Education Provision to Nomadic Pastoralists: A Literature Review. IDS Working Paper.

Overview & Synopsis

Educationally, pastoralists appear to be a paradox. From the perspective of official education, they are a complete failure, scoring badly in terms of enrollment, achievement, attainment, and gender balance. However, pastoralists are far from being unskilled. Their daily lives require them to perform tasks involving high levels of individual and social specialization. A consideration of this paradox should be central to analyses of the continuous failure, with regard to nomads, of the universal project of education. Instead, education programs appear to oppose nomadic culture at all levels--from principles and goals to evaluation. As a universal project, education has had a very broad goal of the fulfillment of all individuals as human beings and a very narrow view of educational structure and content. With regard to education of nomads, this literature review suggests that such attitude should be reversed to a broader view and focused goals. Policies should expand the view from statistics and the classroom to education as a broad phenomenon. Education for nomads should be flexible, multifaceted, and focused enough to target specific structural problems such as social and economic marginalization, lack of political representation, or coping and interacting successfully with the challenges of globalization. Sections of this literature review cover the educational rationale (education as basic need and right, education for development and integration); practical problems and solutions (mobility, remoteness, poverty, sparse population, distance education, staff, motivation, language); cultural problems (conservatism, ignorance, child labor, cultural alienation, education of girls, parent choice, relevance); impact and outcomes of education; a Mongolia case study; and key issues for future policy. (Contains 194 references.) (TD)