Sunday, June 15, 2014

Week 6 -Sharing Web Resources
On the ACEI website that I have been exploring over these past 5 weeks, there are a few interesting quick links that covers many topics.
The section of the ACEI site that I have searched thoroughly is The Global Gateway. This week the featured article was on Education around the World. This is considered the place where we can look into global education at the various levels ranging from early childhood through primary. It allows you to see the diversity of the countries and the uniqueness of their education systems. One of the many regions that was highlighted is Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is reported in this article that the Caribbean and Latin America has a very good education access rate at the primary school level. The reported level of enrollment is an average of 95.3%. Even though education is an important aspect of the culture, there are still issues of quality education and barriers for children with special needs, however there are regional plans in place to deal with these. One big issue that concerns the region is that the indigenous children are marginalized and disadvantaged. More and more they are losing interest in education because they do not believe it is not practical to their existence for example, they do not see the need for bilingual or bicultural programs in their culture. This has really sparked my interest and so I will be looking more into the education and culture of the indigenous people. Another area of great concern in the article is the high rate of violence in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. The murder rate is considered to be alarming especially among the youth and is highly gang related. The link to find out more is at: http://acei.org/global-gateway/americas#latinamer
Engaging Effectively With the UN
As a member of the United Nations Association Council of Organizations (COO), ACEI is active in promoting the collaboration of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with the United Nations and its various agencies. As a part of that effort, ACEI recently supported the United Nations Association in presenting "The UN and You: Guiding Effective Engagement."(ACEI, 2014).

One insight that I have gained over this week is that there are many barriers to ensuring quality education for young children ranging from poverty to language difficulty or lack of qualified teachers. However, there is much that can be done to eliminate most if not all of those barriers and it begins with awareness.

http://www.acei.org/ 

3 comments:

  1. Hi Sherron,
    Thank you for sharing your insights with us. I agree with you that it does take awareness to break down barriers. If people do not know, there will never be a change.

    Elizabeth

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  2. Sherron,
    Thank you for sharing this valuable and very concerning information. It is hard to understand how a society could become uninterested in education and do not see it as practical. In my community, there is a culture of families that do not believe that obtaining a high school diploma as a necessity. The school district has been struggling for several years with low graduation rates and the value of education to families is one of the causes.

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  3. Hello Sherron,

    I really liked your blog that gives me a lot of feedback as far as with Caribbean and Latin America. There are so many barriers in the education field now. So many cultures feel like certaining things are not as important as the next. However, the important of these barriers is so that the field can continue to grow and be more interesting by getting through the barriers and really hatching out the barriers. I see you mentioned how they feel learning other languages is a waste, however, being bilingual gives you better opportunity. I really thank you for sharing and look forward to other blogs.

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