FACT: Children Face Many Obstacles to Getting an Education

There are many complex reasons why children do not attend school, all of which require tough, probing questions to properly answer.

Certainly, traveling long distances is often an obstacle that children cannot overcome without sufficient transportation. However, there are circumstances in which a school may be a short walk from a child’s home, but her family cannot afford to buy shoes to make the journey an easy one.

Still, even if a child has the means to overcome the distance and can attend school, there are often conditions within the classroom that inhibit effective learning. It is not uncommon to find a single teacher struggling to instruct sixty or more children who are at different grade levels, and who may have specific educational needs that require individual attention and specialized learning approaches. Also, educators are often ill-equipped to teach even one child when they lack the appropriate tools, such as blackboards, chalk or textbooks.

Very often, it is not physical distance, but social distance, that keeps a child out of school. Children from marginalized communities sometimes experience discrimination that discourages them from getting an education. No child would be eager to go to school if it meant she would be humiliated publicly, segregated from the rest of her peers, or chastised for non-performance because she is of a particular social or ethnic group. This kind of behavior occurs so often that many people outside of the marginalized group do not even notice that a problem exists.

Schools also set requirements that can further hinder a child’s ability to attend. At the simplest level, rigid school schedules are not sensitive to the diverse religious and cultural needs within the community. In many agricultural societies of Asia and Africa, for example, older children frequently miss school during the harvest season because they are needed to help their families and take part in important communal celebrations. Students who do not attend school during these times find it difficult to make up the lost class work, and eventually drop out. Creating a more flexible, socially sensitive school calendar would make it possible to ensure regular schooling for all children.

Overall, it is clear that children face obstacles to getting an education that go well beyond that of physical distance. School systems should be flexible when responding to the diverse needs of their student population; they should also have adequate teaching facilities. And, more importantly, each society needs to treat all children equally – without discrimination.