The essay process (first draft)

How effective is education as a solution to alleviate the income inequality between countries?

Globalisation is the process of whereby different parts of the world gets integrated. International Monetary Fund (IMF) recognises the four aspects of globalisation which includes trade and transaction, capital and investment movements, migrations and movement of people and spread of knowledge. In Goldin’s talk he mentions that “globalisation is not inclusive” and many people are left out from the benefits of globalisation. This is especially so for the countries that are less developed. In his talk he acknowledges that the area on technological development, medicine, genetic modification is flourishing. Indeed these are brought about and speed up by globalisation where ideas can be exchanged within geographical boundaries easily. However, this market is often monopolised by the rich companies in the developed countries that have more resources invested in the research of these area and have the ability to constrict a barrier to entry to these markets. The weaker countries have no knowledge and money for these developments which leads to them being trapped in the poverty cycle and can only do lowly skilled and paid jobs, resulting in the effect where the rich will richer and the poor get poorer. Education is globally recognised as a way to eradicate the income disparity between countries and even within a country. United Nation Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) also acknowledge that education is a tool to eradicate poverty. I feel that education is a effective tool in the long term basis.

Singapore is a good example to show that education is an effective tool for the growth and development of a country. Singapore the government identified that education and literacy is a key for success, in 2003, a compulsory education is introduced to prepare the children for the knowledge based economy. Singapore has progress thus far from a small fishing village to one of the globally recognised developed nation in the world. This shows the effectiveness of education to a nation. In addition there is also a general trend that people with a higher level of education can get a higher salary than the people low level of education. The average starting salary of a diploma holder in Singapore is about $2000 and a degree holder is $3000. This shows the importance of education to get a higher pay which provides the poor with opportunity to leave poverty.

In contrast, India being a less developed country have many citizens are still trapped within the poverty cycle although it is starting developing rapidly recently. These citizens are mostly uneducated. True enough, under the influence of globalisation, the Indians seemed to benefit as more of them got a job. However, due to the lack of education and knowledge they are often exploited to do manual and lowly paid jobs for the richer countries. For example, Singapore employed a lot of Indians as construction workers where they faces high risks and are lowly paid. Also, with the scholarship system, developed countries uses attractive scholarships to bonds the talents from the less developed countries to their countries, leaving behind the weaker in the less developed countries. These illustrates the importance of education. With education, the less developed people be more knowledge which will give them more options and opportunities to choose their job and not being exploited.

However, there are also limitation to education. Education is a long term process. Singapore took about 50 years to progress to what we have today. For education to be an effective tool, good educational policies and strategies are required. According to the United Nation Report, 125 million school children are still unable to read a sentence after 4 years of education. This indicated that having education is not sufficient, the policy and the teaching strategies are crucial determinant for the effectiveness of education.

Sir Francis Bacon once said “Knowledge is power”. True enough, education and knowledge is one of the crucial key to success and wealth in the society now. Hence I believe that education is an effective tool to eradicate poverty.

Referencing

UNESCO. (2014). Education for the 21^st Century. Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org/themes/education-21st-century