Yearn to Learn
Sermon given by Laurie Magnuson
At the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 13, 2018
The school district where I grew up required a child to be five years of age by December 31 of the school year to start kindergarten, so I started school when I was four years old. I loved it! It never occurred to me that a child would not go to school – it was just what everyone seemed to do. It also did not occur to me to be especially grateful for it. I was aware that some people dropped out of High School. I understood by the time I was thinking about which college I might want to attend (which, mind you – not even “whether”) that I was lucky to have that particular choice. I know not everyone was able to (or even wanted) to pursue their education after high school graduation. I just did not, at the time, realize just how lucky I was to have been born in a country that values education; because there is a global crisis in education at this time, particularly for girls.
Lauren Lewis states in Global Education that the benefits of education equip individuals of all ages with the skills and knowledge needed to be productive and successful global citizens. Educating citizens within poverty-stricken areas can be an effective way to address and eradicate global poverty.
The following are eight benefits of education that help to combat global poverty:
1. Education Raises Literacy Levels Illiteracy is a cycle which reinforces long-term poverty levels throughout generations. Individuals living in poverty are often prevented from entering educational settings. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a 12 percent drop in global poverty could be achieved if each student within low-income countries received basic reading and literacy skills by the time they left school.
2. Education Increases Income and Wealth Creation Increased education levels directly give individuals the necessary skills to increase their income level. Each extra year of schooling a child receives increases that student’s earnings by up to 10 percent, according to UNESCO. Education also boosts the income levels and amount of food farmers produce on their land by giving them the necessary information to cultivate cash crops or follow other measures that may raise their cultivation levels.
3. Education Helps Reduce Instability and Corruption According to the Global Partnership for Education, 36 percent of children worldwide who are not receiving education live in areas of conflict. This lack of opportunity damages their ability to find employment once the conflict ceases. Education promotes stable and peaceful societies that are capable of development.
4. Education Promotes Healthier Lives Education and awareness give individuals the tools they need to take control over their health choices. Education is also important for the containment of communicable diseases. According to the World Health Service, an individual who has completed a lower secondary school education has poor health 18 percent less than individuals with no education. Prevention programs help to fight the transmission of diseases within affected communities and reduce mother/infant mortality rates. UNESCO reported a mother who is literate is 23 percent more likely to give birth with the help of a skilled attendant or midwife. Further, children born to literate mothers are also 50 percent more likely to live past the age of five.
5. Education Empowers Females The benefits of female education are not limited to childbirth. When women receive educational opportunities they have greater abilities to generate income, their families are healthier, they raise fewer children and get married at older ages, thereby averting child marriages. Educating mothers is integral for the societies they belong to. Over the last four decades, around four million child deaths have been prevented due to an increase in female education according to a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation posted in The Lancet journal.
6. Education, Food Security and Nutrition Poor nutrition affects brain development and the ability to learn for individuals living within poverty stricken areas. According to UNESCO, 1.7 million fewer children would suffer from stunting, a sign of malnutrition, if all women completed primary education levels. Education also contributes to a more varied diet which reduces the prevalence of malnutrition.
7. Education and the Development of Technical Skills With increased levels of education, a country’s residents will be more likely to gain knowledge of technical skills creating employment opportunities in fields such as agriculture, construction, technologies and transportation. The development of infrastructure gives children living in remote areas the ability to reach school facilities more easily, raising educational levels within that particular area.
8. Education Boosts Economic Growth Education promotes and fuels productivity gains that boost economic growth within countries. As reported by the United States Agency for International Development, increasing the average level of education in a country by only one year can increase the annual gross domestic product of that nation by half a percentage point.
Unfortunately, in spite of these known benefits of education, too many girls in too many parts of the world are not in school.
WIDE, the World inequality database in education tells us that:
In 10 of the world’s countries, less than 50% of the poorest girls aged 7 through 16 enter school at all, and nine out of ten do not complete their schooling. In three of those countries, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ethiopia, more than one million girls are not in school.
In those 10 countries, the average years of education for 17-22 year old females is 1.1 years or less. 31 million primary school aged girls and 34 million adolescent girls are not in school.
Two thirds of the 774 million illiterate people in the word are female. Slow education progress for children has lifelong effects: almost a quarter of young women aged 15-24 today (116 million) in developing countries have never completed primary school and so lack skills for work.
Although these statistics are overwhelmingly negative, there is hope. Angela Melchiorre is a member of Advisors for the Right to Education Project. In her keynote address before a panel of experts at the UN Half-day of General Discussion on girls and women’s right to education, she said “Three factors can and hopefully will, support us in bringing about change:
Awareness,
Participation, and
Inspiration”
The disheartening statistics earlier can count for awareness. Now, for some much-needed inspiration –
As I mentioned, one of the bottom 10 countries for female education is Pakistan. It has been ten years since Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai began writing an anonymous diary about life under Taliban rule in north-west Pakistan.
Malala was born in 1997. Her father Ziauddin, an educator, was determined that his daughter would go to school and be given every opportunity a boy would have.
In 2007, the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, where her family lived. At first, they banned television and music. Then at the end of 2008, the Taliban issued an edict banning girls from going to school. Using a pen name to protect her family, Malala began blogging for the BBC about her life and how she felt in the final days before her school was set to close. In a 2016 interview on The Daily Show, she said that although she always loved to learn, it wasn’t until she lost her right to education that she realized how much it meant to her.
In 2009, The New York Times featured Malala and her father in a short documentary about their life and fight to protect girls’ education in the Swat Valley.
By November 2011, the Pakistani army had weakened the Taliban’s hold on the Swat Valley, forcing them to retreat to rural areas outside and Malala’s school was able to reopen. She spoke out against the Taliban by publicly campaigning for girls to go to school, winning Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. She says she did not fear for herself, but for retaliation against her father – she did not believe even the Taliban would target a child.
In October 2012, a masked Taliban gunman boarded Malala’s school bus and asked for her by name. He shot her in the head, neck and shoulder, along with two of her friends.
Malala survived the shooting and was transported to the UK for treatment. She was discharged from the hospital in January of 2013 and by March was back in school in the UK.
She spoke at the United Nations on her 16th birthday (which the UN proclaimed “Malala Day”) and promised to dedicate her birthday each year to shining a spotlight on the world’s most vulnerable girls. She spent her 17th birthday in Nigeria (another of the world’s bottom 10 countries for girls’ education), where she met with the families of mass kidnapping victims and added her voice to the outcry demanding their safe return.
In December 2014 Malala and Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize. The youngest-ever Nobel Laureate invited girls from Syria, Nigeria, and Pakistan to attend the ceremony in Oslo.
Continuing her promise to dedicate her birthday each year to girls in need, she spent her 18th birthday opening a secondary school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. On her 19th birthday she met with refugee girls living in Kenya and Rwanda.
Before beginning University, Malala traveled to North America, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America on what she called her “Girl Power Trip”. Everywhere she went, she heard directly from girls about barriers to their education, like violence, poverty, child marriage and machismo culture. She then held over a dozen meetings with presidents and prime ministers urging them to invest in girls’ education.
She is currently enrolled at the University of Oxford, studying philosophy, politics and economics. She continues to fight for girls’ education around the world. She was once asked what she thought the reason was that the Taliban closed her school. She said she believed it was because education gives a person power, and the Taliban does not want girls to be educated because they were afraid of girls being powerful. She started the Malala fund to work for a world where every girl can learn and lead without fear.
And she is not alone - there are many more shining examples:
Naseem Parveen is Central Asia Institute’s (CAI) mission all rolled up in one person.She is female. Her impoverished family was devastated by a natural disaster that nearly derailed her education. But with CAI’s help she stayed in school and completed her college degree. Now, at age 22, she’s giving back with a six-month voluntary teaching position in a remote CAI school. After that, she hopes to pursue a master’s degree. She has three brothers and wants to start working so she can help give education to her brothers, otherwise they will not be able to continue their education.”
Another bright light is Camfed. Camfed invests in girls and women in the poorest rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where girls face acute disadvantage, and where their empowerment is now transforming communities.
Melody, a secondary scholar in Zambia, says “It is important for us to be educated, because we are the future leaders.” Melody was at risk of becoming a child bride until she was selected to for a Camfed scholarship. She says “Education is very important because my mum keeps telling me that when you educate a girl child, you educate the whole nation… I think that as well!”
An orphan at age seven, Sharifa depended on her primary school teachers for daily food as well as learning. Although she passed her primary school exams, without financial support, she could go no further. Sharifa recalls her conversation with her grandmother when offered a place at secondary school, “I just need a skirt, a shirt and shoes, and then I’ll figure out how to go to school.” Her grandmother replied, “If food is a problem, how can I afford education? I wish I could help, but I can’t.” She remained at home while some of her friends continued to secondary school until she received a scholarship. She says "I am lucky today because I have people fighting for my right. I am getting an education. But there are so many children out there who do not have the privilege I have been given. I want to be a lawyer because I want to fight for the rights of the women, the children, and the oppressed people in my community. My first focus would be to children.”
I could go on and on, but don’t worry, I won’t. While there are countless heart-wrenching stories, there are also so very many inspirational ones and many ways we can help.
Malala’s father was once asked what he did to make his daughter so strong, and he answered “Do not ask me what I did; ask me what I did not. I did not clip her wings.” What a powerful example of awareness, participation and inspiration!
I chose the title and subject of this sermon because of an RE class earlier this year. The younger children’s group had been learning our seven principles. The UUA has a version of the seven principles for children which uses a seven colored rainbow as a way to learn and remember them. The first letter of each color is the first letter of the children’s version of one of the principles. So, for the first principle, “R” for “red” is also “R” for “Respect All Beings”. On a particular Sunday, we were discussing our third principle which in the children’s version is represented by yellow and is “Yearn to Learn”. We read a story about UU Dorothea Dix and the free school she started in the early 1800’s in her grandmother’s barn in Boston for the children who could not afford the fees for private school. The story was about two young girls who can only go to this free school because their family could not afford private school and girls were not allowed to attend public school at that time. Then we talked about some places in the world where girls are not allowed to go to school at all. The children were confused by this; they told me I must be talking about the olden days, like in the story. I told them that I wished I were, but it is true that in many places in the world today, girls are either not allowed or are not able to attend school. They were upset! They were outraged! They said “but that’s not fair! Everyone should be able to go to school!” They said “We have to do something about this!”
May it be so.
Sermon given by Laurie Magnuson
At the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 13, 2018
The school district where I grew up required a child to be five years of age by December 31 of the school year to start kindergarten, so I started school when I was four years old. I loved it! It never occurred to me that a child would not go to school – it was just what everyone seemed to do. It also did not occur to me to be especially grateful for it. I was aware that some people dropped out of High School. I understood by the time I was thinking about which college I might want to attend (which, mind you – not even “whether”) that I was lucky to have that particular choice. I know not everyone was able to (or even wanted) to pursue their education after high school graduation. I just did not, at the time, realize just how lucky I was to have been born in a country that values education; because there is a global crisis in education at this time, particularly for girls.
Lauren Lewis states in Global Education that the benefits of education equip individuals of all ages with the skills and knowledge needed to be productive and successful global citizens. Educating citizens within poverty-stricken areas can be an effective way to address and eradicate global poverty.
The following are eight benefits of education that help to combat global poverty:
1. Education Raises Literacy Levels Illiteracy is a cycle which reinforces long-term poverty levels throughout generations. Individuals living in poverty are often prevented from entering educational settings. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a 12 percent drop in global poverty could be achieved if each student within low-income countries received basic reading and literacy skills by the time they left school.
2. Education Increases Income and Wealth Creation Increased education levels directly give individuals the necessary skills to increase their income level. Each extra year of schooling a child receives increases that student’s earnings by up to 10 percent, according to UNESCO. Education also boosts the income levels and amount of food farmers produce on their land by giving them the necessary information to cultivate cash crops or follow other measures that may raise their cultivation levels.
3. Education Helps Reduce Instability and Corruption According to the Global Partnership for Education, 36 percent of children worldwide who are not receiving education live in areas of conflict. This lack of opportunity damages their ability to find employment once the conflict ceases. Education promotes stable and peaceful societies that are capable of development.
4. Education Promotes Healthier Lives Education and awareness give individuals the tools they need to take control over their health choices. Education is also important for the containment of communicable diseases. According to the World Health Service, an individual who has completed a lower secondary school education has poor health 18 percent less than individuals with no education. Prevention programs help to fight the transmission of diseases within affected communities and reduce mother/infant mortality rates. UNESCO reported a mother who is literate is 23 percent more likely to give birth with the help of a skilled attendant or midwife. Further, children born to literate mothers are also 50 percent more likely to live past the age of five.
5. Education Empowers Females The benefits of female education are not limited to childbirth. When women receive educational opportunities they have greater abilities to generate income, their families are healthier, they raise fewer children and get married at older ages, thereby averting child marriages. Educating mothers is integral for the societies they belong to. Over the last four decades, around four million child deaths have been prevented due to an increase in female education according to a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation posted in The Lancet journal.
6. Education, Food Security and Nutrition Poor nutrition affects brain development and the ability to learn for individuals living within poverty stricken areas. According to UNESCO, 1.7 million fewer children would suffer from stunting, a sign of malnutrition, if all women completed primary education levels. Education also contributes to a more varied diet which reduces the prevalence of malnutrition.
7. Education and the Development of Technical Skills With increased levels of education, a country’s residents will be more likely to gain knowledge of technical skills creating employment opportunities in fields such as agriculture, construction, technologies and transportation. The development of infrastructure gives children living in remote areas the ability to reach school facilities more easily, raising educational levels within that particular area.
8. Education Boosts Economic Growth Education promotes and fuels productivity gains that boost economic growth within countries. As reported by the United States Agency for International Development, increasing the average level of education in a country by only one year can increase the annual gross domestic product of that nation by half a percentage point.
Unfortunately, in spite of these known benefits of education, too many girls in too many parts of the world are not in school.
WIDE, the World inequality database in education tells us that:
In 10 of the world’s countries, less than 50% of the poorest girls aged 7 through 16 enter school at all, and nine out of ten do not complete their schooling. In three of those countries, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ethiopia, more than one million girls are not in school.
In those 10 countries, the average years of education for 17-22 year old females is 1.1 years or less. 31 million primary school aged girls and 34 million adolescent girls are not in school.
Two thirds of the 774 million illiterate people in the word are female. Slow education progress for children has lifelong effects: almost a quarter of young women aged 15-24 today (116 million) in developing countries have never completed primary school and so lack skills for work.
Although these statistics are overwhelmingly negative, there is hope. Angela Melchiorre is a member of Advisors for the Right to Education Project. In her keynote address before a panel of experts at the UN Half-day of General Discussion on girls and women’s right to education, she said “Three factors can and hopefully will, support us in bringing about change:
Awareness,
Participation, and
Inspiration”
The disheartening statistics earlier can count for awareness. Now, for some much-needed inspiration –
As I mentioned, one of the bottom 10 countries for female education is Pakistan. It has been ten years since Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai began writing an anonymous diary about life under Taliban rule in north-west Pakistan.
Malala was born in 1997. Her father Ziauddin, an educator, was determined that his daughter would go to school and be given every opportunity a boy would have.
In 2007, the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, where her family lived. At first, they banned television and music. Then at the end of 2008, the Taliban issued an edict banning girls from going to school. Using a pen name to protect her family, Malala began blogging for the BBC about her life and how she felt in the final days before her school was set to close. In a 2016 interview on The Daily Show, she said that although she always loved to learn, it wasn’t until she lost her right to education that she realized how much it meant to her.
In 2009, The New York Times featured Malala and her father in a short documentary about their life and fight to protect girls’ education in the Swat Valley.
By November 2011, the Pakistani army had weakened the Taliban’s hold on the Swat Valley, forcing them to retreat to rural areas outside and Malala’s school was able to reopen. She spoke out against the Taliban by publicly campaigning for girls to go to school, winning Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. She says she did not fear for herself, but for retaliation against her father – she did not believe even the Taliban would target a child.
In October 2012, a masked Taliban gunman boarded Malala’s school bus and asked for her by name. He shot her in the head, neck and shoulder, along with two of her friends.
Malala survived the shooting and was transported to the UK for treatment. She was discharged from the hospital in January of 2013 and by March was back in school in the UK.
She spoke at the United Nations on her 16th birthday (which the UN proclaimed “Malala Day”) and promised to dedicate her birthday each year to shining a spotlight on the world’s most vulnerable girls. She spent her 17th birthday in Nigeria (another of the world’s bottom 10 countries for girls’ education), where she met with the families of mass kidnapping victims and added her voice to the outcry demanding their safe return.
In December 2014 Malala and Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize. The youngest-ever Nobel Laureate invited girls from Syria, Nigeria, and Pakistan to attend the ceremony in Oslo.
Continuing her promise to dedicate her birthday each year to girls in need, she spent her 18th birthday opening a secondary school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. On her 19th birthday she met with refugee girls living in Kenya and Rwanda.
Before beginning University, Malala traveled to North America, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America on what she called her “Girl Power Trip”. Everywhere she went, she heard directly from girls about barriers to their education, like violence, poverty, child marriage and machismo culture. She then held over a dozen meetings with presidents and prime ministers urging them to invest in girls’ education.
She is currently enrolled at the University of Oxford, studying philosophy, politics and economics. She continues to fight for girls’ education around the world. She was once asked what she thought the reason was that the Taliban closed her school. She said she believed it was because education gives a person power, and the Taliban does not want girls to be educated because they were afraid of girls being powerful. She started the Malala fund to work for a world where every girl can learn and lead without fear.
And she is not alone - there are many more shining examples:
Naseem Parveen is Central Asia Institute’s (CAI) mission all rolled up in one person.She is female. Her impoverished family was devastated by a natural disaster that nearly derailed her education. But with CAI’s help she stayed in school and completed her college degree. Now, at age 22, she’s giving back with a six-month voluntary teaching position in a remote CAI school. After that, she hopes to pursue a master’s degree. She has three brothers and wants to start working so she can help give education to her brothers, otherwise they will not be able to continue their education.”
Another bright light is Camfed. Camfed invests in girls and women in the poorest rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where girls face acute disadvantage, and where their empowerment is now transforming communities.
Melody, a secondary scholar in Zambia, says “It is important for us to be educated, because we are the future leaders.” Melody was at risk of becoming a child bride until she was selected to for a Camfed scholarship. She says “Education is very important because my mum keeps telling me that when you educate a girl child, you educate the whole nation… I think that as well!”
An orphan at age seven, Sharifa depended on her primary school teachers for daily food as well as learning. Although she passed her primary school exams, without financial support, she could go no further. Sharifa recalls her conversation with her grandmother when offered a place at secondary school, “I just need a skirt, a shirt and shoes, and then I’ll figure out how to go to school.” Her grandmother replied, “If food is a problem, how can I afford education? I wish I could help, but I can’t.” She remained at home while some of her friends continued to secondary school until she received a scholarship. She says "I am lucky today because I have people fighting for my right. I am getting an education. But there are so many children out there who do not have the privilege I have been given. I want to be a lawyer because I want to fight for the rights of the women, the children, and the oppressed people in my community. My first focus would be to children.”
I could go on and on, but don’t worry, I won’t. While there are countless heart-wrenching stories, there are also so very many inspirational ones and many ways we can help.
Malala’s father was once asked what he did to make his daughter so strong, and he answered “Do not ask me what I did; ask me what I did not. I did not clip her wings.” What a powerful example of awareness, participation and inspiration!
I chose the title and subject of this sermon because of an RE class earlier this year. The younger children’s group had been learning our seven principles. The UUA has a version of the seven principles for children which uses a seven colored rainbow as a way to learn and remember them. The first letter of each color is the first letter of the children’s version of one of the principles. So, for the first principle, “R” for “red” is also “R” for “Respect All Beings”. On a particular Sunday, we were discussing our third principle which in the children’s version is represented by yellow and is “Yearn to Learn”. We read a story about UU Dorothea Dix and the free school she started in the early 1800’s in her grandmother’s barn in Boston for the children who could not afford the fees for private school. The story was about two young girls who can only go to this free school because their family could not afford private school and girls were not allowed to attend public school at that time. Then we talked about some places in the world where girls are not allowed to go to school at all. The children were confused by this; they told me I must be talking about the olden days, like in the story. I told them that I wished I were, but it is true that in many places in the world today, girls are either not allowed or are not able to attend school. They were upset! They were outraged! They said “but that’s not fair! Everyone should be able to go to school!” They said “We have to do something about this!”
May it be so.
Proudly powered by Weebly