This paper was presented at an undergraduate conference at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 2017. It was written originally as a research paper. While this paper is a few years old, I decided to post it now because of its focus on education and the importance of education in creating a stable civil society. This is an area that I am passionate about and hope to research further.
In 2011, a violent civil war broke out in Syria. Since then, there have been millions of people killed and displaced by the conflict, with many Syrians living trapped between ISIS and their government. With all the physical damage and death taking place, it is easy to miss another crisis taking place underneath the rest of the destruction. Education has been declared a human right by Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but in areas of crisis, it is a luxury. While I do not mean to suggest that the loss of education is as serious as the loss of life and limb, it creates a far-reaching impact which stalls the growth of a generation. In areas of crisis, the loss of education is an invisible disaster where children living both in the area of conflict and living abroad as refugees are unable to receive quality education. This in turn harms the well-being and potential advancement both of the individual and the collective society by creating what we might call a ‘lost generation’.
Within the immediate regions of crisis, education becomes a dangerous and difficult pursuit, if not entirely impossible. Prior to the civil war in Syria, literacy rates were over 90% (Futures under Threat 3). Unfortunately, this is far from the current reality, in which it is estimated that “half of Syria’s 4.8 million school-age children are out of school, whether within Syria itself or within neighboring countries” (Watkins and Zyck 3). In sharp contrast to the classes of Syrian students who came before them, this generation is facing a crisis of education. As the civil war in Syria enters its seventh year of conflict, it is important to recognize that for some children, it may mark the seventh year of a struggle to be educated. Schools have been repurposed as military buildings or shelters, or simply destroyed. The labor force of teachers had, three years into the conflict, been reduced by 22% with more than 50,000 educators having fled or been killed (Futures under Threat 6). Furthermore, even when the schools are still present and operational, there are serious risks involved in attending school. For example, in May of 2014, 153 students were kidnapped on the way home from completing their final examinations. Without completing these exams, students are considered unqualified to continue their education, yet the environment in Syria has become such that pursuing these exams created an incredible danger (Futures under Threat 8). Not only is there a physical loss of educational structures, as well as the decline in the workforce of educators, but physically pursuing an education has become a life or death situation in some cases. Naturally, it takes both the resources and the institutions, along with a reasonable expectation of security to safeguard an educated future for millions of children.
For many living in conflict zones, the natural goal is to leave the country. However, in crisis surrounding education does not stop within the borders of the conflict area, but unfortunately stays with children as they flee. Many refugee children face a variety of obstacles which keep them from obtaining an education. In fact, 62 percent of all Syrian refugee children are out of school within the Middle East (Watkins and Zyck 4). One issue that interferes with refugee children pursuing an education is a language barrier, on top of having to uproot their entire lives and flee from home, which is an emotional stress. Schools in hosting countries are also unprepared to accommodate such an influx of students, “in some cases resulting in schools doubling in size” (O’Rourke 724). Along with these factors, poverty is a debilitating problem which affects many refugees, and it is a problem which falls, to some extent, on the shoulders of children who will have to forgo education to pursue labor and wages for their families (Hos 54). Furthermore, the restrictive red tape of various governments holds back many potential refugee students from entering the classrooms. For example, in Egypt, “certified papers must be ratified by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs before they leave Syria (which is often an impossible task) and then by the local education administration in Egypt (which can involve travel to another city) and by the Syrian Embassy before a refugee child can be enrolled in school. Parents must also have valid residency permits before children can enroll in school” (Futures under Threat 22). Though many families have been fortunate enough to escape the war in their homeland, it is far from the end of their struggles. For children displaced by conflict and crisis, securing an education in a new country is still uncertain and a struggle.
The depravation of education which many children face will have multiple negative effects on the individuals. Most of the threats against children who are deprived of education will manifest themselves in exploitive forms. One of these forms is through child labor. In some cases, this is a necessity for their family in order to put food on the table, as for example, 80% of Syrians are now impoverished (Stern 305). It is important to keep in mind, though, that this type of child labor is different from labor we generally see in our own country from youths. This type of labor tends to range from manual work in a field or shop to working with “dangerous equipment [and] exposure to toxic chemicals” (Stern 306). It has been found too that in some instances, children are working over 12 hours a day (Watkins and Zyck 5). Remember also that this is not a life chosen by these children, but one thrust upon them which, without any kind of education, will be nearly impossible to escape or improve from. This is where the problem really starts to take root, and can be seen among impoverished groups anywhere: the pursuit of basic survival needs creates a cycle of poverty which becomes difficult to break, as money (or time or energy) is not saved but used immediately to just barely get by. Furthermore, the means by which to elevate oneself are hard to reach. For example, to escape poverty, children could use an education to obtain a better job. However, all their time and energy is being spent on working which takes away from their time to learn, robbing them of an important tool for advancement. For children who should be students, this sets them up for a lifetime of this trap. There is also the threat of sexual exploitation, along with child and forced marriages (Bouchane 76). This is a particularly strong threat to girls, who are “almost 2.5 times more likely to be out of school in conflict-affected countries,” and in Jordan, forced marriage has doubled among Syrian refugees (Bouchane 77). Another looming danger is that children without education can be driven to joining militant groups to alleviate their poverty (Futures under Threat 19). In the end, an education which provides children with the tools for personal improvement and critical thinking creates a stronger and safer generation of active citizens (Stern 307). Without education, individuals can more likely become trapped as victims of their circumstances, as they lack the necessary tools to advance themselves. In the context of crisis areas, it creates a generation of these individuals.
Not only will a lack of education affect individuals, but there is a high cost on societies and nations which struggle with an uneducated populace. As Bouchane importantly points out, “when children are vulnerable we are all more vulnerable” (77). One way in which this cost manifests itself is through a literal cost, or a toll on the economy. “UNICEF estimates the cost of the loss of human capital resulting from Syrian children missing out on education alone to be US$10.7 billion, more than 17 percent of Syria’s 2010 GDP” (Bouchane 76). Education is also crucial in creating and sustaining peace, as there is evidence to suggest that this can happen through promoting the ideas of tolerance and conflict resolution in schools. Additionally, as Bouchane states, “those with a secondary education are three times more likely to support democracy than those with no education” (77). In a similar vein, education can help the formation and stability of nation-states. “‘The nation,’ it should be recalled, ‘is an imagined political community’ for which compulsory public schooling is an essential mechanism of integration… Given the importance of schooling in nation-building, it has been argued that the monopoly of legitimate education in modern nation-states may be more important than the monopoly of legitimate violence” (Tawil and Harley 9). To be fair, quality of education becomes more important when discussing the promotion of a cohesive nation-state, as a biased or divisive educational institution could exacerbate issues. However, a quality education, which is what should be seen as necessary for children anywhere, especially those in conflict, will promote a more tolerant and cohesive nation-state. Not only do children and individuals benefit from education, but so does the collective, arguably in ways that are most important for crisis areas.
Even after the fighting has stopped in a chaotic region, there will still be hundreds of thousands, or in the case of Syria, millions, of kids who are now so many steps behind their peers. There will also be some who feel that this damage is not theirs to correct. The reality is that “despite a great deal of rhetoric on the importance of education, efforts to create safe places to play and learn for children impacted by the conflict and disaster around the world received a mere 1.4 percent of all humanitarian funding in 2015” (Bouchane 77). Though people in more fortunate countries may feel that this crisis will not affect them, in a globalized world, we may very well feel consequences in the future. Considering that more than half of school-age Syrian children are now out of school, how can we expect the country of Syria itself to recover from its civil war state to a more secure and stable environment?
Works Cited:
Bouchane, Kolleen. “Syria’s $10 Billion Hidden Education Crisis.” Harvard International Review, vol. 37, no. 4, 2016, pp. 76-81. General Reference Center Gold.
Futures under Threat: The Impact of the Education Crisis on Syria’s Children. Save the Children, 2014.
Hos, Rabia. “Education in Emergencies: Case of a Community School for Syrian Refugees.” European Journal of Educational Research, vol. 5, no. 2, 2016, pp. 53-60. ERIC.
O’Rourke, Joseph. “Education for Syrian Refugees: The Failure of Second-Generation Human Rights during Extraordinary Crises.” Albany Law Review, vol. 78, no. 2, Apr. 2015, pp. 711-38. EBSCOhost.
Stern, Caryl M. “It Is Time to Step up and Help the Children of Syria.” Brown Journal of World Affairs, vol. 22, no. 1, Fall-Winter 2015, pp. 305-09. International Security and Counter-Terrorism Reference Center.
Tawil, Sobhi, and Alexandra Harley. Education, Conflict and Social Cohesion. International Bureau of Education, 2004. Studies in Comparative Education. Google Scholar.
Watkins, Kevin, and Steven A. Zyck. Living on Hope, Hoping for Education: The Failed Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Overseas Development Institute, Sept. 2014. Google Scholar.
Olivia Michael Tarman 