Here are two sobering statements on education in poor countries that, I believe, cast light on the origin of human suffering all over the world. The first one comes from the IRIN article highlighting the recent report on violence in African schools:
[M]any parents support corporal punishment as an integral part of education; while some see sexual relations between students and teachers as a viable way for the child to get ahead.
The second is found in Nicholas Kristof’s latest column:
[I]f the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed.
These are extremes but they show how wrong, unhealthy relationship among human beings is creating the whole spectrum of problems that we desperately try to solve through mechanisms of ideology, politics, and money.