We cannot always build the future for ouryouth, but we can build the youth for ourfuture.

–Franklin D. Roosevelt

Societies throughout history have ac-knowledged the importance of educa-tion to human progress. From ancientEgypt’s Books of Instruction to ancient

Greece’s Academy, from early Quranicschools to the modern Western world,civilizations have attempted to ensuretheir prosperity by educating theiryouth. Smaller societies, too, from vil-lages in Yemen to dwellers in the Africanbush, have invested time and resourcesin education for similar reasons.

Universal education has been on theglobal agenda since the 1948 Declarationof Human Rights proclaimed free andcompulsory education to be a basic hu-man right. The 1990 Convention on theRights of the Child, signed by all but twoof the world’s governments, reaf½rmedthis right as a legally binding obligation.Since then, there have been many high-level international commitments to edu-cation for all.1 Several scholars have alsoenvisioned broadening its reach. Butnone of these international declarationshas suf½ced to translate right into reality.None of these scholarly reports takes onthe linkage of basic and secondary edu-cation with other parts of the educationsystem and with other sectors. Nonegives a balanced consideration of all

David E. Bloom & Joel E. Cohen

Education for all:an un½nished revolution

84 Dædalus Summer 2002

David E. Bloom is Clarence James Gamble Pro-fessor of Economics and Demography at the Har-vard School of Public Health. He is the author of“Quality of Life in Rural Asia” (with Patricia H.Craig and Pia N. Malaney, 2001), a principalauthor of “Higher Education in DevelopingCountries: Peril and Promise” (with Henry Ro-sovsky, 2000), and co-editor (with Peter God-win) of “The Economics of hiv and aids: TheCase of South and South East Asia” (1997). Hiscurrent research interests include labor economics,health, demography, and the environment.

Joel E. Cohen is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professorof Populations at Rockefeller University andheads the Laboratory of Populations at theRockefeller and Columbia Universities. A Fellowof the American Academy since 1989 and of theNational Academy of Sciences since 1997, hispublications include “How Many People Can theEarth Support?” (1995).

© 2002 by David E. Bloom & Joel E. Cohen

1 Just this year, the World Bank announced anew effort to ensure that all children wouldreceive an elementary education. At the sametime, of½cials acknowledged that they wouldprobably not reach this goal by the target dateof 2015.

modalities of education (in addition tothe classical schoolroom). None iden-ti½es workable solutions to the econom-ic, political, and cultural obstacles toachieving universal basic and secondaryeducation. Finally, none of these inter-national declarations endeavors to docu-ment in detail the globally transforma-tive effects that would follow from edu-cating well all the world’s children withthe equivalent of today’s primary andsecondary education.

There is ample room, then, for furtherinquiry and discussion oriented towardaction at the global, national, and com-munity levels. It cannot be taken forgranted that the educational models andmethods of today’s industrial countrieswill be appropriate and feasible to bringeducation of high quality to all childrenin the rest of the world.

In recent decades, progress toward uni-versal education has been unprecedent-ed. Illiteracy in the developing world hasfallen from 75 percent of people a centu-ry ago to less than 25 percent today. Theaverage number of years spent in schoolin developing countries more than dou-bled between 1965 and 1990, from 2.1 to4.4, among those age twenty-½ve andover.2

However, while the number of peoplewith access to some schooling has in-creased, improvements at the secondarylevel have been patchy. Whether the lackof progress is due to a lack of politicalwill, a lack of resources, bad implemen-

tation of good ideas, or other factors,separately or in combination, is unclear.Acknowledging past failures and ½ndingout what went wrong, as well as ½ndingthe reasons for progress where progressoccurred, are crucial to future success.

At the same time, improvements inthe quality of primary education havealso been less than impressive. In manyareas, of½cial statistics disguise funda-mental flaws and exaggerate the pro-gress made. Largely focused on enroll-ment and literacy, the data reveal littleabout the quality of education. (Even theconcept of the “quality of education” isproblematic, likely to be culturally de-pendent, and in need of further analysisand operational de½nition.)

Rote learning is the norm in many de-veloping-country schools, and a lack ofwell-quali½ed teachers means that manychildren receive only the rudiments ofan education. Many others whose atten-dance at school does not endure muchbeyond registration day miss even that.Of the 1993 cohort that entered primaryschool in developing countries, nearlyone-fourth failed to reach the ½fth grade.

Enrollment data also camouflage ab-senteeism and grade repetition. In inef-½cient educational systems, many stu-dents repeat years of schooling. In Bra-zil, for example, 26 percent of primaryand 20 percent of lower secondaryschool students repeated their grades in1997. On average, Brazilian students re-peat over two years of classes, which ac-counts for a signi½cant amount of thetotal years spent in school.3

Even with 4.4 years of education, thedeveloping world lags far behind the in-dustrialized countries, where the corre-sponding ½gure is 9.4 years. Over 45 per-

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2 unesco, Compendium of Statistics on Illiteracy,1990 ed. (Paris: unesco Of½ce of Statistics,1990); Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, “In-ternational measures of schooling years andschooling quality,” American Economic Review,Papers and Proceedings 86 (2) (1996): 218–223;Task Force on Higher Education and Society,Higher Education in Developing Countries: Periland Promise (Washington, D.C.: World Bank,2000).

3 unesco/oecd World Indicators Pro-gramme, Investing in Education: Analysis of the1999 World Education Indicators (Paris: oecd,2000).

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86 Dædalus Summer 2002

cent of adults in the world’s least devel-oped countries, moreover, are illiterate,and gender differences are wide.4 Inlow-income developing countries, ac-cording to World Bank ½gures for 1999,19 percent of males and 31 percent offemales aged ½fteen to twenty-four yearswere illiterate.5

The authors of this essay are part of acollective effort to develop and imple-ment a detailed program to make moreprogress in educating all of the world’schildren. We believe it is possible anddesirable for all children to receive high-quality primary and secondary school-ing, through ten or a dozen years of edu-cation, whether in traditional or nontra-ditional settings. In what follows, wewill describe the background of our ef-fort, and the steps underway to convertour vision into a workable plan–and aworking reality.

In 1990, a World Conference on ‘Educa-tion for All’ was held at Jomtien, Thai-land. The 155 countries represented atthis conference jointly pledged to pro-vide primary education for all by theyear 2000, and to ensure that childrenand adults would “bene½t from educa-tional opportunities designed to meettheir basic learning needs.”

Progress toward meeting these goalswas reviewed ten years later at the WorldEducation Forum in Dakar, Senegal.Much had been achieved: for example,some countries have come close toachieving universal primary educationsince Jomtien. Much more remains to bedone, however. The net enrollment ratiofor primary education (that is, the num-ber of pupils in the of½cial school-agegroup as a percentage of the total popu-

lation in that age group) in sub-SaharanAfrica rose from 54 percent in 1990 to 60percent in 1998, and in southern andwestern Asia it rose from 67 percent to74 percent over the same period.6 At thisslow rate of progress, sub-Saharan Africawould require another half century, andsouthern and western Asia another quar-ter century, to obtain 97.5 percent netprimary enrollment. Such progress issimply too slow. Parts of South Asia andsub-Saharan Africa continue to lag be-hind. One hundred and thirteen millionprimary school-age children remainedout of school as of early 2000, and thequality of educational delivery and re-sponsiveness to student need remainedpatchy.

Enrollment ratios still vary widely bygender. For example, in 1998 the net en-rollment ratio for primary education insub-Saharan Africa was 66 percent formales, but only 54 percent for females;in the Middle East and North Africa, itwas 80 percent for males and 71 percentfor females; and in southern and west-ern Asia, 79 percent for males and 67 per-cent for females. For the world as awhole, including developed countries,the primary net enrollment ratio was 87percent for boys and 80 percent forgirls.7

Demographic trends mean that devel-oping world educational systems arelikely to come under increasing pressure.While 1998 un Population Division pro-jections foresee few dramatic changes tothe global school-age population overthe next half-century as a whole, theyproject large increases in the countriesthat can least afford it.

The growing population of primaryschool-age children, in conjunction withraising primary school enrollment rates

4 unesco, World Education Report (Paris:unesco, 2000).

5 World Bank, World Development Indicators2001 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2001).

6 unesco, Education for All 2000 AssessmentStatistical Document, 29, 33

7 Ibid.

to 100 percent throughout the develop-ing world, would result in approximately15 percent more primary students by2015 than in 1995. However, a much larg-er problem in achieving universal educa-tion will be in secondary schools. In1997, secondary school enrollment in de-veloping countries stood at 281 million,with another 264 million not enrolled.8The population of ten- to fourteen-year-olds–the age range for which data areeasily available, and which approximatesthe secondary school years–will growby 65 million from 1995 to 2015.9 Thus,full secondary school enrollment willrequire the enrollment of over 300 mil-lion more students in 2015 than in 1995.

By far the greatest increases will beneeded in sub-Saharan Africa and SouthAsia, the two regions with the lowestcurrent enrollment rates. In sub-SaharanAfrica, for example, only 26 percent ofchildren are enrolled at the secondarylevel–an increase of just 4 percentagepoints since Jomtien in 1990. In SouthAsia, although secondary gross enroll-ment rates have risen sharply since 1970,at 45 percent they remain well behindthe global average. In the least developedcountries overall, at most 19 percent ofchildren attend secondary school.10

The Dakar Framework for Action thatemerged from the World Education Fo-rum simultaneously renewed the inter-

national community’s commitmentsand implicitly acknowledged its inabilityto achieve its stated goals, extending thedeadline to 2015.11

New thinking on designing and im-plementing a high quality education forall the world’s children is clearly needed.In today’s knowledge economy, pri-mary education, while essential, is notenough. In the developing world, sec-ondary schools, colleges, and universi-ties have yet to reach large numbers ofpotential students. Low standards are apersistent problem in many areas wherepoverty is endemic.

Policymakers are now coming to ac-knowledge these failings more fully.‘Education for All’ has not beenachieved. We need new ideas, new strat-egies, and new efforts if the goals laidout at Jomtien, and our more ambitiousgoals, are to be realized.

The case for providing an ‘Educationfor All’ can be made on four differentgrounds: humanitarian, sociological,political, and economic.

The humanitarian case is straightfor-ward: Education enables human beingsto develop their capacities so that theycan lead ful½lling and digni½ed lives.Promoting equality of opportunitythrough education can be a powerfulresponse to those who believe that therecent process of globalization has in-creased inequality and further marginal-

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8 unesco online database.

9 United Nations, World Population Prospects,2000 rev.

10 Each of these ½gures is a gross enrollmentrate–that is, the ratio of the number of stu-dents enrolled in secondary school to the num-ber of children in the population who are in theage group normally expected to be enrolled insecondary school. Children counted in thenumerator may be older than the normal agesfor secondary school because they startedschool late or because they had to repeat one ormore years of schooling. A gross enrollment

rate, therefore, may exaggerate or overstate thefraction of children of secondary school agewho are enrolled in secondary school. unescoInstitute for Statistics, “Gross enrollment ratiosby level of education,” 2001; available at<http://www.uis.unesco.org/en/stats/stats0.htm>.

11 unesco, “Education for All,” 2001; avail-able at <http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/index.shtml>.

ized the poor. Education of high qualityhelps people give meaning to their livesby placing them in the context of humanand natural history and by creatingawareness of other cultures. (We ad-dress below the formidable task of speci-fying what we mean by “education ofhigh quality” when we sketch some pre-liminary thoughts about the goals ofeducation.)

A second justi½cation for basic andsecondary education is sociological.Social and cultural capital, which arecrucial ingredients in the developmentprocess and ones that enhance the oper-ation of other development channels,can be greatly strengthened by educa-tion. Schools can help foster a sense ofcommunity. A good education empow-ers people to take responsibility for theirown lives and for improving the lives ofthose around them. The Jomtien Decla-ration highlights the importance of edu-cation to furthering the cause of socialjustice, human rights, and social andreligious tolerance–all vital to ensuringinternational peace and promoting sus-tainable human development.

A third justi½cation for universal edu-cation is political. Education is popularamong voters. It can also, as FrancisFukuyama has argued, “create the condi-tions necessary for democratic socie-ty.”12 “It is hard to imagine,” he contin-ues, “democracy working properly in alargely illiterate society where the peoplecannot take advantage of informationabout the choices open to them.” Bothdomestic and international political sta-bility, too, are affected by education orits absence. Dictators, for example, whocan have serious destabilizing impactson their regions, often endure becausethe limited educational level of their

subjects makes it more dif½cult for apopulace to mobilize against them.13 Atthe level of international politics, educa-tion has an important contribution tomake to global peace and stability, asmodern technology makes it possible forthe problems caused by poor educationanywhere to affect other countrieseverywhere.

A fourth and perhaps most persuasiveargument for universal education is eco-nomic. For over two hundred yearseconomists have been struggling to an-swer one simple but fundamental ques-tion: Why are the people of some coun-tries richer than others? Why did Aus-tralia surge ahead of Argentina? Whyare the Asian Tigers so far ahead ofSouth Asia? A classic answer has beenthat some countries have more naturalresources and physical capital and bettertechnology than others, and that theseadvantages allow them to create greaterincome and wealth. But the truth seemsto be more complex. Beginning in thelate 1950s, economists expanded thenotion of capital to include human capi-tal as well. Education, or investment inpeople’s capacities, raises people’s pro-ductivity and provides a foundation forrapid technological change. Each year ofschooling in developing countries isthought to raise people’s earning powerby over 10 percent.14

Education can also operate indirectlyby promoting good health and a demo-graphic transition from high fertility andhigh mortality to low fertility and low

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12 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and theLast Man (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 116.

13 We recognize, of course, that a well-educat-ed population is not a guaranteed barrier to thepower of dictators. The most notable exceptionis that of Nazi Germany.

14 Gene Sperling, “Educating the World,” NewYork Times, 22 November 2001; George Psach-aropoulos, “A reply to Bennell,” World Develop-ment 24 (1996): 201.

mortality. The spread of schooling in-creases possibilities for the growth ofnational income, and that additionalincome helps to ½nance additional edu-cation, which leads to more income, in avirtuous spiral.15

Amartya Sen has shown how the eco-nomic success of Japan in the last 150years was driven by its focus on expand-ing education before economic develop-ment was underway. The contrastingfortunes of China and India in movingtoward an open, market-oriented econo-my further support the importance ofeducation. India’s “massive negligenceof school education,” Sen argues, meantthat the country was ill-prepared foreconomic expansion. The spectacularsuccess of China’s economy, on theother hand, since it began to open mar-kets in 1979 was built on a highly literatepopulation produced by a strong basiceducation system, which attempted toinclude all girls as well as all boys.16

The economic argument, however, isnot, by itself, suf½cient. Well-educatedpopulations in the Soviet Union, Cuba,and the Indian state of Kerala, for exam-ple, have failed to build strong econo-mies. There are limits to what educationcan achieve when its effects are neutral-ized by other obstacles to development.Some of the Gulf states, whose growthhas been founded on oil rather than edu-cation, show that universal education isnot even necessary for economicgrowth.

Indeed, the case for universal educa-tion must rest ½nally on the best avail-able empirical evidence for all of its pos-sible bene½ts–humanitarian, sociologi-cal, political, and economic.

Those who promote the bene½ts ofeducation must demonstrate that educa-tion is an essential component on thepath to greater quality of life in the fu-ture if they wish to convince politicalleaders and their constituencies to takemeaningful action. The arguments foreducation as an essential complement toother factors of development and toother factors of national interest mustbe analyzed, the likely cost of progressmeasured, and the practical actionsagreed on, while taking into account thelessons learned from previous successesand failures.

The ½eld of international developmentis littered with apparently good ideasthat failed to deliver their promised ben-e½ts. The failures to achieve universalbasic and secondary education havemany causes.

Economists have long argued that edu-cation should be a policy priority fordeveloping countries, but many govern-ments have so far done little to raise edu-cational attainment beyond increasingprimary enrollment rates. Some of theobstacles are material: a lack of fundsand inadequate infrastructure. Some ob-stacles derive from limited local capacityto change. But among the greatest prob-lems is lack of political will for an initia-tive whose bene½ts will accrue substan-tially to nonelites and remain invisibleuntil far into the future.

Developing countries spend around$240 billion a year of public money onprimary and secondary education.17 As

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15 David Bloom and David Canning, “Cumula-tive Causality, Economic Growth, and theDemographic Transition,” in Nancy Birdsall,Allen C. Kelley, and Steven W. Sinding, eds.,Population Matters: Demographic Change, Eco-nomic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World(New York: Oxford, 2001), 165–197.

16 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),42–43.

17 Authors’ calculations based on data fromTask Force on Higher Education, Higher Educa-tion in Developing Countries.

there are approximately one billion chil-dren aged six to sixteen in developingcountries, the average expenditure isabout $240 per child per year–less than10 percent of the comparable ½gure forhigh-income countries.

How much additional funding is reallyrequired is not obvious from these ½g-ures because some countries are appar-ently able to educate children very wellat relatively low cost. For example, Cubaspends below $1,000 of public moneyper primary school student per year, lessthan most other nations of the WesternHemisphere. Yet Cuba’s primary schoolstudents rank far higher in terms of stan-dardized test scores than those of anyother country in the Latin American re-gion.18 More generally, there is much tolearn from studying success stories ofboth countries and regions within coun-tries.

Another view of the ½nancial obstaclesto the spread of education is given byestimates of what it would cost to putevery child in quality primary educationby 2015. Gene Sperling quotes recentunicef estimates of $7 billion and $9.1billion per year and an Oxfam estimateof $8 billion additionally annually.19 Ontheir face these cost estimates seem im-plausibly low, especially in comparisonwith amounts that are currently beingspent.20 A recent World Bank Working

Paper has given a higher estimate of$10–15 billion per year.21 This is not atrivial magnitude, but even it surelypales in comparison to the full costs ofnot educating these children. In anycase, more data and analysis are sorelyneeded here.

Rising enrollment ½gures are likely tomagnify the strain on government bud-gets. The strain may be moderated inso-far as there are some natural economiesof scale in the provision of education(development of educational materialsand tools for educational management,for example). On the other hand, it maybe magni½ed as a result of the need torecruit larger numbers of quali½edteachers.

While a lack of funding has undoubt-edly been a problem in some countries,the fact remains that even where goodschools are available, many children donot attend them. The opportunity costof attending school is particularly sig-ni½cant in poor areas, because sending achild to school prevents him or her frommaking an economic contribution to thefamily. Out-of-pocket costs such as forschool fees, uniforms, or textbooks mayalso be beyond the reach of many poorfamilies. Even if the labor market offersreasonable rates of return on invest-ments in schooling, families may declineto undertake the investments insofar aseducation promotes migration (urbanand international), the bene½ts of whichdo not necessarily accrue to the familyleft behind.

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18 Christopher Marquis, “Cuba Leads LatinAmerica in Primary Education, Study Finds,”New York Times, 14 December 2001, A22; TaskForce on Education, Equity, and EconomicCompetitiveness in Latin America & the Carib-bean, Lagging Behind: A Report Card on Educationin Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Partnershipfor Educational Revitalization in the Americas,Inter-American Dialogue, November 2001).

19 Gene Sperling, “Toward Universal Educa-tion: Making a Promise and Keeping It,” ForeignAffairs 80 (5) (September/October 2001): 7–13.

20 If we divide these estimates by the estimatednumber of children of primary school age who

were not in primary school in 1998, namely, 113million (unesco, Education for All 2000 Assess-ment Statistical Document, 9), we get a cost of$62 to $81 per child per year.

21 Shantayanan Devarajan, Margaret J. Miller,and Eric V. Swanson, “Goals for Development:History, Prospects, and Costs,” World BankWorking Paper 2819 (April 2002): 16, 22–26.

Gender inequality can also depressenrollment rates. In many of the poorestareas of the world, girls do not receivethe same education as boys. Parentalconcerns about the personal and sexualsecurity of their daughters may makethem reluctant to send daughters toschools away from home, to classroomswithout female teachers, or to schoolswithout latrines separated by sex. Insub-Saharan Africa, for example, only 69percent of girls enroll in primary school,compared to 84 percent of boys.22

Promotion of female education hasstrong potential to trigger virtuous de-velopment spirals. Educated girls gen-erally have fewer children, so that edu-cating one generation of girls makes iteasier to educate the next. The childrenof educated mothers generally enjoyhealthier lives than those of less educat-ed mothers, and hence are better able tolearn. They also have lower mortality, sothey are better investments for the edu-cational system.

In addition, education directly im-proves the quality of life and the eco-nomic potential of the educated girl her-self. Increasing the number of femaleteachers, expanding schools so thatsexes may be separated where that isdeemed culturally desirable, and work-ing to eliminate gender discriminationin the labor market can all help to cutgender bias and increase enrollmentrates further.

The poor quality of education is an-other major factor behind low enroll-ment statistics. Obsolete curricula, alack of educational materials, inade-quate classrooms, and poor teacherquality all reduce the incentive for chil-dren to attend school.

In many areas, moreover, the drive toincrease enrollment rates has had a det-

rimental effect on educational quality. Insuch areas, the number of teachers hasnot kept pace with the number of stu-dents, and student-teacher ratios haverisen as a result. A study in Tamil Nadu,India, for example, found that while thenumber of children enrolled in primaryand lower secondary school increased by35 percent from 1977 to 1992, the numberof teachers rose by only 4 percent.23 Afalling ratio of students to teachers is noguarantee of rising educational quality,as Argentina appears to have discovered,but the trend in Tamil Nadu goes in thewrong direction. Improved access toeducation may therefore become athreat to quality.

Higher enrollment rates do not lead togreater knowledge or skills if teachingquality is low. Low salaries and poorteacher training mean that highlyskilled, motivated people are unlikely tobe attracted to a teaching career. Largeclass sizes also tend to be a further deter-rent to potential educators. Moreover,those who are attracted, if they are notjudged and rewarded on the basis oftheir results, often have little incentivebeyond normal worker’s pride to im-prove their methods.

Effective reform requires more thanarticulating a sensible new vision forbasic and secondary education. Itrequires appreciating the different goalsof education in different cultures, and itrequires developing the human andtechnological means necessary toachieve those goals. It requires a thor-ough quantitative assessment of presenteducational performance and a rigorous

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22 unesco/oecd, Investing in Education.

23 P. Duraisamy, Estelle James, Julia Lane, andJee-Peng Tan, “Is there a Quantity-QualityTradeoff as Enrollments Increase? Evidencefrom Tamil Nadu, India,” Policy Research Work-ing Paper (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank,1997).

projection of the expected consequencesof future improvements. It also requiresthe mobilization of political will, build-ing a broad-based consensus in favor ofkey reforms.

Governments, ministries of education,teachers, and parents all need to be en-listed in a renewed drive for universaleducation. These traditional agents ofeducation will bene½t from nontradi-tional partnerships with other govern-ment ministries, such as ministries oflabor and of commerce, along with local,national, and multinational businesses–in short, with all parties that have a stakein a capable populace. An effective strat-egy requires an appreciation of nationalneeds and concerns outside of basic andsecondary education. It requires an ob-jective account of each country’s ½nan-cial, human, and political resources. Itrequires sensitivity to each country’shistory and cultures to ensure the work-ability and legitimacy of the institutionsthat have to be built as part of the re-form.

If governments and teachers are to bebrought on board, the bene½cial conse-quences of achieving universal primaryand secondary education will have to bespelled out and, ideally, supported bycredible data. An evidence-based strate-gy needs to identify the mechanismsthrough which education enhances thequality of life by promoting health, hu-man dignity, and economic growth.

For example, education may affect apopulation in a variety of ways: by culti-vating skills and disseminating knowl-edge; by raising social status; by increas-ing earnings in the labor market; by low-ering fertility rates; by enhancing thesense of personal autonomy; by broad-ening cultural horizons.24

If knowledge and skills acquired inschools are the main avenue of influenceon demography, then curricular contentis crucial. If, on the other hand, contactwith a culture outside the home, or po-tential earnings and the opportunitycosts of high fertility are the main ave-nues of influence, then the content ofthe curriculum may not be so crucial.This is one reason why careful researchis critical to the formulation of policy.

Cross-national comparisons and re-search into the effect of education onforeign direct investment, internationalcompetitiveness, inequality, and povertywill be instructive for policymakers andeducators alike. Because considerableresearch on these topics has already beencarried out, new efforts should build onwhat is already known and clarify areasof uncertainty.

Of course, not every regime will wel-come every likely consequence of pro-viding an ‘Education for All.’ Marshal-ling the evidence that education changesthe aspirations of women, brings downfertility rates, and promotes a demo-graphic transition (by, for example, in-creasing age at ½rst marriage, age at ½rstbirth, use of family-planning services,and encouraging parents to invest moretime and money in fewer children) willact as a spur to some governments–andperhaps as a deterrent to others.

In addition, governments may react invaried ways if there is reason to thinkthat money spent on universal educationdetracts from the achievement of poten-tially competing social goals, such as im-proved health.

Still, if it can be demonstrated empiri-cally that universal education is ½nally inthe interest of every society, then mostgovernments are eventually liable to joinin the effort. And if businesses, too, canbe persuaded that universal education isa public good, then they too may be will-

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24 National Research Council, Critical Perspec-tives on Schooling and Fertility in the DevelopingWorld (Washington, D.C.: National AcademyPress, 1999).

ing to bring their innovation and cre-ativity to the table, and perhaps evensome money.

One of the most sensitive issues in anyeffort to promote universal basic andsecondary education is the de½nition ofgoals. Goals must be clearly laid out sothat the success of programs can be con-tinuously monitored. At the local level,those who will be most affected by local-ly adopted goals should not be excludedfrom the tasks of adapting educationalgoals to local knowledge and aspira-tions. To stimulate thinking and provokediscussion about possible shared goals,we offer the following suggestions: • The skills taught should include read-

ing with understanding, writing withclarity, and speaking with con½dence.(The choice of language or languagesin which these skills are practiced islikely to be a national or local issue.)The skills taught should also includenumeracy, that is, the ability to readand understand the kinds of quantita-tive information encountered in dailylife, plus the ability to compute as re-quired in the contexts of daily life.(These fundamental skills with wordsand numbers are to be distinguishedfrom the specialized disciplinary skillsof literary and mathematical analysis.)Additional skills worthy of attentioninclude peaceful ways to manage andresolve, where possible, conflicts anddifferences within and between a vari-ety of cultural units. The conflicts andthe means of resolving them will differculturally (e.g. compromise vs. con-sensual discussion vs. majority vote vs.appeal to tradition) but the skills ofdealing peacefully with conflict mayhave widespread or universal value.Other important skills include theability to analyze and make choicesabout personal life and work, and the

ability to be productive and ½nd satis-faction in personal life and work.

• The knowledge to be imparted mustfocus on both the self and others. Inhuman terms, others might includethe family, the local community, othercommunities and cities, the nation-state (if relevant), other countries andcultures, and humankind. In nonhu-man terms, others might include otherliving species and the major nonlivingcomponents of the Earth. “Other” willalso refer to other times, including thesources and limitations of our under-standing of past and future. Thesedomains of knowledge can be ap-proached through the perspectives ofthe natural sciences, the social sci-ences, and the arts and humanities. Forexample, understanding the self in sci-enti½c perspective provides a vehiclefor instruction in health and humanbiology and behavior.

• The attitudes to be instilled must alsorefer both to the self and to others–though here the goals of a universaleducation are liable to provoke contro-versy. How will schools balance thevalues of individuality and of collec-tive concern, of innovation and con-formity, of initiative and obedience, ofcompetitiveness and cooperation, ofskepticism and respect? The industrialmodel of classroom education, withstudents sitting silently and obedientlyat desks arranged on a grid and listen-ing to an authoritative teacher, withclasses starting promptly when the bellrings, conveys a different set of valuesand attitudes than many alternativemodes of education.The goals of education for children

around the world will shape the kinds ofpeople we and our children will liveamong. More is at stake in de½ning andassuring a quality education for every

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child than defeating terrorism, or lower-ing population growth rates, or expand-ing world economic growth, or spread-ing democracy and the rule of law–though all of these in our view areworthwhile consequences. Also at stakeare the inventiveness and civility of thepeople among whom we will live, andthe richness of our own opportunities tolearn from them.

The American Academy of Arts andSciences is currently assembling a taskforce to examine the rationale, means,and consequences of providing a qual-ity education to all the world’s childrenat the primary and secondary levels. Theproject aims to synthesize what isknown about many of the issues raisedabove, and also to identify what needs tobe known, in order to formulate policyoptions for moving forward.

The Academy project has six featuresthat, in combination, set it apart fromprevious efforts to promote universaleducation.

First, instead of taking the value ofuniversal education as self-evident, theproject will be analytical. It will attemptto document in detail who bene½ts andto what extent and how. Thus the valueof education is taken as a hypothesis tobe evaluated, not as an axiom.

Second, the project will be cross-sec-toral in orientation, attempting to evalu-ate the interactions of education withcompeting and complementary contrib-utors to human well-being, such as pub-lic health (including family planning andreproductive health), jobs, nutrition,and physical infrastructure.

Third, the project will be cross-sec-toral in expertise. It will encourage freshperspectives from economists, develop-mental psychologists, demographers,statisticians, historians, cultural anthro-pologists, medical and public-healthworkers, and others to complement the

expertise of those who already work ineducation.

Fourth, the project will consider edu-cation by all means, including but notlimited to enrollment in primary andsecondary school.

Fifth, the project will explore the viewthat the goal of primary education for allis not ambitious enough. The projectwill extend this goal through secondaryeducation.

Sixth, the project will take into ac-count the interactions of universal andlocal criteria for what constitutes educa-tion of high quality.

Ideas for means of reaching childrento educate them will bene½t from draw-ing on successful efforts to change large,complex systems in other ½elds. Educa-tional programs may bene½t from expe-rience with successful delivery methodsin national and international efforts in,for example, agriculture and publichealth.

The project will examine whether andhow new technologies can be harnessedto promote a more effective and equi-table distribution of education. It willalso evaluate teacher development ef-forts where education is to be deliveredby teachers.

These large goals will eventually haveto give way to speci½cs, such as ‘Wherewill the implementation of the plansdeveloped by the ½rst phase of the proj-ect start?’ ‘Who should be involved?’‘Where will the money come from?’‘How can students study at night in vil-lages with no electricity?’ ‘How are poorfamilies going to be persuaded to lettheir children study instead of work?’Delivery methods will inevitably need tobe judged on their economic viability aswell as by their human and politicaladvantages.

The research is not intended to com-pare formally universal basic and sec-ondary education to other instruments

Educationfor all

Dædalus Summer 2002 95

of development. It is not trying to modelrigorously the whole development pro-cess. It is meant to take a critical look atprevious thinking in the ½eld and assessboth the desirability and the feasibilityof a global effort to involve govern-ments, businesses, nongovernmentalorganizations, families, and individualsin the drive for primary and secondaryeducation for all.

The Academy’s scholarly analysis anddissemination of research results willcomplement other efforts under way todevelop support for universal educationat the level of grass-roots organizationsand at the level of national and interna-tional political leadership (for example,the Global Alliance on Basic Educationproposed by Gene Sperling25).

We hope that the Academy’s researchwill support and improve the policies ad-vocated by other groups, while receiving

stimulation from the practical questionsthey raise. A coordinated approach toglobal educational development thatcombines analytical research with popu-lar and political advocacy seems morelikely to be effective than advocacy with-out research–or research conductedwithout effective advocacy.26

25 Sperling, “Toward Universal Education,”7–13.

26 The authors gratefully acknowledge the sup-port of the American Academy’s ubase project,which is underwritten by the Hewlett Founda-tion, John Reed, the Golden Family Founda-tion, Paul Zuckerman, an anonymous donor,and the American Academy of Arts and Sci-ences. jec acknowledges the support of Nation-al Science Foundation grant deb 9981552 andthe hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. William T. Gol-den during this work. Ines Aguerrondo, LeslieBerlowitz, Ariel Dorfman, George Ingram, Kis-hore Mahbubani, Martin Malin, Kenneth Pre-witt, Mamphela Ramphele, Larry Rosenberg,Bruce Scott, Adele Simmons, Stephen Sinding,and Paul Zuckerman provided helpful com-ments on and discussion of earlier drafts.