to pay for the preschools in smaller villages, such as the cost of the building, water, electricity, teacher salaries, etc.

UNICEF has introduced an idea for solving this problem, known as the alternative preschool. Usually a given town in Armenia already has a building that is not being used, or is partly used. UNICEF uses these buildings to create preschools, which cuts down on the cost for the building, water, electricity, etc. because the building is already being used for other purposes. Also, instead of hiring teachers, UNICEF trains local women to be teachers to work at the preschool. The preschool is only three to five hours a day, instead of a full eight, which also cuts down on the cost. Studies show that it is more important to get children into preschools when they are younger rather than later, even for shorter days. Shorter school days are cheaper and therefore possible to do for more years and they give access to more students. The good news is that after trying the alternative preschool method, the towns have adapted to it. Once an alternative preschool is created, the community is able to care for it without the help of UNICEF.

Another issue in education is that of children with disabilities. According to UNICEF, “there are at least 93 million children with disabilities in the world, but numbers could be much higher.” Some of these children are going to schools only for disabled children, and are missing the chance to interact with non-disabled children. UNICEF believes that disabled children should be integrated into regular classrooms. UNICEF calls this Inclusive Education. I agree with UNICEF about Inclusive Education, although teachers may not have the right knowledge about disabled children. The teacher may teach such students things they already know, or teaching them things way too hard for their level. UNICEF solves this problem by training teachers in regular schools how to interact with disabled children. If a family is lucky, they can send their child to a regular school, where they can learn to interact with all children instead of just with children with special needs in special schools. Sometimes families of children with special needs do not even have the money to send their child to any school at all. In other cases the family does not believe the child is capable of learning, and these children are called “out of school” children.

Overall, I agree with UNICEF’s mission that every child should have the right to quality education no matter what. Without education, children will not able to find a job when they grow up to help not only themselves, but also their society. Without jobs the society does not earn as much money, and the society may even become a dangerous place in which to live. This idea is similar to that of the food chain; without mosquitos there are no flies, then there are no snakes, then there are no eagles, etc. Quality education is interconnected with the society thriving and prospering. According to UNICEF, “an added year of quality education can increase an individual’s income by 10 per cent.” (www.unicef.org).

Lastly, I also agree with UNICEF that children with disabilities should be included in the same schools as children without disabilities in order to have a fair chance for quality education. In my elementary school in the United States, I had a friend in the fourth grade with a Down Syndrome, a type of disability. Interacting with her not only helped her learn, but I also learned the value of caring. If children with disabilities like this are included with children without disabilities, all the children are going to learn something, take something away from the experience.