Each 24 January is celebrated as United Nations International Day of Education.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books on all aspects of education.

TU students are familiar with the outstanding achievements of the Thammasat University Faculty of Learning Sciences and Education. Its Facebook page provides up to date information about the Faculty.

This year’s theme for the United Nations (UN) International Day of Education is

Recover and revitalize education for the COVID-19 generation.

According to the UN website:

The International Education Day occurs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to a global learning disruption of unprecedented scale and severity. The closure of schools, universities and other learning institutions, as well as the interruption of many literacy and lifelong learning programmes, has affected the lives of 1.6 billion students in over 190 countries. As a new year begins, now is the time to step up collaboration and international solidarity to place education and lifelong learning at the centre of the recovery and the transformation towards more inclusive, safe and sustainable societies.

Now is the time to power education by stepping up collaboration and international solidarity to place education and lifelong learning at the centre of the recovery. Capturing the spirit of the International Day of Education, UNESCO and partners have spearheaded the Learning Planet Festival to celebrate learning in all contexts and share innovations that fulfil the potential of every learner, no matter what their circumstances. The winners of an essay contest of “Le Petit Prince” will be unveiled as part of the Day’s celebrations.

Education is a human right

The right to education is enshrined in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration calls for free and compulsory elementary education. The& Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, goes further to stipulate that countries shall make higher education accessible to all.

Education is key to sustainable development

When it adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015, the international community recognized that education is essential for the success of all 17 of its goals. Sustainable Development Goal 4, in particular, aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030.

Challenges to achieving universal education

Education offers children a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future. But about 265 million children and adolescents around the world do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school; 617 million children and adolescents cannot read and do basic math; less than 40% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa complete lower secondary school and some four million children and youth refugees are out of school. Their right to education is being violated and it is unacceptable.

Without inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, countries will not succeed in achieving gender equality and breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth and adults behind.

SDG 4: Facts and Figures

Enrolment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent but 57 million primary age children remain out of school.

More than half of children that have not enrolled in school live in sub-Saharan Africa.

An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas.

The website of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a specialised agency of the United Nations aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, the sciences, and culture, adds:

Education is a human right, a public good and a public responsibility.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education (link is external)(link is external), in celebration of the role of education for peace and development.

Without inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, countries will not succeed in achieving gender equality and breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth and adults behind.

Today, 258 million children and youth still do not attend school; 617 million children and adolescents cannot read and do basic math; less than 40% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa complete lower secondary school and some four million children and youth refugees are out of school. Their right to education is being violated and it is unacceptable.

Ideas about education

Here are some thoughts about education by authors, all of whose books are represented in the TU Library collection or are available to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service:

• The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Attributed to Aristotle; reported in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers,

• One of our immediate educational objectives must be the elimination of the competitive spirit, and the substitution of the co-operative consciousness.

Alice Bailey Education in the New Age, Lucis Trust Publishing (1954)

• EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

• Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hay-fields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education. By being well acquainted with all these they come into most intimate harmony with nature, whose lessons are, of course, natural and wholesome.

Luther Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

• Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

G.K. Chesterton, Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907

• Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed (1897)

• I hope we still have some bright twelve-year-olds who are interested in science. We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives on preparing for examinations.

Freeman Dyson, “Butterflies and Superstrings” in Timothy Ferris (ed.) The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics

• It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Albert Einstein; quoted in “Autobiographical Notes”, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul Schilpp, ed. (1951)

• Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

André Gide, “An Unprejudiced Mind,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)