How can developed countries help the developing and underdeveloped countries in order to improve their sec education? Are the developed countries willing to help and are they helping already?

Answer for Questions & Answers for the future of Secondary Education in 2020

The ideal situation would be one where there is no need for help, where everybody is equal. Aiding organizations generally have several ways of polishing away the misbalance in the world. One is to simply bring funds and/or goods to the needing countries. This however often leads to corruption and only rarely does the population really experience the benefit of this aid. Another is to bring experts from the developed world to the developing nations in order to for instance man a hospital or to teach there. This approach I like to compare with disposable camera's, it is very useful in itself, but the wheel keeps being reinvented as every person is new and nothing structurally changes.

The approach that I would suggest is one that I do not see in practice; my method would consist of making sure that there is a core team of natives that receive their training in education in the first world, but that these people instead of becoming teachers, become teacher-teachers. As such, the first world does not 'fill' the educational staff, it is the people of the third world that do this themselves. Furthermore, I would suggest structural approaches that improve the quality of life, such as the omnipresence of basic utilities, but especially should the quality of life improve as a result of measures that take away the need to send the children to work instead of to school.

The question is will these measures become reality. I actually think not. The reason people in developing countries have to work hard and have to send their children to work is because they only get little money. Money that comes from the developed countries buying their products. Now, we could simply say that the prices should be raised. The problem with that is that companies exist for profit and will seek the lowest price. If a developing country raises its prices, there will likely be another country to step in the void and offer the product for a low price. We could also levy a tariff on import that goes straight back to development aid. Either way, when prices rise it will be cheaper elsewhere, possibly even in the developed world. The question is then, is the developing country better off with low pay or with no trade at all? No matter how much the western governments do, the economy of developing countries cannot be steered by a foreign government, but only by companies that do business in that country. As long as the economy remains below par the egg that is the possibility of secondary education will not hatch. The problem is that the economy is in a state of deadlock.