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Georgia's education system seems to be broken. It is no longer corrupt, which is good, but it does not deliver the quality that we all want and need. Our teachers are among the lowest paid in Georgia and in the world. Quality is an issue at all level of education, starting with preschools and ending with graduate and post-graduate education.
On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, ISET organized a public discussion on the question “Do We Need No Education?” This event features talks by ISET’s President Eric Livny and Giorgi Bakradze, a Master of the intellectual show “What? Where? When?” and Advisor to the Chairman of the National Bank of Georgia.
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Mr. Livny chose to devote his TEDx talk to the challenge of bringing education and light to Georgia’s remote villages. He told the story of Dzevri, a tiny village in Imereti, which used the help of an American couple, Cathy McLain and Roy Southworth, to revolutionize the local school. In just three years, college enrolment for local school graduates went from zero to almost 100%. These amazing results were achieved by giving students incentives in the form of a modest scholarship (covering the cost of tuition at a public college or university), and using volunteers’ help to organize a wide range of extracurricular activities (English classes, baseball, drama, etc.).
Mr. Livny emphasized the importance of exposing Georgian children to new role models in order to widen their world-view and give them something to strive for. He argued that one can achieve a lot by simply changing children’s motivation. This is a crucial point: progress is possible without a lot of investment in infrastructure or bureaucratic tinkering with teaching standards, certification, etc.
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