The Impossible Dream: Education and the MDGs
The Impossible Dream: Education and the MDGs
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不可能的梦想：教育与千年发展目标
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发表时间：
2008
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Phillip W. Jones
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作者：
Phillip W. Jones
对于在社会部门工作的国际援助和发展机构来说，千年发展目标（MDG）制定了他们的旗舰计划和预算，特别是在教育和卫生领域。这些目标于 2000 年由联合国大会通过，构成了到 2015 年实现减贫的雄心勃勃、充满活力和综合的战略。主要的全球组织，尤其是世界银行和其他联合国专门机构，现在通常根据千年发展目标制定其政策和干预措施，这种方法在西方主要捐助国提供的援助计划中也很明显，也许更可预见的是，致力于减贫的著名非政府组织也提供了这种方法。 [插图省略] 对于教育，已经做了很多工作来量化 2000-2008 年期间的进展并评估 2015 年之前的前景。但在这个中间点，现在是时候重新考虑千年发展目标本身隐含的持续政策优先事项了。他们的核心理念是全民教育（EFA）。围绕全民教育的语言是理想主义的语言，不仅因为千年发展目标的教育目标雄心勃勃，而且因为现在在整个发展中国家实现千年发展目标的教育目标是肯定的。 2005年实现教育性别平等的最后期限已经过去，到2015年，仍有多达70个国家无法为每个年轻人提供基础教育，有些国家的情况严重。教育史上的理想主义 教育史深深植根于通过提供教育来实现理想社会的尝试。乌托邦的愿景有很多；更多的是通过促进广泛的宗教信仰来进行社会改革的尝试。政治革命也经常在教育中看到其可持续性的途径，我们已经习惯于通过教育手段实现社会凝聚力、公平和稳定的尝试。鉴于其潜在的超越性，教育常常披着理想主义者的谈论的外衣，这是可以理解的。不仅如此，普及教育本身已成为一种理想，而不仅仅是实现理想目标的手段。在西方，工业革命之后大众教育的兴起见证了历史理想主义的缓和。一旦大众教育的理念扎根，理想主义就必须让位于对方式和手段的更现实的关注——尤其是社会可以安置多少年轻人上学，以及他们的教育形式和持续时间。无论政府是否被视为普及教育的保证者，从大规模扩张一开始就很明显，增长速度将受到资源和能力限制的影响。这些担忧直接影响了大众教育的目的，而这些目的现在正受到经济审查的约束。因此，现代教育中出现了巨大的鸿沟——道德与物质之间的紧张关系。从近代历史中我们知道，物质问题似乎在教育优先事项和预算的构建中最为重要。教育的经济原理决定了招生模式、课程内容以及对教育目的的理解方式。事实证明，无论是在发达国家、在旧苏联集团的转型经济体，还是在整个南方发展中国家，情况都是如此。然而，教育作为一项潜在的超越事业的理想主义并没有消失，学习者个人、他们的家庭和社区似乎坚定不移地相信教育可以成为一项超越物质存在限制的努力。这一信念的一个突出体现是教育作为一项基本人权的理念，这一理念被著名地纳入 1948 年《世界人权宣言》中。将理想付诸实践的主要障碍与其说是道德接受的问题，不如说是能力的障碍。 ……
For international aid and development agencies working in the social sectors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) shape their flagship programs and budgets, notably in education and health. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000, the goals constitute an ambitious, dynamic, and integrated strategy for poverty reduction by the year 2015. Major global organizations, not least the World Bank and other specialized UN agencies, now routinely frame their policies and interventions in terms of the MDGs, an approach also highly visible in the aid programs provided by major Western donor countries, and, perhaps more predictably, by prominent non-governmental organizations committed to poverty reduction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For education, much work has been done to quantify progress over the 2000-2008 period and to assess prospects for the years leading to 2015. But at this midpoint, it is timely to reconsider the ongoing policy priorities implied in the MDGs themselves. At their heart is the notion of education for all (EFA). The language surrounding EFA is the language of idealism, not simply because the MDG education targets are ambitious but because the impossibility of reaching the MDG education targets right across the developing world is now a certainty. The 2005 deadline for gender equity in education has come and gone, and in 2015 as many as 70 countries will still be short of providing a basic education to each of its young people, some seriously so. Idealism in Educational History The history of education is deeply embedded in attempts to achieves an ideal society through educational provision. Utopian visions are numerous; even more numerous are attempts at social reform by promoting widespread religious commitment. Political revolutions also frequently saw in education a pathway to their sustainability, and we are well used to attempts to achieve social cohesiveness, equity, and stability by educational means. Given its potentially transcendent nature, it is understandable that education is so often clothed in the talk of idealists. More than this, universal education has become an ideal in itself, and not merely a means to idealized ends. In the West, the rise of mass schooling that followed the Industrial Revolution saw a tempering of much historical idealism. As soon as the idea of mass education took hold, idealism had to yield some ground to more realistic concerns of ways and means--not least how many young people society could place in school, as well as what form and duration their schooling should take. Whether or not it was government that was looked to as the guarantor of universal access to education, it was clear from the very beginnings of mass expansion that the rate of growth would be tempered by resource and capacity constraints. Such concerns impinged directly on the very purposes of mass schooling, these now being subjected to the discipline of economic scrutiny. So there opened up that great divide in modern education--tension between the moral and material. We know from recent history that material concerns seem to count most in the construction of educational priorities and budgets. Economic rationales for education have shaped enrollment patterns, the content of curriculum, and the very way the purposes of education are understood. This has proven to be universally the case--in the developed world, in the transition economies of the old Soviet bloc, and across the developing world of the South. Yet the idealism of education as a potentially transcendent enterprise refuses to go away, and individual learners, their families, and their communities seem unshakeable in belief that education can be an endeavour that transcends the confines of material existence. One prominent expression of this belief is the idea of education as a fundamental human right, famously included in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The chief obstacle to putting the ideal into effect is less a matter of moral acceptance than the obstacle of capacity. …