BW: What is the link between enhancing education and eradicating poverty? What is the sustainability of financing basic education?
MM: You can’t eradicate poverty without creating growth. As noted, education creates the skill base required to support productivity, which is a key source of sustainable growth. Broad-based high-quality education also has an indispensable redistributive effect. Labor is perhaps the best asset of the poor. Increasing the quality and therefore earning power of labor through education puts income in the pockets of the poor, enables their absorptive capacity for diverse social services, including education and health, among others, while affording them a higher quality of life.
Education is also important because development is not just economic growth; education equips people with the values that make it possible for us to peacefully and respectfully coexist in our diversity, and it actually enables us to live peacefully together. As you may know, UNESCO truly holds that “peace is made in the minds of men (and women of course).” Education is a key tool for promoting peace. Peace is a critical enabler for development. Show me one country that is at war or is in internal scuffle and is at the same time developing!
Education also produces the regenerative capacity required to propel development in ever changing and unpredictable environments, where the agility to adapt is a critical asset.
BW: What influence does neuroscience have on policy reform, curriculum development, and education systems?
MM: This type of research is very fundamental to UNESCO’s work on quality education. Current research on brain development and neuroscience informs us that while people are born with a near full development of their brains, the highest pace of building brain circuits critical for learning occurs within the first five years of life. The child’s environment can stimulate or retard the use of these circuits, and this affects the efficiency of their learning throughout life. This research informs us of the importance of early childhood care and education as an indispensable base for efficient and effective lifelong learning. UNESCO utilizes the knowledge accumulated from diverse fields of research, including neuroscience, molecular biology, human development, and human capital, and developmental and behavioral research.
BW: What motivated you to pursue a career in education?
MM: I never chose education. After my secondary education, I wanted to study commerce, international trade, economics, and development, but sometimes life takes you to places you have not anticipated. At a young age, I had the zest for developmental issues. I was always fascinated by the question of why some countries develop and others are more challenged to make progress. As I grew in this profession, I realized that by being in education I am actually at the very heart of development issues. I have come to really, really appreciate the importance of education, and now I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2011 issue of Brain World Magazine.
