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Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Two main reasons which were responsible for the highlight of sustainable development by the World Conference on Environment and Development (WCED) are the poverty conditions of the global South and the unsustainable consumption and production of the global North. These made the world leaders decided to move issues of development further after the MDGs by setting the Agenda 2030 through the 17 SDGs and 169 targets.

Quality education is Goal 4 of the 17 SDGs and it emphasizes inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities for all. This dream is pertinent when one considers the population of people that are yet to be educated. Statistics from UNESCO reveals that at least 771 Million young people and adults lacks basic literacy skills presently. Life without education limits people and I appreciate UNESCO Director General’s statement about giving opportunities for people to dream and be free during the 2020 International Literacy Day when he said:

"As we celebrate International Literacy Day, UNESCO would like to invite all actors around the world, in the field of education and beyond, to mobilize for the literacy of young people, adults and women. So that they, too, can have the right to dream and be free."

It is obvious that people have dreams, but dreams are better fulfilled with education. Using Amartya Sen’s lens in his book “Development as freedom” development is considered as realization of freedom and abolishment of unfreedoms. Lack of education keeps people in the dark in many areas of life, vicious cycle of poverty, limited ideas and so on.

Some major and vital aspects of goal 4 of the SDG is that learning is meant to be continuous, learner focus, collaborative and individuals are to learn through discovery as opposed to the transmissive, teacher-centred and individual learning in the traditional method. Education is inexhaustive, it is meant to be continuous as long as someone lives since no one knows everything. However, the tendency is that when one reaches certain level of educational attainment there is the possibility of nudging the feeling that “you have arrived” when in the real sense you are just starting. The spirit of quality education promote lifelong learning for all thereby making it inclusive in every community.

CITA reading skills foundation using Amartya Sen’s lens of freedom through education provides ideas of how we could prepare the future leaders adequately by guiding and providing support simply through the formation of the right habit during their formative years to help them make right choices that would lead them to freedom.