EDUCATION • POLITICS CURRENT AFFAIRS PATTERNS OF …

ADVANCING GLOBAL EDUCATION

PATTERNS OF POTENTIAL HUMAN PROGRESS

VOLUME 2

Janet R. Dickson Barry B. Hughes Mohammod T. Irfan

PARADIGM

ADVANCING GLOBAL EDUCATION

PATTERNS OF POTENTIAL HUMAN PROGRESS

VOLUME 2

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any media or form, including electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or informational storage and retrieval systems, without the express written consent of the publisher.

Copyright ? 2010 Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, University of Denver

Published in the United States by Paradigm Publishers, 3360 Mitchell Lane Suite E, Boulder, CO80301 USA. Paradigm Publishers is the trade name of Birkenkamp & Company, LLC, Dean Birkenkamp, President and Publisher.

Distributed on the Indian Subcontinent by Oxford University Press India, 1 Jai Singh Road, Post Box 43, New Delhi 110001 India.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dickson, Janet R. Advancing global education / Janet R. Dickson... [et.al.]. p. cm. -- (Patterns of potential human progress v.2)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59451-755-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. International education. I. Title. LC1090.D54 2010 370.116?dc22 2009026878

Cover design by Designed and typeset by .

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Corporation

14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5

Picture credits

(Photos are from left toright):

Chapter 1 Thomas DeClerk Andres Dottir Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver

Chapter 4 Nancy Clarkson Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver Maya Casagrande

Chapter 2 Sarah Meyer Jessica Crotta Nancy Clarkson

Chapter 5 Mitch Chrisme Nicole Vilegi Maya Casagrande

Chapter 3 Thomas DeClerk Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver Maya Casagrande

Chapter 6 Kendra Smith Vanessa Devereaux Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver

Chapter 7 Ashley Latimer Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver Emily Ruppel

Chapter 8 Peter Birmingham Wayne Armstrong/ University of Denver Kendra Smith

Chapter 9 Amanda Schveitzer Kendra Smith Ashley Marks

Cover Art

The cover art, an oil painting by Margaret Lawless, represents many elements related to the volume's theme of advancing global education. The processes of education require the interaction of adults and young people within the home and community as well as in the school. The diversity of human figures captures the diversity of human populations and of participants in the educational process. The division of education into levels--primary, secondary, and tertiary--is now all but universal, although the precise specifications of the levels and the periods spent in each may vary. The upward sloping path of the picture represents not just the progression of people through stages of education but the broader concept of progress this volume series explores. It even hints at the S-shaped character that transitions in human development so often follow. The transformation of the global human condition to longterm, sustainable well-being encompasses many such transitions, which are therefore a pervasive theme and image of work from the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures.

Advancing Global Education

PATTERNS OF POTENTIAL HUMAN PROGRESS

VOLUME 2

Janet R. Dickson Barry B. Hughes Mohammod T. Irfan

Barry B. Hughes, Series Editor

University of Denver

Paradigm Publishers Boulder ? London

Oxford University Press India New Delhi

Preface

Advancing Global Education is the second in a series of volumes on Patterns of Potential Human Progress, a series that explores prospects for human development and the improvement of the global human condition. Each volume considers one key aspect of how development appears to be unfolding globally and locally, how we would like it to evolve, and how better to assure that we move it in desired directions.

The first volume was dedicated to the issue of global poverty reduction, presenting a longrange, base case forecast--an elaboration of the path we appear to be on. It also explored an extensive set of variations in that path, each tied to alternative domestic and international interventions. The current volume applies a similar methodology--a long-range, base case forecast and alternative assumptions--to global advances in education participation and attainment. A coming volume will similarly look at improving global health.

The volumes emerge from the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies. The International Futures (IFs) modeling and analysis project has worked for three decades to develop and use the strongest possible global, long-term, multiple-issue capability for exploring the future of global issues. Among the philosophical underpinnings of the IFs project are the beliefs that (1) prediction is impossible, but forecasting is necessary to understand change and to support policy development; (2) analysis should be built around alternative possible futures; and (3) tools for forecasting should be as fully open and transparent as possible.

This second volume drills down into arguably the most important option for consciously making the future better than the past: the expansion of global educational opportunities and levels of education attainment. It explores the remarkable transition in global patterns of participation in education that, at least on the timescale of most historical human change, is moving with quite incredible speed toward women's and men's universal basic education and literacy. More

advanced levels of education are also spreading rapidly across the global population. The century of change between 1960 and 2060, roughly our focal horizon, promises to be of historic importance in the advance of education.

Education brings much private gain but also provides substantial benefits to the broader society. Fortunately, societies largely recognize this and act to enhance educational opportunities. Nonetheless, one of the central questions for this volume is whether a further acceleration of participation rates across multiple levels of formal education would bring individuals and societies a still greater return on their investment.

Overall, the answer to that question is a resounding "yes." The time lag between public investments in education and widely distributed social returns from that investment is long, but the payoffs are huge. It is impossible to imagine a sustainable, global society with widely distributed well-being unless that society is highly educated. The capabilities of individual human beings to function successfully and to live well depend on education. Incomes are certainly important indicators of such functioning, but represent only a part of the fulfillment that education brings. Education is also central to the potential of communities to provide a setting with peace and justice in which humans live long and happy lives.

We fully recognize that what we do in this volume is simple compared to the real work of bringing about transitions in global education patterns. It is too easy for authors of books and articles to identify countries or regions that can be said to lag in providing education and urge them to do better (or urge others to help them do so). However, with few exceptions, the human community is already collectively engaged in the monumentally important transformation of global education participation patterns, and hundreds of millions of people contribute daily to that process. We hope only that the attempt here to describe what is happening, and to explore the benefits of continuing and enhancing those efforts, can make its own small contribution to the process.

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Patterns of Potential Human Progress Volume 2: Advancing Global Education

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