Thursday, October 25, 2007

Demographic Reality

Gerry sent me this yesterday: World Population

It’s a clever demographic breakdown of the Human Race along all sorts of lines, using an imaginary village of 100 people to represent the entire species.

There are a lot of shocking truths buried in this report – spend a few minutes checking it out. The one the blew me away the most was this:

“1 (only one) would have a college education.” Only one person in our imaginary village of 100 people representing the entire human race has a college education. I find this disturbing in that it means the intellectual future of our species is being determined by a handful of white westerners. Look what wonderful things the white west has introduced to the world in the past century. If nobody else is being educated we have nobody else to champion an alternate path for our world.
I have contended for years that education is the highest goal we can achieve as a society. I renew that contention. But not only must we improve the state of education for our own (American) children to create parity with the remainder of the West (and some parts of Asia); we must be looking to educate the children of the world. Yes, I know, they need to be fed first. What is an education to a starving child? Of course the old adage, of teaching a woman to fish and thus feeding her for life, does come to mind.

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