by Tasha Raymond

Created on: November 19, 2009

Assessing how a culture values education can be difficult due to the barriers of language and customs. However, it is extremely important information when it comes to building education in countries that lack such. The literacy rates, aspirations, and religious beliefs of a people are factors that need to be taken into consideration. Not to be over looked are the key components of societal structure and the current economy as well. Gathering information on these components can help build an over-all view as to how much value a culture places on education.

Literacy Rates
The literacy rate of a country is one of the most obvious pieces of how valuable education is to a culture. Cultures that have low literacy rates tend to have no or inadequate schools set up. Many of these countries are hard hit by conflict and natural disaster, leaving education low on their priority list. Some of these countries, such as Malawi (literacy rate of 25.5%) and Sierra Leone (literacy rate of 20.7%), having continued on with low literacy rates, have breed a culture in which education is considered by the children as a privilege and not a right. They see themselves us unworthy or not needing of an education.

Aspirations and Future Ambitions
One way to decipher the value of education in a culture is to talk to the children and see what their future aspirations and ambitions are. If they say they are going to be whatever their father is simply because that's what is expected, it can be assumed that there is no strong push to have children educated and open to the idea of doing something else or going further than the norm. In areas in which children readily say that they wish to be a doctor, or a lawyer, jobs that require extensive education, than it can be assumed that education is at least valued to some extent by the culture enough to give children the hope of learning something new.

Economy and Societal Structure
By looking at the economy, you can learn a lot from a culture. If a culture is based off from an economy built off from agrarian practices (such as Cambodia in the 1970s) and leaves no room for jobs in advanced fields of study (such as technology, industry, finances), than more often than not, the only value given towards education is for that which is learned by hand and in the field. The societal structure here is that to go to traditional forms of schooling, the children are wasting their time as what they are going to do in their adulthood as been chosen for them by

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