Analysis

People with an experience of extreme poverty shared their views on how to reach education for all, at the Ouagadougou seminar on the evaluation of the MDGs, in March 2013.

Need for community education

In this day and age, you cannot attain educational success alone. A parent cannot council his child on his own, it is necessary for others also to call on the child when mistakes are made, to give advice. When you put your child in school, you need to be like a student too. You mustn’t stay at home and tell yourself your daughter is in school, without going at least three times a month to see the teacher, to ask if the child is coming to school; if she is learning well; if the teacher is satisfied with her. You have to get up and go to see the teacher to say – this is my child, if he doesn’t come to school, let me know and I will help you.
Teachers need to forgive children who find it difficult to learn. If the teacher thinks that by hitting the child, he will learn better, he is mistaken. The day after, the child will be afraid, and will forget everything he learned.
André Compaoré, Burkina Faso.

Mixing learnings and know-hows

Those who say that old people are not intelligent, because they haven’t been to school, those people know nothing. No-one is born with the knowledge of how to write. I am just an elderly man here, we don’t look at bits of paper before we speak, but we speak with our own intelligence.
In this day and age, to teach a child, you need to start first from where he wishes to start from, and from that you can, little by little, add your own know-how. The learning of your child must embrace your own knowledge. You need to be able to mix types of learning, otherwise you won’t get anywhere.
Mahamoudou Guérémi, Burkina Faso.

Success is shared

If you do not support your child, if you do not show him what is needed, then when he grows up he will not be able to do anything that will be good for him, or for you. You must make an effort for your child to succeed. If you help him to succeed, he will share this success with you, with the family, the neighbours, and your life will improve.
Mariam Zongo, Burkina Faso.