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Learning about the birds and the bees is undeniably an incredibly daunting yet important task. It is also one which no country's education system seems to have totally mastered.

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With such variation even between individual schools, it is no wonder sex education differs vastly from country to country. Sex and relationships are a huge part of many people's lives; in fact none of us would be here without it. Its absence in the curriculum, therefore, can have detrimental effects.

Every country has its flaws with sex education, yet some have more dangerous consequences than others. Here's how sex education looks around the world.

• The Educational World, Karachi, Pakistan. 15,227 likes 287 talking about this 477 were here. International Education at affordable cost.
• 4-H, 4-H Arts, 4-H Visual Arts, 4-H Global & Cultural Education. Accessibility Questions: For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.
• 4-H, 4-H Arts, 4-H Visual Arts, 4-H Global & Cultural Education. Accessibility Questions: For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.
• Written by Kimberly Greacen, Education World® Contributing Writer Kimberly is an educator with extensive experience in curriculum writing and developing instructional materials to align with Common Core State Standards and Bloom's Taxonomy.

Belgium

Belgians are a rather relaxed bunch, like many of their European neighbours. While this is seen as very reasonable by some, others find the Belgian approach to sex education rather disturbing.

Recently, the Belgian site Alles Over Seks (All About Sex), set up by sexual health organisation Sensoa, was criticised for 'teaching seven-year-olds explicit sex positions'.

The site was originally intended for 15-year-olds but is now being recommended to those as young as seven. The Belgian media claimed the 'Youth Guide', an advisory pamphlet supported by the Flemish government and distributed in primary schools, endorsed the website.

Belgian sex education website for seven-year-olds is slammed for teaching advanced sex techniques https://t.co/A3Yc0w4ieS

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) October 23, 2017

China

Chinese sex education is often very reductive or even completely absent. With the number of abortions and contractions of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) rising at an alarming rate, something clearly needs to change.

Sex education is not compulsory in China which leads to great gaps in children's knowledge as they enter adulthood. Allegedly, a Chinese couple laid next to each other in bed for three years trying to get pregnant.

Many Chinese universities have installed vending machines selling home testing kits for HIV to students. Additionally, some schools have been battling the taboo by using sex education textbooks. While designed to tackle the problem, the books sparked uproar from parents and were quickly removed from schools.

https://twitter.com/CarlBenjaminsen/status/914729306450006016

India

Much like China, in India sex education is not compulsory in schools. The statistics are shocking: adisturbing 53 percent of children between the ages of five and 12 have been subjected to sexual abuse. India has the fastest growing population in the world and one of the highest rates of HIV infection. According to The Times of India, more than 50 percent of girls in rural India are unaware of menstruation or what it even means.

The culture around sex promotes silence and shame which confuses young people. Often they are unable to recognise abuse.

However, The Guardianhas suggested India has the best sex education programme in the world.

The YP foundationdesigned and implemented a progressive curriculum for sex education. The programme teaches gender equality, sexual diversity and consent among other subjects. It incorporates role play, art and games to engage 12 to 20-year-olds across the 14 classes it runs.

While India may run a successful programme, it needs to be implemented in all schools to have a positive effect on its young audience.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, sex education is considered an 'extra-curricular' activity.

Worryingly, often parents do not have a comprehensive understanding of the topic so it is down to the government to ensure teachers are well-informed and supplying this knowledge. Many young couples are forced to wed due to accidental pregnancies.

Indonesians are usually warned of the dangers of having sex, but not taught why it can be dangerous or how to do it safely.

I #supportsexed because trial-and-error is no way to learn about one of the most intimate aspects of our lives.

— Kate Kenfield ☕️ (@katekenfield) May 4, 2015

However, things are looking up. In April, five Indonesian civil society organisations pushed for comprehensive sex education through a large conference.

The conference reasoned with Government to support a revised programme for Indonesian youth. The wheels are in motion to bring about change to Indonesia's sex education.

Malaysia

The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry in Malaysia has called for better sex education. Currently, sex education is integrated into subjects such as Moral and Islamic studies, science and biology. The basis of the sex education revolves around abstinence.

It also focuses on the biological aspect of sex, ignoring many other crucial facets like consent, emotional wellbeing and contraception. Children, especially those who attend religious schools, are not prepared for the real world.

The Malaysian Council for Child Welfare has decided something needs to change. It proposed a proper channel be launched, detailing reproductive health for children and young people.

The Netherlands

The Dutch are famously liberal. The general ethos in The Netherlands is that sexuality is a natural part of human life and should be taught as such.

It is compulsory for all children aged four and older to receive age-appropriate sex education. Often, this education emphasises building respect for both their own bodies and sexuality, as well as their peers'. One of their first lessons is on consent.

Everything is covered, from contraception to relationships, STIs to pleasure. As a result of their extensive programme the country's teenage pregnancy rate is very low.

Belgium & holland have got sex education spot on maybe if the UK would take this on we would have less under age pregnancies #sexinclass

— Neil Jones (@Mr_NJones) August 12, 2015

New Zealand

Sexuality is one of seven ‘key areas' in the Health and Physical Education curriculum. It is compulsory for both primary and secondary schools to teach up until Year 10. Sex and relationships have been taught in schools since 1999 and also cross over into NZ's Relationship Education.

The New Zealand Heraldreported: 'The Education Review Office assessed the quality of sexuality education programmes in Years 7 to 13 in 100 primary and secondary schools and found many were adopting a ‘one size fits all' approach.'

However, in April Government Health Officials announced plans to improve sex education programmes in NZ. With the recent inauguration of new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, even more plans could soon be in motion for NZ's youth.

Uganda

Religion and morals often play a large part in a country's sex education programme. Uganda is no different.

Recently, the Ministry of Health declined the proposal to distribute contraceptives to those aged 15 and over in Uganda on moral grounds. The proposal also suggested sex education was extended to 10-year-olds. It was a bid to lower teenage pregnancy rates in the country.

The Ministry claimed, however, the proposal would encourage promiscuity and abortions.

Over a quarter of young girls aged 15 to 19 in Uganda are currently pregnant or have given birth. On average, women have five children, yet a mere 24 percent of women use a modern form of contraception.

#Uganda condemns sex education for 10-year-olds as 'morally wrong' https://t.co/6FtRhtXQ8r

— amyfallon (@amyfallon) October 21, 2017

UK

It may come as no shock that the British are rather reserved in how they talk about sex. While sex education is now compulsory in all schools, the guidelines are relatively thin.

Sex education is incorporated into the curriculum through Personal, Social, Health and Economics Education (PSHE), yet this varies vastly between schools.

In March 2017, the UK government announced all children aged four and above would be given relationship education. Additionally, all children in secondary school education would be taught age-appropriate material about sex and sexual and emotional relationships.

US

In an even more extreme situation than the UK, US schools' programmes vary widely from school to school and state to state.

According to Guttmacher Institute, just under half of US states include HIV education in their programmes.Guidance is given to schools in most states, but school districts ultimately call the shots.

Planned Parenthoodreported 'overall, in 2011–2013, 43 percent of adolescent females and 57 percent of adolescent males did not receive information about birth control before they had sex for the first time'.

Liked this? Then you'll love…

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify differences in educational resources around the world
• Describe the concept of universal access to education

Education is a social institution through which a society's children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. Every nation in the world is equipped with some form of education system, though those systems vary greatly. The major factors that affect education systems are the resources and money that are utilized to support those systems in different nations. As you might expect, a country's wealth has much to do with the amount of money spent on education. Countries that do not have such basic amenities as running water are unable to support robust education systems or, in many cases, any formal schooling at all. The result of this worldwide educational inequality is a social concern for many countries, including the United States.

International differences in education systems are not solely a financial issue. The value placed on education, the amount of time devoted to it, and the distribution of education within a country also play a role in those differences. For example, students in South Korea spend 220 days a year in school, compared to the 180 days a year of their United States counterparts (Pellissier 2010). As of 2006, the United States ranked fifth among twenty-seven countries for college participation, but ranked sixteenth in the number of students who receive college degrees (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2006). These statistics may be related to how much time is spent on education in the United States.

Then there is the issue of educational distribution within a nation. In December 2010, the results of a test called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is administered to fifteen-year-old students worldwide, were released. Those results showed that students in the United States had fallen from fifteenth to twenty-fifth in the rankings for science and math (National Public Radio 2010). Students at the top of the rankings hailed from Shanghai, Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. They also recruited teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).

Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States' low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as 'resilient students,' or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States' educational system may be on a descending path that could detrimentally affect the country's economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).

Education in Finland

With public education in the United States under such intense criticism, why is it that Singapore, South Korea, and especially Finland (which is culturally most similar to us), have such excellent public education? Over the course of thirty years, the country has pulled itself from among the lowest rankings by the Organization of Economic Cooperation (OEDC) to first in 2012, and remains, as of 2014, in the top five. Contrary to the rigid curriculum and long hours demanded of students in South Korea and Singapore, Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. It is common for children to enter school at seven years old, and children will have more recess and less hours in school than U.S. children—approximately 300 less hours. Their homework load is light when compared to all other industrialized nations (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school). There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests (Laukkanen 2008; LynNell Hancock 2011).

Prioritization is different than in the United States. There is an emphasis on allocating resources for those who need them most, high standards, support for special needs students, qualified teachers taken from the top 10 percent of the nation's graduates and who must earn a Master's degree, evaluation of education, balancing decentralization and centralization.

'We used to have a system which was really unequal,' stated the Finnish Education Chief in an interview. 'My parents never had a real possibility to study and have a higher education. We decided in the 1960s that we would provide a free quality education to all. Even universities are free of charge. Equal means that we support everyone and we're not going to waste anyone's skills.' As for teachers, 'We don't test our teachers or ask them to prove their knowledge. But it's true that we do invest in a lot of additional teacher training even after they become teachers' (Gross-Loh 2014).

Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the PISA. Finland's school children didn't always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child.

'We created a school system based on equality to make sure we can develop everyone's potential. Now we can see how well it's been working. Last year the OECD tested adults from twenty-four countries measuring the skill levels of adults aged sixteen to sixty-five on a survey called the PIAAC (Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which tests skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Finland scored at or near the top on all measures.'

Every country has its flaws with sex education, yet some have more dangerous consequences than others. Here's how sex education looks around the world.

• The Educational World, Karachi, Pakistan. 15,227 likes 287 talking about this 477 were here. International Education at affordable cost.
• 4-H, 4-H Arts, 4-H Visual Arts, 4-H Global & Cultural Education. Accessibility Questions: For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.
• 4-H, 4-H Arts, 4-H Visual Arts, 4-H Global & Cultural Education. Accessibility Questions: For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.
• Written by Kimberly Greacen, Education World® Contributing Writer Kimberly is an educator with extensive experience in curriculum writing and developing instructional materials to align with Common Core State Standards and Bloom's Taxonomy.

Belgium

Belgians are a rather relaxed bunch, like many of their European neighbours. While this is seen as very reasonable by some, others find the Belgian approach to sex education rather disturbing.

Recently, the Belgian site Alles Over Seks (All About Sex), set up by sexual health organisation Sensoa, was criticised for 'teaching seven-year-olds explicit sex positions'.

The site was originally intended for 15-year-olds but is now being recommended to those as young as seven. The Belgian media claimed the 'Youth Guide', an advisory pamphlet supported by the Flemish government and distributed in primary schools, endorsed the website.

Belgian sex education website for seven-year-olds is slammed for teaching advanced sex techniques https://t.co/A3Yc0w4ieS

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) October 23, 2017

China

Chinese sex education is often very reductive or even completely absent. With the number of abortions and contractions of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) rising at an alarming rate, something clearly needs to change.

Sex education is not compulsory in China which leads to great gaps in children's knowledge as they enter adulthood. Allegedly, a Chinese couple laid next to each other in bed for three years trying to get pregnant.

Many Chinese universities have installed vending machines selling home testing kits for HIV to students. Additionally, some schools have been battling the taboo by using sex education textbooks. While designed to tackle the problem, the books sparked uproar from parents and were quickly removed from schools.

https://twitter.com/CarlBenjaminsen/status/914729306450006016

India

Much like China, in India sex education is not compulsory in schools. The statistics are shocking: adisturbing 53 percent of children between the ages of five and 12 have been subjected to sexual abuse. India has the fastest growing population in the world and one of the highest rates of HIV infection. According to The Times of India, more than 50 percent of girls in rural India are unaware of menstruation or what it even means.

The culture around sex promotes silence and shame which confuses young people. Often they are unable to recognise abuse.

However, The Guardianhas suggested India has the best sex education programme in the world.

The YP foundationdesigned and implemented a progressive curriculum for sex education. The programme teaches gender equality, sexual diversity and consent among other subjects. It incorporates role play, art and games to engage 12 to 20-year-olds across the 14 classes it runs.

While India may run a successful programme, it needs to be implemented in all schools to have a positive effect on its young audience.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, sex education is considered an 'extra-curricular' activity.

Worryingly, often parents do not have a comprehensive understanding of the topic so it is down to the government to ensure teachers are well-informed and supplying this knowledge. Many young couples are forced to wed due to accidental pregnancies.

Indonesians are usually warned of the dangers of having sex, but not taught why it can be dangerous or how to do it safely.

I #supportsexed because trial-and-error is no way to learn about one of the most intimate aspects of our lives.

— Kate Kenfield ☕️ (@katekenfield) May 4, 2015

However, things are looking up. In April, five Indonesian civil society organisations pushed for comprehensive sex education through a large conference.

The conference reasoned with Government to support a revised programme for Indonesian youth. The wheels are in motion to bring about change to Indonesia's sex education.

Malaysia

The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry in Malaysia has called for better sex education. Currently, sex education is integrated into subjects such as Moral and Islamic studies, science and biology. The basis of the sex education revolves around abstinence.

It also focuses on the biological aspect of sex, ignoring many other crucial facets like consent, emotional wellbeing and contraception. Children, especially those who attend religious schools, are not prepared for the real world.

The Malaysian Council for Child Welfare has decided something needs to change. It proposed a proper channel be launched, detailing reproductive health for children and young people.

The Netherlands

The Dutch are famously liberal. The general ethos in The Netherlands is that sexuality is a natural part of human life and should be taught as such.

It is compulsory for all children aged four and older to receive age-appropriate sex education. Often, this education emphasises building respect for both their own bodies and sexuality, as well as their peers'. One of their first lessons is on consent.

Everything is covered, from contraception to relationships, STIs to pleasure. As a result of their extensive programme the country's teenage pregnancy rate is very low.

Belgium & holland have got sex education spot on maybe if the UK would take this on we would have less under age pregnancies #sexinclass

— Neil Jones (@Mr_NJones) August 12, 2015

New Zealand

Sexuality is one of seven ‘key areas' in the Health and Physical Education curriculum. It is compulsory for both primary and secondary schools to teach up until Year 10. Sex and relationships have been taught in schools since 1999 and also cross over into NZ's Relationship Education.

The New Zealand Heraldreported: 'The Education Review Office assessed the quality of sexuality education programmes in Years 7 to 13 in 100 primary and secondary schools and found many were adopting a ‘one size fits all' approach.'

However, in April Government Health Officials announced plans to improve sex education programmes in NZ. With the recent inauguration of new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, even more plans could soon be in motion for NZ's youth.

Uganda

Religion and morals often play a large part in a country's sex education programme. Uganda is no different.

Recently, the Ministry of Health declined the proposal to distribute contraceptives to those aged 15 and over in Uganda on moral grounds. The proposal also suggested sex education was extended to 10-year-olds. It was a bid to lower teenage pregnancy rates in the country.

The Ministry claimed, however, the proposal would encourage promiscuity and abortions.

Over a quarter of young girls aged 15 to 19 in Uganda are currently pregnant or have given birth. On average, women have five children, yet a mere 24 percent of women use a modern form of contraception.

#Uganda condemns sex education for 10-year-olds as 'morally wrong' https://t.co/6FtRhtXQ8r

— amyfallon (@amyfallon) October 21, 2017

UK

It may come as no shock that the British are rather reserved in how they talk about sex. While sex education is now compulsory in all schools, the guidelines are relatively thin.

Sex education is incorporated into the curriculum through Personal, Social, Health and Economics Education (PSHE), yet this varies vastly between schools.

In March 2017, the UK government announced all children aged four and above would be given relationship education. Additionally, all children in secondary school education would be taught age-appropriate material about sex and sexual and emotional relationships.

US

In an even more extreme situation than the UK, US schools' programmes vary widely from school to school and state to state.

According to Guttmacher Institute, just under half of US states include HIV education in their programmes.Guidance is given to schools in most states, but school districts ultimately call the shots.

Planned Parenthoodreported 'overall, in 2011–2013, 43 percent of adolescent females and 57 percent of adolescent males did not receive information about birth control before they had sex for the first time'.

Liked this? Then you'll love…

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify differences in educational resources around the world
• Describe the concept of universal access to education

Education is a social institution through which a society's children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. Every nation in the world is equipped with some form of education system, though those systems vary greatly. The major factors that affect education systems are the resources and money that are utilized to support those systems in different nations. As you might expect, a country's wealth has much to do with the amount of money spent on education. Countries that do not have such basic amenities as running water are unable to support robust education systems or, in many cases, any formal schooling at all. The result of this worldwide educational inequality is a social concern for many countries, including the United States.

International differences in education systems are not solely a financial issue. The value placed on education, the amount of time devoted to it, and the distribution of education within a country also play a role in those differences. For example, students in South Korea spend 220 days a year in school, compared to the 180 days a year of their United States counterparts (Pellissier 2010). As of 2006, the United States ranked fifth among twenty-seven countries for college participation, but ranked sixteenth in the number of students who receive college degrees (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2006). These statistics may be related to how much time is spent on education in the United States.

Then there is the issue of educational distribution within a nation. In December 2010, the results of a test called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is administered to fifteen-year-old students worldwide, were released. Those results showed that students in the United States had fallen from fifteenth to twenty-fifth in the rankings for science and math (National Public Radio 2010). Students at the top of the rankings hailed from Shanghai, Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. They also recruited teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).

Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States' low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as 'resilient students,' or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States' educational system may be on a descending path that could detrimentally affect the country's economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).

Education in Finland

With public education in the United States under such intense criticism, why is it that Singapore, South Korea, and especially Finland (which is culturally most similar to us), have such excellent public education? Over the course of thirty years, the country has pulled itself from among the lowest rankings by the Organization of Economic Cooperation (OEDC) to first in 2012, and remains, as of 2014, in the top five. Contrary to the rigid curriculum and long hours demanded of students in South Korea and Singapore, Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. It is common for children to enter school at seven years old, and children will have more recess and less hours in school than U.S. children—approximately 300 less hours. Their homework load is light when compared to all other industrialized nations (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school). There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests (Laukkanen 2008; LynNell Hancock 2011).

Prioritization is different than in the United States. There is an emphasis on allocating resources for those who need them most, high standards, support for special needs students, qualified teachers taken from the top 10 percent of the nation's graduates and who must earn a Master's degree, evaluation of education, balancing decentralization and centralization.

'We used to have a system which was really unequal,' stated the Finnish Education Chief in an interview. 'My parents never had a real possibility to study and have a higher education. We decided in the 1960s that we would provide a free quality education to all. Even universities are free of charge. Equal means that we support everyone and we're not going to waste anyone's skills.' As for teachers, 'We don't test our teachers or ask them to prove their knowledge. But it's true that we do invest in a lot of additional teacher training even after they become teachers' (Gross-Loh 2014).

Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the PISA. Finland's school children didn't always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child.

'We created a school system based on equality to make sure we can develop everyone's potential. Now we can see how well it's been working. Last year the OECD tested adults from twenty-four countries measuring the skill levels of adults aged sixteen to sixty-five on a survey called the PIAAC (Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which tests skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Finland scored at or near the top on all measures.'

Formal and Informal Education

As already mentioned, education is not solely concerned with the basic academic concepts that a student learns in the classroom. Societies also educate their children, outside of the school system, in matters of everyday practical living. These two types of learning are referred to as formal education and informal education.

Formal education describes the learning of academic facts and concepts through a formal curriculum. Arising from the tutelage of ancient Greek thinkers, centuries of scholars have examined topics through formalized methods of learning. Education in earlier times was only available to the higher classes; they had the means for access to scholarly materials, plus the luxury of leisure time that could be used for learning. The Industrial Revolution and its accompanying social changes made education more accessible to the general population. Many families in the emerging middle class found new opportunities for schooling.

The modern U.S. educational system is the result of this progression. Today, basic education is considered a right and responsibility for all citizens. Expectations of this system focus on formal education, with curricula and testing designed to ensure that students learn the facts and concepts that society believes are basic knowledge.

In contrast, informal education describes learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviors by participating in a society. This type of learning occurs both through the formal education system and at home. Our earliest learning experiences generally happen via parents, relatives, and others in our community. Through informal education, we learn how to dress for different occasions, how to perform regular life routines like shopping for and preparing food, and how to keep our bodies clean.

Parents teaching their children to cook provide an informal education. (Photo courtesy of eyeliam/flickr)

Cultural transmission refers to the way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms of their culture. Both informal and formal education include cultural transmission. For example, a student will learn about cultural aspects of modern history in a U.S. History classroom. In that same classroom, the student might learn the cultural norm for asking a classmate out on a date through passing notes and whispered conversations.

Access to Education

Another global concern in education is universal access. This term refers to people's equal ability to participate in an education system. On a world level, access might be more difficult for certain groups based on class or gender (as was the case in the United States earlier in the nation's history, a dynamic we still struggle to overcome). The modern idea of universal access arose in the United States as a concern for people with disabilities. In the United States, one way in which universal education is supported is through federal and state governments covering the cost of free public education. Of course, the way this plays out in terms of school budgets and taxes makes this an often-contested topic on the national, state, and community levels.

How has your state's revenue affected your educational opportunities? (Graph courtesy of Census of Governments: Survey of School System Finances 2012)

A precedent for universal access to education in the United States was set with the 1972 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia's decision in Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia. This case was brought on the behalf of seven school-age children with special needs who argued that the school board was denying their access to free public education. The school board maintained that the children's 'exceptional' needs, which included mental retardation and mental illness, precluded their right to be educated for free in a public school setting. The board argued that the cost of educating these children would be too expensive and that the children would therefore have to remain at home without access to education.

This case was resolved in a hearing without any trial. The judge, Joseph Cornelius Waddy, upheld the students' right to education, finding that they were to be given either public education services or private education paid for by the Washington, D.C., board of education. He noted that

Constitutional rights must be afforded citizens despite the greater expense involved … the District of Columbia's interest in educating the excluded children clearly must outweigh its interest in preserving its financial resources. … The inadequacies of the District of Columbia Public School System whether occasioned by insufficient funding or administrative inefficiency, certainly cannot be permitted to bear more heavily on the 'exceptional' or handicapped child than on the normal child (Mills v. Board of Education 1972).

Today, the optimal way to include differently abled students in standard classrooms is still being researched and debated. 'Inclusion' is a method that involves complete immersion in a standard classroom, whereas 'mainstreaming' balances time in a special-needs classroom with standard classroom participation. There continues to be social debate surrounding how to implement the ideal of universal access to education.

Summary

Educational systems around the world have many differences, though the same factors—including resources and money—affect every educational system. Educational distribution is a major issue in many nations, including in the United States, where the amount of money spent per student varies greatly by state. Education happens through both formal and informal systems; both foster cultural transmission. Universal access to education is a worldwide concern.

Short Answer

1. Has there ever been a time when your formal and informal educations in the same setting were at odds? How did you overcome that disconnect?
2. Do you believe free access to schools has achieved its intended goal? Explain.

References

Darling-Hammond, Linda. 2010. 'What We Can Learn from Finland's Successful School Reform.' NEA Today Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2014. (http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm (http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm).

H Education World Ico

Durkheim, Emile. 1898 [1956]. Education and Sociology. New York: Free Press.

H Education World

Gross-Loh, Christine. 2014. 'Finnish Education Chief: ‘We Created a School System Based on Equality.'' The Atlantic. Retrieved December 12, 2014. (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/finnish-education-chief-we-created-a-school-system-based-on-equality/284427/?single_page=true).

Mills v. Board of Education, 348 DC 866 (1972).

H Education Worldwide

National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. 2006. Measuring UP: The National Report Card on Higher Education. Retrieved December 9, 2011 (http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED493360.pdf).

National Public Radio. 2010. 'Study Confirms U.S. Falling Behind in Education.' All Things Considered, December 10. Retrieved December 9, 2011 (https://www.npr.org/2010/12/07/131884477/Study-Confirms-U-S-Falling-Behind-In-Education).

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