No education, no respect?
Reading yet another article on the importance of women's education for their 'emancipation', I am suddenly questioning this oft-repeated assumption.
Now, don't get me wrong! I am passionate about education for all and would not have spent nearly 10 years in Bangladeshi classrooms if I had not been putting my life where my mouth was but why do we find it necessary to give approval (apparently) to the prejudice that women have to be educated before they can be respected? I do not note any mention in statements of human rights that they are limited to 'the educated'! Surely we should be upholding the ideal that, whether someone is educated or not, they still have the right to be treated with respect. Is that asking too much? Surely, if there is no respect at a social level then however much you might develop women's education, the increase in respect will only be marginal and grudging. Why continue to give to anyone the excuse to treat certain women badly 'because they are uneducated'! Even in some educational establishments, one hears the complaint, “Oh, but the parents are uneducated!” At which I growl, “My father left school at 16 and my mother at 14 but they were delighted I had 6 years at Oxford University!”
Like all social reforms, the one-step solution is not to demand money for projects to educate 'the poor' - as though they are the problem. Social training has to cast a wider net than that. In the last 2 days I have visited an NGO in the north of Bangladesh where, once again, I have seen evidence that it is often the less educated who are humble enough to be teachable! An education based solely on passing the right exams (by hook or by crook) is resulting, all over the world, in a graduate class, some of whom are so arrogant that they are unemployable!
Time after time, I have been in the middle of a nice conversation with an 'educated' person and a woman servant has entered the room and the person who is talking to me turns to address her and uses a tone of voice I would not use to a dog! Is it not the more 'educated' classes that have to set the example? Similarly, dowry could surely be stopped in its tracks if the upper classes abjured it loudly and clearly...
Excuse me, sir, but who, exactly, needs to be 'educated'?
However, there is a problem to educating more women. I fear that there would be some men and, regrettably some women also - who might feel seriously deprived if there were no 'uneducated women' for them to shout at...
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