In the article by Tina
Rosenberg, A Boost for the World’s
Poorest Schools, she is trying to address how the program, Save the
Children is working to improve the reading level of children. She starts off
this article by stating that the world has made great progress toward the goal
of having all children in school. She also gives several statistics. One of
these statistics is that 69 million school-age children do not attend school as
of right now. However, this is an improvement compared to the year 1999 in
which there were 106 million school-age children not attending school. Countries
have made progress by getting rid of school fees, building schools in distant
areas, switching the language of teaching to the one children actually
speak, and giving families incentive to send children to school with school
food. But, the flowing in of new students in many places has affected school
systems that were already having a hard time. Some schools in countries such as
Latin America, Africa, and Asia often have no materials or books other than a
chalkboard. Sometimes at these schools, teachers do not even speak the same
language as the students, and do not even show up for class. Save the Children
is trying to help schools. In Tigray, Ethiopia, 23 percent of third grade
students in a school supported by Save the Children could not read a single
word in one minute. In Nepal, it was 50 percent. The Save the Children organization
created Literacy Boost. This program is now in schools in 12 countries and
expanding to another six this year. It works in any language and culture. It
also holds workshops to help teachers learn effective teaching methods. The
goal of this program is to expose children to reading as much as they can, and
boost children’s literacy skills.
Reading this article
made me realize how lucky we are to live in the United States and receive a
good education. Sometimes, we take it for granted. It completely blows my mind
to think that there are children around the world who are in third grade and cannot
read a single word. I also cannot believe that teachers are not even showing up
to school to do their jobs. I won’t get myself started on that aspect. One
thing that saddened me during this article was that some schools in poor parts
of the world have no other learning materials besides a chalkboard. We are so fortunate
to live in the United States, where we have just about everything we need to
learn. One thing I thought was interesting about this program was that all of the
books are homemade. This makes the stories more interesting and children can
learn to appreciate the work that was put into creating the books. From what I
have read in this article, I think that Save the Children’s Literacy Boost
program is a successful and rewarding program. I also think that we should
create something like this for the under-privileged schools in the United States.
This program has been proven to work, and can only help students in the United
States improve their literacy skills even more!
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/118675/?scp=19&sq=Education%20Problems&st=cse
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