Universalizing Primary Education in Sierra Leone: The Unintended Consequence of Problematizing Not Going to School

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Although the global number of out-of-school children has declined by almost half in the past decade, the Millennial Development Goal (MDG) of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) is stubbornly elusive for many developing countries. Against this backdrop, research on UPE policies in Africa is mixed. While some have found that UPE policies particularly in regards to eliminating school fees were associated with dramatic increases in enrollment (Deininger, 2003; Grogan, 2008), others have found such policies to have limited success both in terms of its implementation (Vavrus & Moshi, 2009) and its outcomes (Bold, Kimenyi, Mwabu & Sandefur, 2010). All of these studies, however, take place in East Africa, whereas few studies have looked at West or Central Africa where lagging enrollment rates are the most acute (UNICEF, 2014). More importantly, these studies presume education is an unalloyed good.

Taking Sierra Leone as a case study, this study poses the following question: What is the effect of the universal primary education agenda on out-of-school children? Using qualitative data from 101 interviews conducted in the spring of 2014 with out-of-school children, their parents and local leaders in rural Sierra Leone, this study examines the perceptions and experiences of not attending school.

Results suggest that an unintended consequence of universalizing education has been the problematization of the act of not attending school. According to interviewees, not participating in school is problematic in that it increases the number of “idlers” and “thieves” who “roam about” aimlessly. These out-of-school children are believed to collectively constitute a social “problem” by producing communities with disengaged constituents who do not have a “particular place” in the community. Alongside this problematization of the act of not going to school is the stigmatization of those who are out of school. For instance, uneducated children are described as “senseless” “fools” who are “rude and wicked.”

These results highlight how true universal education is more a process than a singular goal that can be realized at once. This means that in the interim, an inequity arises between those who do and do not obtain education. Thus, the imperfect nature of implementing universal education inadvertently stratifies society along the lines of an educated class on the one hand, and an uneducated class on the other. Children who do not participate in school experience a feeling of being split from their peers, and children who formerly worked and played with their peers on equal grounds are suddenly aware of their social and cognitive deficiencies. But unlike Pierre Bordieu’s theory of cultural reproduction, schools are not simply aiding in reproducing the dominant culture of the elite class. Instead, education is instrumental in imperceptibly superimposing a new hegemonic culture based on Western values. In this way, education is facilitating the production of – rather than the reproduction of – a new form of social inequality in rural Sierra Leone.

A key implication of this study is that educational identity should be established as an identity domain relevant to the social sciences. Results suggest there is a stigmatizing effect of being out of school, whereby the categorization of one’s educational status is an aspect of identity that is distinct from other domains such as one’s race, class, gender, sexual, religious and even occupational identity. Part of what shapes a person’s self-perception in the current world is his or her level of education and academic achievement. This is particularly so for children and adolescents whose main function in society is seen to be attending and completing school. Educational identity should therefore be established as a salient and separate construct, with further research on the process by which the stigma of being “out-of-school” forms, as well as the actions that result from this self-perception.

Author

• Grace Pai, New York University