if you can read this...thank a teacher

This week Global Action Week for the Global Campaign for Education.

"Millions of parents, teachers and children around the world are calling on their governments to provide free, good quality, basic education for all the world's children. They are part of the Global Campaign for Education; we add our voice to their call."

- Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, April 2002.

Imagine if you hadn't even been to primary (elementary) school. When we talk in our societies about problems like drugs, environment, etc people often say that it's education that will make real change. We talk about how the internet is spreading information far and wide, provoking discussion, changing people's perceptions of the world around them, and again, effecting change.

But we fool ourselves if we believe that these things can touch the illiterate and uneducated of our world. That widening internet doesn't tell you anything if you can't read what's on the screen. Education starts with the basics - and that means school.

Education is a basic human right and fundamental to the fight for human dignity and freedom. For 125 million children and 880 million adults, that right is violated every day.

The Global Campaign for Education promotes education as a basic human right, and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfill their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people; in particular for children, women and all disadvantaged, deprived sections of society.

Primary school education is such a given in our lives, it's hard to imagine a place where children pray to be lucky enough to get a few years of schooling. Most of our kids are praying that the school holidays will hurry up and arrive. They don't know what it is to yearn for knowledge and be refused.

If there's an event on in your city this week, I hope you'll lend your support. My country isn't even listed in the event list ~ I wish I'd known earlier so I could have maybe planned an event. I'll have to remember it for next year. It would be a cool thing to be involved in and get some kids involved in.

More information on the Global Campaign for Education.