VOA标准英语2012--Experts Tackling Education in Africa

Experts Tackling Education in Africa

The statistics are hard to ignore. Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest-ranked region in the world on the United Nations' education development index.
The U.N. education agency (UNESCO) says a quarter of all children in sub-Saharan Africa do not go to school, and account for 43 percent of the world's out-of-school children.
Meantime, the African Union (AU) has said the continent will need to recruit more than 2 million new teachers by 2015, just three years from now.
While the U.N. and the AU agree on the scope of the education challenges facing the continent, they are from two separate schools of thought on how to remedy the situation.
UNESCO, for instance, develops individual programs catering¹ to each country's needs based on the U.N.'s Education for All initiative (EFA).
"Every country or every region, we look at those and see what is important," said Joseph Massaquoi, director of UNESCO's East Africa office. "For instance in Uganda they have decided² that teacher training is what is important, in Sudan it is literacy that we are emphasizing, similarly we are doing the same for Rwanda. So every country we pick an area that we strive to emphasize."
EFA lists six major goals, including improving child education, gender³ parity⁴ and literacy.
UNESCO says the initiative has made major strides, especially an effort to attain⁵ universal primary education, with countries like Ethiopia, Guinea and Burundi improving rapidly since 1999.
Education for All is also in-line with the U.N.'s Millennium⁶ Development Goals, or MDGs, which seek to eradicate⁷ poverty, stop HIV/AIDS and improve other aspects of life in developing countries.
But the head of the Education Division at the African Union Commission, Beatrice Njenga, says the U.N. initiatives are misdirected.
"EFA focuses on basic education and a few years later we have MDGs whose education goal is primary education, but they go on to list other goals to do with development, to do with child mortality, food security and all that," said Njenga. "And you look at those goals and you think with primary education, with basic education shall we be able to meet these goals? One reason we might not meet MDGs in terms of, for instance, child mortality is because we don't have human resources. Where do human resources come from? Not basic education."
The African Union has established its own "Plan of Action," education goals to achieve by the year 2015.
Instead of focusing on a bottom-up approach that promotes basic education for all, the AU plan is geared more toward developing stronger African universities, that will produce graduates who are focused on solving African problems.
Njenga says here too, on the university level, Africa is lagging behind.
"Higher education, higher education," added Njenga. "The world average for access to university is about 27 percent. The average for Africa for accessing a first degree is between two and seven percent. We've been told we need to at least double it to 12 percent if we are just to get the human resources that we need."
The AU has established a Pan-African University which will have institutes in five separate regions focused on different disciplines. Njenga says three of the schools, in Kenya, Cameroon and Nigeria, will be ready to accept students this year. Another two are planned for Algeria and a country yet to be determined⁸ in southern Africa.
UNESCO's Massaquoi objects to the African Union characterization of the U.N. as being too focused on primary education.
"We cannot make progress with basic education unless we also strengthen higher education," added Massaquoi. "Teachers come from higher education. So when we talk about teacher training we are really talking about the higher education level. So we are now doing that. So whereas the emphasis would appear to be on basic education, all of the other inputs⁹ that we strengthen and bring about quality of education, closing the gender gap and so on are also addressed by other programs including higher education."
The challenges to providing education in Africa are vast, but Massaquoi says he is optimistic.
"We should not look at where we are and assess ourselves on that basis," noted¹⁰ Massaquoi. "We should look at where we are coming from, we should also look at impediments we have overcome because some of these countries have had wars and conflicts where everything was either destroyed or stagnated¹¹ for a while, so when we look at all of that together and we see some progress, we feel very optimistic that by 2015 we'll be able to obtain some of those goals if not all."
Both the AU and the U.N. are looking at 2015 as the benchmark year to reassess the effectiveness of their two programs.

1 catering   

n. 给养

参考例句：

• Most of our work now involves catering for weddings. 我们现在的工作多半是承办婚宴。
• Who did the catering for your son's wedding? 你儿子的婚宴是由谁承办的？

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

4 parity   

n.平价，等价，比价，对等

参考例句：

• The two currencies have now reached parity.这两种货币现已达到同等价值。
• Women have yet to achieve wage or occupational parity in many fields.女性在很多领域还没能争取到薪金、职位方面的平等。

5 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

6 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。

7 eradicate   

v.根除，消灭，杜绝

参考例句：

• These insects are very difficult to eradicate.这些昆虫很难根除。
• They are already battling to eradicate illnesses such as malaria and tetanus.他们已经在努力消灭疟疾、破伤风等疾病。

8 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

9 inputs   

n.输入( input的名词复数 )；投入；输入端；输入的数据v.把…输入电脑( input的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Uncheck the inputs checked for optimization in the previous stage. 不测试那些已经测试过的优化了的以前步骤的inputs.（变量参数）。 来自互联网
• Just in case, save in a file the inputs obtained at the previous stage. 以防万一，保存以前步骤获得的inputs（变量参数值）到一个文件中去。 来自互联网

10 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

11 stagnated   

v.停滞，不流动，不发展( stagnate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The balloting had stagnated, he couldn't win. 投票工作陷于停顿，他不能得胜。 来自辞典例句
• His mind has stagnated since his retirement. 他退休后头脑迟钝了。 来自辞典例句