Education Week - October 14, 2015 - 19

Education Is a Global Answer
To the Challenges of Our Time

By Susan Hopgood, Lily Eskelsen-García, & Randi Weingarten
s educators, we're optimists by nature,
and we believe the global goals adopted
by the United Nations late last month
will be achieved by the 2030 target date,
including free quality education for all.
What gives this particular goal the best
chance of success is how the U.N.-identified "sustainable development goals"
are interrelated-the success of one requiring the success
of others. The elimination of poverty and hunger and the
ensuring of healthy lives and gender equity, to name a few,
are all benefits of quality education.
Why the optimism? Start with the people who were not
in New York City to attend the United Nations but who
dominate global attention-the millions around the world
displaced and on the move because of natural and manmade disasters, and the parents who are risking everything to give their children a quality education, a healthy
start, and an upbringing free of violence. We can see this
most recently with the tens of thousands fleeing war-torn
Syria and Afghanistan and the mounting human toll of
that exodus.
No single goal's success will end this misery. Teachers in
Lebanon working double and triple shifts to accommodate
Syrian-refugee students without extra pay are part of a
comprehensive solution only when we add meaningful civil
society and governmental interventions. The inclusion and
accountability that link our challenges together will drive a
new definition of success that leaves no one behind.
Next, think in terms of the whole child, whole school,
whole community, whole system. Failure in the past was
marked by fragmented, piecemeal strategies and market
fundamentalism. The U.N.'s sustainable-development goals
are not a shopping list to guide purchases inside a global
supermarket limited by an overstretched credit line and a
lint-filled purse. Instead, they are an ecosystem in which
education, poverty reduction, healthy lives, GDP, and environmental sustainability are linked and embedded in
shared national interests.
The days of arguing over the costs and benefits of overlapping line items are over. The cost of educating a girl and
the cost of women's health programs are no longer a win-orlose funding choice in an era of goals that recognize holistic
benefits. When well-being (physical, social, emotional), environmental sustainability, and greater equality are elevated,
cross-sector collaborations take root, and the search for interactions replaces the race of advocates and their funders
to prove the worth of single, sectoral interventions.
Third, recognize that the world is not only ready for quality, it's sick and tired of pretenders. Tablets don't replace
teachers any more than radio or cassette tapes did. More
than two millennia of teachers and students have watched
fads come and go while study after study repeatedly reports
the value of high-quality professional teachers. Yet, trending policies like those that led to expanded class sizes and
untrained class minders seem always to use communities
of the poorest and most marginalized as laboratories.
Why is it that a 10-year-old girl in Accra, Ghana, must
sell water at busy intersections on Mondays and Wednesdays to raise money to go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Why is it that global for-profit companies are hiring
consulting firms to help them pick governments with the
least capacity as partners in enterprises that eliminate
public schooling in favor of fee-based content mills led by
the lowest-paid workers available?
One reason is that, until now, there has been relatively
little discussion about consistently demanding government
accountability on issues like reforming global capital and
finance regulations, strengthening domestic resource mobilization, and simply collecting the taxes owed. But in an era
in which global priorities are latticed in a visible way, and
governments and private-sector actors are internationally
branded for their selfish and often callous activities, NGOs,
funders, and advocates will be united in defending and promoting the range of goals in unison. Education is a human
right and must be free.

This is how we win. It's no longer enough to support each
other's success in coalitions and collections of shared purpose. The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals will guide
our success in the next 15 years, because they are a path
for a world in crisis and chaos at a time when millions of
eyes are turned to the United Nations and global advocates,
hoping to see collective engagement across a very broad
front of issues.
As teachers, we know how it feels to have so many eyes
watching and people poised to participate. They are looking
not for answers to every crisis in turn, but for a consistent
and aggressive implementation of a plan for success. In this
case, in our own time, they are seeking assurance that humanity will put its money where its mouth is, and finally
apply lessons learned to its most pressing problems. The
U.N.'s sustainable-development goals are the right place
to start. ■

Failure in the
past was marked
by fragmented,
piecemeal
strategies
and market
fundamentalism."

SUSAN HOPGOOD is the president of Education International.
LILY ESKELSEN-GARCÍA is the president of the National Education
Association. RANDI WEINGARTEN is the president of the American
Federation of Teachers.

Getty

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