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Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen stresses empowering role of education and need to reform school curricula, in address to Population Commission; Commission also concludes discussion of national experiences and population activities of the UN System -- Part 1 of 2.

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M2 PRESSWIRE-3 April 2003-UN: Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen stresses empowering role of education and need to reform school curricula, in address to Population Commission; Commission also concludes discussion of national experiences and population activities of the UN System -- Part 1 of 2(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:04022003

The single-mindedness of Western civilization strengthened separatism in the non-Western world, which could be seen in the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen told the Commission on Population and Development today, as it continued its thirty-sixth session.

Delivering a keynote address, he said no historical justification existed for categorizing science and mathematics as Western science, and religious beliefs as the foundation of the non-Western world. Arab and Muslim societies, in fact, had historically contributed greatly to both science and math.

Categorizing civilizations, he continued, encouraged societies to adopt singular identities, resulting in ill-education and social hatred. Sectarian schools and teaching crude categorizations, making one group dominant over another, led to aggressive and intolerant identification. Greater focus, he stressed, must be given to school curricula worldwide.

That did not mean issuing global guidelines, but bringing concerns over content more strongly into public debate.

Mr. Sen also discussed the empowering effect education had on people's lives. He noted that literacy was vital in finding employment, understanding legal rights, overcoming deprivation and raising the political voice of underdogs. Also, educating women could sharply reduce fertility and child mortality rates, limit family size, and increase their input into family decision-making.

In the exchange that followed, moderated by the Director of the Population Division, Joseph Chamie, Mr. Sen was asked about a myriad of issues, among them, the merits of informal education. There was no substitute for formal training in reading, writing and arithmetic, he replied. Moreover, schools gave children the opportunity to socialize and interact with people of different backgrounds and were important in developing healthy social skills.

Another question pertained to the importance of developing standards for testing and measuring students' progress in reasoning. Mr. Sen agreed that students' ability to reason was as important as their ability to read, write and

do arithmetic, but said that measuring that ability was difficult and had to be approached in more complex ways.

Also today, the Commission discussed programme implementation and future programme of work of the Secretariat in the field of population. Speakers highlighted ongoing activities to achieve population goals, as well as the need for new measures to combat persistent challenges.

Vast differences in health and welfare between rich and poor countries and between the rich and poor within countries was unacceptable, said the representative of the World Bank.

The Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Millennium Declaration mapped an effective strategy to link population and reproductive health issues to poverty reduction, education for all, improvements in gender equality, and protection of human rights. The challenge was one of effectively implementing that strategy.

China's representative stressed that population had remained a serious issue that should not be ignored, despite the dropping fertility rate. His country was facing new population issues, such as ageing, internal mobility and HIV/AIDS. He hoped the Population Division would devise new measures for approaching HIV/AIDS,...