Gordon Brown on Why Education Is Every Human’s Right - The Daily Beast

Gordon Brown on Why Education Is Every Human’s Right - The Daily Beast:

Gordon Brown on Why Education Is Every Human’s Right

Jul 14, 2012 12:00 AM EDT

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Gordon Brown

The pain of a child excluded from school may not evoke the same heartache as seeing an infant starving to death or a child suffering from AIDS. Yet for millions of children, writes former British prime minister Gordon Brown, an education is the only route out of famine, poverty, disease, and conflict.

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The only international language people understand, it is said, is the cry of a child. I will never forget my visit last May to a one-room village school just outside the capital of the world’s newest state, South Sudan. There were no more than 20 children inside–the most the tiny hut could hold–but scores more crowded outside trying to peer in through the single window. They were desperate to see what had been denied them: the chance of an education, a right most of us take for granted. Beyond their curiosity, it was possible to see something else, something profoundly disturbing: in their eyes I could see a sadness at being excluded from the future, their slow-dawning realization tha