Actividades ejemplo

The first dawnings of reason, with the first development of fancy and affections, are in every country greatly subject to the control of the female mind and women thus everywhere exert a powerful influence on the character of after life (British and Foreign School Society Annual Report, 1829 in Goodman, 2000:16- 17).

Education of women has a positive impact on the quality of life. The educated woman gives more attention to the health and nutrition of her family, has a higher life expectancy than her illiterate counterpart and sees to the education of her children. Deprivation can result in sickness, inadequate nutrition, large families, high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy (UNESCO, 1994:3).

As the two quotes, above - written more than 120 years apart - highlight, the reproductive roles of women, their lives as wives and mothers, have been the most powerful and enduring focus of discussions around the role of education for women in Third World societies (Moser, 1989:1807). This focus was established by early colonial educators who targeted women as the “angels of the hearth” (Rivers, 2006:6), or ‘moral guardians’ of the household. They encouraged women to emulate European models of household management that focused on improving family health and hygiene (Goodman, 2000:17; Leach, 1998:11; Rogers, 1980:39). This focus has been perpetuated by mainstream development organisations concerned with the potential of educating women to reduce fertility levels, and decrease infant and child mortality rates (Pong, 1999:155).

The establishment of educational institutions during the colonial era was dominated by the aims of two major institutions: the Church and the State. While these two institutions often had competing educational objectives, they both shared a belief in the inferiority of indigenous education beliefs, and a view that women were less suited for education than men. These views were strongly influenced by evolutionary arguments of the day that positioned both women and non-Western peoples as more ‘child-like’, with smaller brains, and lower levels of intelligence (Fox, 1997:51; Lyons, 1978:192). Both women and indigenous people were seen as barely educatable, and indeed many cautioned against ‘over-education’ for fear that it would lead to ill health resulting from an overtaxed brain (Lyons, 1978:197).

As a result, women were more likely to be targeted for church-based ‘moral education’ than skills-based state education (Kelly, 1989). Church-based education tended to be more broad-based and inclusive, focused, as it was, on the wide-spread transmission of Christian values (Gould, 1993:22). Indeed, women, as the ‘moral guardians’ of the family, were often explicitly targeted by missionary educators hoping to accelerate cultural change within the family.

The colonial administrators, on the other hand, did not support the type of broad-based education favoured by the Church, fearing that it would lead to increased expectations and social unrest (Altbach, 1987:50). The colonial administrators saw education as a tool that could be used to ‘up-skill’ a small local male elite in order to enable them to take up lower-level administrative positions within the new colonial governments. As a result, state education tended to focus more on basic literacy and numeracy skills, and was available to a higher level to a small number of local men (Altbach & Kelly, 1978:2; Gould, 1993:22). Women were not considered suited to public office, and as a result, tended to be educated for ‘domesticity’ (Rogers, 1980:36). Gail Kelly (1989) summarises the typical differences between the curriculum for boys and girls in the colonial era; in this case focusing on French Vietnam:

Without a doubt, both the informal and formal curriculum of the schools emphasized woman’s roles as mother and housewife. In the French-language curriculum, the Ecole Brieux in Hanoi assigned essays on hygiene and health as well as on how mothers should discipline their children and the qualities of a good housewife. In boy’s schools, the French composition topics focused on

describing objects, on writing letters to the French local administrator, on occupations students might assume after graduation, on the work of the peasant, and on the benefits of France. (Kelly, 1989:196)

On the whole, education for both men and women in the colonial era was aimed at the primary level; and importantly, unlike the dominant discourse within Europe at the time, was not promoted as a means for social mobility. Indeed education tended be as restricted as possible in order to fulfil the aims of Church and State, without encouraging demands for increased equality amongst the colonised (Altbach & Kelly, 1978:42). In addition, policies on post-primary education also tended to vary between colonies. Britain was relatively generous with the development of tertiary education in India, but actively avoided it in Africa due to fears about the cultivation of political unrest. The French, too, were more generous in Vietnam than West Africa. The Dutch and Belgians were particularly opposed to the development of universities in their colonies - Belgium going as far as banning the development of post-secondary schooling in its colonies (Altbach, 1987:49).

Education policy in the independence era continued to prioritise education as a tool for ‘modernising’ women’s domestic roles (Moser, 1989:1809). Development policy has tended to focus on the ways in which basic education and increases in literacy, in particular, can enable women to make more ‘informed’ decisions about family health and wellbeing. Educated women, it is argued, are more likely to use contraception and to produce fewer children, thus limiting population growth (Herz & Sperling, 2004:4; Hill & King, 1993:20). They are also considered to be more likely to make better decisions about child health (Hill & King, 1993:12; Schultz, 1993:70), and to value education for their own children (Herz & Sperling, 2004:4; Summers, 1993:vii). As this piece from Lawrence Summers (1993), then Vice-President of the World Bank, highlights, the ‘educated woman’ is considered to be the key player in ‘breaking the cycle’ of family deprivation. While the uneducated woman is stuck in the home, burdened by tradition and ignorance, the educated woman is positioned as modern, forward thinking, and proactive about taking advantage of modern medical facilities to protect the health of her family:

A poor family has three children. The mother went to school for five years and is able to read and do arithmetic well enough to teach school in the village. As her last birth was extremely difficult, she and her husband adopted family planning. She now has more time and resources to spend on her family.

Hoping for a better future for her children, she insists that they all go to school and practice their reading each night. When one of her daughters gets sick and does not seem to be getting better, she takes her to the medical clinic. The doctor gives the mother some ampicillin tablets and instructs her to give them to any of the children who fall ill. The daughter’s strep infection is cured, as is the infection of the son, who is running a high fever by the time the mother returns home. (Summers, 1993:vi)

However, since the 1970s, feminist theorists have been increasingly critical of the tendency to focus on women’s reproductive roles at the expense of recognition of the productive roles women play in Third World economies. This critique has prompted a widening of education and development discourse to include the impact of education on women’s productive capacities.