McKenzie Hartmann-Education Endures-4th Period

Education is a vital part of existence and allows innovation in society and technology.  So many "underdeveloped" areas of the world are rife with environments unsuitable to learning and plagued by the ignorance of past generations.  Women, especially fall victim to the dangerous kind of ignorance.  In a more rural part of Ghana, for example, there is an ancient practice called trokosi that essentially promotes the enslavement of young women to priests to atone for the misdeeds of their family members.  While this practice was outlawed in 1998, it is still practiced in the more remote areas of the region.  A young woman named Millicent Thenkey was allowed to attend school in the final stages of this practice when she realized the injustice of it.  She was a person, after all, and with education she was able to fully grasp the injustice behind this tradition attempted to fight it.  Her contemporaries were not as foreword in this thought process.  Millicent took the case to the courts, yet her family refused to attend and the police wouldn't force them, therefore the case was thrown out.  Despite the fact that this is now a crime, Millicent became a slave, the law didn't protect her and the community didn't strike back.  When the priest who condones this practice was interviewed,  his response was, "We just heard that trokosi was against the law and that women were human beings and needed to be treated as equal. We hadn't ever heard before that women needed to be treated as equal."  He later goes onto say the times are changing and newer generations may end old practices all together.  Education has improved living conditions, saves lives and promotes purpose.  A woman in Africa chose to spend her money sending her daughter to school instead of buying the medicine necessary to save her life.  Chile soldiers in Liberia claimed their greatest desire is to go back to school.  People around the world have demonstrated their lust for information in the dramatic measures they have taken to support it.

So often our society takes the most basic privileges for granted.  Our country mandates each citizen is entitled to an education, while other people struggle to receive a fraction of the information that is just given to us.  An educated person has the ability to inform and strive for a greater understanding of what's right both internally and logically.  If mothers in remote areas of the world were taught basic sanitary procedures, so many young lives could be saved.  If people were allowed to expand on their knowledge perhaps there would be less inequality and practices like the trokosi would no longer be in effect.  Examples like these demonstrate the how necessary education is to the well being of a society and ensuring that justice is received by all people.