In absence of population education the world population would skyrocket.justify this statement considering the need and importance of population education.
Answers
Thanks to David Burleson for this talk by Colin Power, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO in 1993.
ADDRESS by Mr. COLIN POWER, Assistant Director-General for Education of UNESCO
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Mr. State Minister of Education,
Distinguished Ministers,
Dr. Sadik,
Mr. Director General of UNESCO,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In his recent book “Preparing for the 21st Century”, Paul Kennedy of Yale University asks: Where will we put the next three billion people? The population explosion threatens the very existence of already over-crowded and poverty stricken countries of South Asia, Latin America and Africa. Very clearly, rapid population growth is one of the most serious impediments to development today, and the single largest obstacle to our dream of education for all by the year 2000. It is not just a problem of increasing poverty, growing numbers of illiterates, overgrazing, soil erosion and destruction of rain forests, but population pressures also tend to produce regional conflicts, flow of refugees, and great pressure on developed to admit emigrants from poorer countries. Rational self-interest, Kennedy argues, not just humane concern, should make rich countries do all they can to prevent overpopulation and the suffering and strife it brings.
REAL REASONS FOR POPULATION GROWTH: WHITEPAPERThe nature and magnitude of the problem has been forcefully and clearly articulated by the Directors General of UNESCO and UNFPA and by the Prime Minister. Theirs was not, however, a message of despair, for they pointed to the solution. The key to the problem of stabilizing the number of humans on the planet, as Mr. Mayor, emphasized, is education -particularly an education which empowers girls and women, an education which provides women and men with a basic knowledge and skills to population issues.
In my address, I would like to elaborate a little on the substantive issue raised in the opening session: the problem of making our population education programmes effective and part of the fabric of formal and non-formal programmes world-wide.
Nature and Development of Population Education
At the World Conference on Education for All, we defined the purpose of population education as that of helping people to understand the impact of population change on lives and to develop the decision making skills they will need to cope with their population situation and to improve it. Such population education can help people to improve well being of their families and communities, and it can have an especially important impact on women in society.
While it is evident that education has a vital role to play in addressing the population issue, we cannot escape the fact that initially there was resistance on the part of governments and educational systems to accept population education in the curriculum schools and universities and we cannot sidestep the obstacles to its development. Despite the problems of curriculum overcrowding and cultural-religious obstacles, over past two decades, population education programmes have been implemented approximately 100 developing countries. The pace of development has not been the same in all the regions. Africa tops the list with almost all the African countries having population education projects; following Africa, is Asia and the Pacific, Latin America Caribbean region, and finally, the Arab region, where population education has grown somewhat more slowly.
In each region, population education programmes have developed in different ways, taking into account specific population problems, the sociocultural setting, the institution infrastructure and the acceptance of population education by the society in general and education system in particular. Thus, in many countries in Asia there is still a resistant to including any kind of family planning or sex education components in school curriculums. On the other hand, some Latin American countries began their programme placing major emphasis on human sexuality. The titles of programmes such as population education, family life education, sex education, and quality of life education reflect the emphasis given by the countries to their specific population related problems.