A third of the world's children illiterate, but there's hope on the horizon

According to the United Nations "Education for All Report," one third of the world's children cannot read or write, or do basic mathematics. At least 57 million are not attending school at all, 120 million miss so much school they can hardly perform, and 130 million are in school, but have not achieved minimum benchmarks for their levels.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - An independent research team has prepared a report for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which states that approximately 250,000,000 children around the world are not being properly educated and are functionally illiterate, and incapable of doing basic math.

This is approximately 1/3 of the world's children. The impact of this lack of education is estimated to cost about $129 billion annually.

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There are several reasons for the problem, but the report says that the situation is at its worst in rural areas, and a lack of trained teachers is behind it.

According to the report, in a third of the countries studied by UNESCO, 75 percent of primary school teachers had not even been trained to meet minimum expectations.

In many cases, the children were not even sent to school for a variety of reasons including conflict, culture, and expense.

The report did indicate that trends are improving over previous years, however deep end chronic problems still persist.

There is hope on the horizon. As worldwide Internet access improves, and access to quality learning devices such as tablets, become ubiquitous, there are hopes that children can be engaged to learn in new ways that are both natural and intuitive.

For example, tablets can be given to children in the Third World, even in places that have limited access to electricity. As long as a wireless Internet connection is available, and there's more Wi-Fi in the world than people realize, students can access lessons and software that meet basic educational standards.

Children also tend to enjoy learning and interacting with tablet computers.

It is expected that in the decades to come, tablet computers will become as common as books. Already there are more smart devices on the planet than there are humans, and there is more Wi-Fi access on the planet than there are flushing toilets.

Building upon this infrastructure, children who are equipped with tablet computers are more likely to learn and remain engaged with the learning process than those who are provided with books or few educational materials at all.

Already in countries such as the United States, tablet computers are being employed in secondary schools as standard issue. It's expected that this trend will continue and trickle down into the primary grades, and will also grow internationally.

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Since tablets are even cheaper than many books, and can contain entire libraries full of information, this new revolution in education is logically expected to overtake the world and should help to alleviate the problems identified by UNESCO.

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