Today, we celebrate the fourth annual International Day of
the Girl. As the Head of School at an
all-girls, grades 3-12 school enrolling 660 female students, I’m proud to say
that every day is the day of the girl. However,
I can only describe my students as privileged.
Most of them live in one of the wealthiest and best educated counties in
the U.S. with one of the finest school systems, and they attend a school long
recognized for its commitment to academic excellence and for preparing leaders,
women who, as our philosophy statement says, “will make a difference in a
complex and changing world.” Many, many
girls around the world, especially in developing countries, can hardly imagine
enjoying such good fortune. As we turn
our particular focus on girls around the world today, we should focus above all
else on the importance of education. Ensuring
that girls receive an education, that they at least finish high school, leads
to a number of important results, results that impact the girls individually,
their communities and even their countries.
It is for this reason that United Nations has set forth as the fourth of
the 2015 Sustainable
Development Goals “Ensure Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and
Promote Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All.”
In many parts of the world, girls still receive less
education than boys. Indeed, of the 130
million children not in school globally, 70% are girls. That amounts to 62 million girls worldwide. The reasons girls don’t attend school are
numerous. In many countries, school
costs money, or if it’s theoretically free, students still need to purchase books
and other supplies. In addition, when
children are in school, they are not contributing, in the short term anyway, to
family income. When a family has very
limited resources, school sits low in their priorities; if they have money to
send some children to school, but not all, the boys will usually go.
Child marriage also obstructs girls’ educational
attainment. Around the world, over 700
million women married before they were 18 and of those a third did so before they
were 15. When girls marry, they leave
school. Moreover, teenage mothers are
more likely to die in childbirth and their children are also more likely to die
than if they waited until their twenties to give birth. As we’ll see shortly, child marriage also
perpetuates poverty and lack of education in the succeeding generation. According to the UN,
when girls in developing countries attend school for just seven years (which
doesn’t even include high school), they marry on average four years later and
have two fewer children.
Reducing the size of families impacts poverty levels as more
resources are available per child.
Ultimately, limiting population growth has the effect of raising
national per capita income levels and promoting overall economic growth. However,
educating girls has even more impact than simply lowering the number of
children born. Again, according to the
UN, every year a girl attends school, she increases her earning power by
10-20%; secondary schooling increases earning power even more: 15% to 25%. Moreover,
women invest their earnings back into their families at a rate of 90%. Finally, women who receive an education are
more likely to insist that their children do so as well. The combination of marrying later and having
fewer children, enjoying greater earning power, investing that money back into her
family, and encouraging the next generation to go to school all point to female
education as the key to overcoming poverty and promoting economic growth in the
developing world.
We are all familiar with the powerful impact that Malala Yousafzai is having on the world. She has come to world prominence thanks to an
ironic combination of her father’s commitment to girls education, to the violence
and misogyny of the Taliban, and her own extraordinary courage and
commitment. Malala, however, is not
alone and if you read the twitter feed today for #dayofthegirl or #IDG, you
will see examples of many women and girls making a difference around the world. Several weeks ago, at Holton-Arms, my school, we
had the opportunity to hear firsthand from one of those people, Dr. Kakenya
Ntaiya. Ntaiya, a Maasai who grew up in a
village in South Kenya, was engaged to be married at 5. As a young teenager, she was expected to undergo
female circumcision and then get married.
However, Ntaiya successfully negotiated with her father, agreeing to the
circumcision if he would allow her to finish high school. She managed to receive a scholarship to what
was then Randolph-Macon Women’s College.
She convinced the village elders to let her go, promising to return to
her village to share the benefits of her education. After college, during which she became the
first youth advisor the UN Population Fund, she earned a doctorate in education
from the University of Pittsburgh.
Training in hand, she fulfilled her promise to the elders by founding
the Kenya’s first girls boarding primary school. The Kakenya
Center for Excellence, which opened in 2009, now enrolls 170 girls in
grades 4-8 and Ntaiya plans to add a secondary school.
The Kakenya Center
for Excellence has already achieved success on several fronts. The school gives preference to the most
destitute students, many of whom are orphans, providing them with full
scholarships. Not surprisingly, these
students came to school with weak academic backgrounds. The class of 2014, the
first graduating class, entered reading on average at a second grade level and scored
below the district average on national exams.
That class finished their Kakenya Center for Excellence careers testing
second in five subjects out of the 133 schools in the district, and one of them
achieved top ranking in the county. All
the graduates from 2014 and 2015 were admitted to secondary school, and 44% of
them enrolled in Kenya’s most prestigious schools. Parents of Kakenya Center for Excellence
students must sign an agreement that prohibits female genital mutilation and
child marriage; as a result all the Kakenya Center for Excellence girls have
avoided these fates. In addition, the
school is having an impact on local mores.
The village chief who in 2006 proclaimed, “girls are for marriage, so
there is no need to educate them,” now serves on the Board of the Center. In a
statement indicative of the social change Ntaiya and her school are engendering,
a Maasai father promised, “Culturally,
girls aren’t supposed to inherit anything from the family. I want, while I am
alive, for my daughter to inherit an education from me.”
Kakenya Ntaiya’s
story demonstrates what a difference educating one girl can make. The girls at her school aspire to be doctors,
lawyers, and pilots; they also expect to make a difference in their
communities. There are many ways for us
to promote girls education around the world, including donating to
organizations such as Save
the Children or the Kakenya Center
for Excellence itself. In supporting
this effort, we would be joining Michelle Obama and the Peace Corps, who have
launched a program called “Let
Girls Learn,” in making girls education a priority. We currently have the
largest generation of girls in history, and 600 million of them live in the
developing world where opportunity is too often limited. These girls deserve –
indeed, demand – our attention and support.
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