education innovation in underdeveloped areas

This is a TED Talk named "Education innovation in the slums" , given by Charles Leadbeater  link: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/charles_leadbeater_on_education.html

In this talk, Charles highlighted some major challenges and some innovative approaches on how to popularize education in far-flung and underdeveloped areas to disadvantaged groups.  Applying what we have learned in class on innovation “Context” and “trends” , I found some points in this talk thought provoking.

1.       Context.

Compulsory education system may not be a cure for education programs in underdeveloped countries.

As Charles says, research on the high drop-out rate reflects that students are just not “interest” and they feel “boring”. Thus the key of education in slum is to “Pull” not “push”, to give them “highly relevant” and productive knowledge.

this totally make sense. Children in extremely poor area need knowledge both to improve their intelligence, acumen but more important they need knowledge that they can make a living. Peers from Africa need knowledge that can protect them from HIV/AIDS. So we need to analyze the context. What are the most desperate needs of our targets to improve their life.  Start to make education that can truly make a difference to them. Or as the last blog indicates, “the way to hell is paved with well-intended innovations”.  

2.       Trends.

Charles mentioned some important trends which can be taken into account when considering initiating social innovations in developing countries.

The first is “girls married in an increasing older ages” they want to have more educational opportunities to fulfill they career dreams. They want to learn and grow. However, I know that in many places girls are expected to help their mothers to undertake lots of family workloads. So I was thinking is it possible to invent some devices that can help them learn while they work and develop some curriculums that fit their needs best?

The second is “urbanization”. Urbanization is taking place all over the developing countries. So many buildings are under construction and thousands of children will spend their school years in building sites. (I know in China there are new construction projects initiated every day and somehow many primary schools for children of migrant workers are being shut down, leaving thousands of children out of school) Migrant workers can be mobile and their children are hard to have constant access to education resources. So some social entrepreneurs use mobile buses to help children to learn.