If history is "a race between education and catastrophe", education seemed until recently to be winning. In 1950 only about half of adults globally had any schooling; now at least 85% do. Between 2000 and 2018, the proportion(比例) of school-age children who were not enrolled(使加入) in classes fell from 26% to 17%. But the rapid rise in attendance masked an ugly truth: many pupils were spending years behind desks but learning almost nothing. In 2019 the World Bank started keeping count of the number of children who still cannot read by the time they finish primary school. It found that less than half of ten-year-olds in developing countries could read and understand a simple story.
Then the pandemic struck and millions of pupils were locked out of school. It should be noted that globally, the harm that school closures have done to children has vastly outweighed any benefits they may have had for public health. The World Bank says the share of ten-year-olds in middle-and low-income countries who cannot read and understand a simple story has risen from 57% in 2019 to roughly 70%. If they lack such elementary skills, they will struggle to earn a good living.
This should be seen for what it is: a global emergency. Nearly every problem that confronts humanity can be alleviated by good schooling. Better-educated people are more likely to work out a cleaner energy source, a cure for malaria or a smarter town plan. If the damage the pandemic has done to education is not reversed(逆转), all these goals will be harder to reach.
Politicians talk endlessly about the importance of schooling, but words are cheap and a fit-for-purpose education system is not. Spending has risen modestly in recent decades but fell in many countries during the pandemic. Apart from the money, the education system itself is in urgent need of change: Testing is a mess, leading governments to overestimate levels of literacy. New teachers have been hired but not trained properly. Teachers, who have come through the same education systems they are supposed to be improving, often struggle to teach.
The same energy that was once poured into building schools and filling up classrooms should now be used to improve the lessons that take place within them. No more children should stumble (蹒跚而行) through their school days without learning to read or add up.
