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... or the G- 7 plus some others, re-direct a small percentage of their defense spending for the defense of the worlds poor. We know that redirecting just 5 % of what the world spends on weapons and soldiers over ten years would be sufficient to guarantee basic education, health care and nutrition, potable water, and sanitation to all of the worlds people. If we focused only on funding a mandatory minimum of nine years of education in every country, that percentage would be even less.
How quickly the great powers muster the political and financial will to bail out failing economies, but how slow we have been to act to stamp out illiteracy, disease, and hunger. As I mentioned before, the resources are there, what is lacking is the vision and the sense of solidarity. If we were to make such an investment in education, it would reap great returns in the quality of our democracies. The most prominent of democracies, the United States, has produced several great statesmen who have recognized the importance of education for democracy. John Adams, one of the founding fathers, noted that "Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people, " and John F.
Kennedy echoed that sentiment in the twentieth century when he said, "Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain. " The connection was perhaps best summed up by political commentator Walter Lippman, who had this to say: "No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people. " These lessons can be well applied in Latin America and many other areas of the world where democracy is still a relatively new experiment. The movement away from dictatorships and repression in developing countries has been progressing steadily, but the institutions of democratic governance remain fragile in many societies. Despite all of the progress in democratization that has been made over the past twenty years in places like Poland, the Philippines, Nigeria, Haiti, Chile and Nicaragua, this democracy will not be complete -- and it will not be secure -- until illiteracy has been eradicated and education is available to all. Education is not only essential to the creation of democracies, it is essential to development, and in particular to what we today call "sustainable development. " Sustainable development implies a balance between meeting immediate needs and looking to the future with a long-term vision.
Everyone knows by now that the hierarchy of human needs dictates that someone who is hungry and has a family to feed is not going to think of protecting the environment first. Because of this, much environmental destruction has been caused by the subsistence farming of poor families throughout the developing world. To reverse this phenomenon, concerted efforts to meet the basic needs of poor families, as well as strong programs of education that are capable of instilling a long-term vision and teaching the responsible use of resources, will be indispensable. When speaking of development, it is important to underscore the active and essential role of women in these processes. It is not a coincidence that the countries with the highest levels of human development also come the closest to offering equal opportunity and gender equity in their societies. Perhaps no society has yet reached the fullness of equality that most of us hold as an ideal, because though we speak about the importance of equal opportunities for women and men, we continue to commit the same errors: we exclude women from positions of power, give them no voice in community decisions, and cling to stereotypes and prejudices so deeply ingrained in us that we do not even realize we have them.
The Arias Foundations Center for Human Progress is working to change this state of affairs in Central America. The Center has several projects that are aimed at studying rural womens access to such resources as land, training, work, and credit, and to advocate for womens rights to these resources where they are being denied. The Center also works with development organizations to incorporate a gender focus in development projects and to try to ensure that women hold some of the decision-making power in these projects. My friends, if we want to advance the health, education, and livelihoods of our poorest communities, we will never succeed by leaving half of the community out of the process.
In fact, even more than half of the picture would be missing. There is a saying that if you educate a man, you educate a man, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family. It is time for all policies, but perhaps development policy in particular, to take into account the role of women and families. In the context of world population growth, too, it is easy to perceive the importance of educating women. Many studies have shown that the most rapid and effective way to slow population growth in the developing world is through the education of girls and women.
If the world's governments and international organizations took this evidence to heart and acted upon it, the global population level would surely stabilize sooner than it will if we continue on our present course. Just as importantly, the world would be making a commitment to fundamental justice and to the dignity of all human beings. My friends, as we build literacy from the ground up among the poorest and the most disenfranchised, we should not be prevented from reaching for the stars at the same time. During my presidency I was able to bring computers into some of our schools here in Costa Rica. The machines had been donated by American corporations, and represented the gift of technology which was so sorely needed in our country, and continues to be needed, to be sure. At the same time, Costa Rica still has many rural schools where a single teacher imparts lessons to all grade levels.
We must make a significant investment in changing that situation, but we must also continue to press forward at the limits of modern technology and science. While we walk in the company of the poor on the road to better opportunities, we must also continue to take to the skies in pursuit of a brighter future. The work of GATE is an example of this. Your distance learning programs grew out of the needs of the corporate sector for well-trained workers in every corner of the globe. The focus of this conference will be on how to use the technologies and standards advanced by GATE to contribute to sustainable development, and I commend you for this highly. As I mentioned, education is certainly key to processes of sustainable development, and being able to deliver training and technical assistance easily over long distances will expedite the processes immensely.
At the same time, I wish to praise your work among the upper levels of the economy. For at the same time that we work to advance the opportunities of the poorest, we must continue to push the boundaries of what is possible to all of us. Your work does this by facilitating the sharing of knowledge and building of capacity in companies around the world. You are helping the developing world not only at the most basic levels of development, but also through spreading the benefits of distance learning in those sectors of our societies that are more advanced, thereby helping our corporations to mature and supporting economic growth in our countries.
Free research essays on topics related to: costa rica, sustainable development, poor families, role of women, population growth
Research essay sample on The Importance Of Education For Development
