By: Julian Hernandez-Webster

(Bagby et al., 2021, p. 1)

While the case of each individual is, of course, unique, there are several factors that can have a great impact in shaping the path that someone’s life will follow, and education is among the most important. A child that grows up in an environment in which education is readily available, featuring quality resources and teachers to stoke their ambitions and abilities, has a distinct advantage in life outcomes over a child whose environment has limited educational access and mediocre educators or programs. Communities like the latter are often further afflicted by other systemic weaknesses such as inadequate infrastructure, poor health care, scarce economic opportunity, institutional corruption, and deep inequality or injustice. While the first child has the support of societal frameworks that allow them to develop and their dreams to flourish, the second may feel invisible or abandoned by their society, or that their dreams are too unrealistic to be worth pursuing. In his Ted Talk, titled The real roots of youth violence, Craig Pinkney says that “if young people feel they are not part of our village, they will burn it down to feel its warmth” (2016, min. 5:25-5:35).

Which environment aligns more with your lived experience? If you were a child again, the same as you were before, how might your life be different if that environment were the opposite? How crucial has the role of education been in your path to the present?

I will use this space to discuss the relationship between access to quality education and the prevalence of youth criminality, particularly violence, as it pertains to the larger development goal of citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Conceptual & Contextual Framing

As education is such a broad concept, it is helpful to first define the concept in order to paint a picture of how it could be. If learning is, as Daniel Wagner writes, “…how we reach our human potential, and it is codified in the myriad customs every culture uses to define what it means to be human,” then education encompasses the many ways in which we encourage, facilitate, and develop learning in others (2017, p. 55). While education can take place in both formal and informal settings, which differ fundamentally in the level of structure or institutionality of the context in which learning occurs, most education systems at the national level are comprised of a network of schools. Accordingly, for the purposes of this piece education will be synonymous with schooling. Within LAC, the public education systems of most countries fall well short of enabling each nation’s students to reach their potential, and instead of high prevalence of school enrollment or levels of student engagement, rates of youth criminality soars as violence grips the children and adolescents of communities throughout the region.

Latin America and the Caribbean, in part as a result of a long history of foreign political and economic intervention (mostly at the hands of the United States in recent times, although Spain, France, Portugal and others have done plenty of damage as well going back further), is in particularly poor standing when it comes to citizen security. As a metric of a society’s level of development, citizen security is made up of many factors, including compliance with a society’s rules and norms of coexistence, efficiency of the justice system, and perhaps most importantly, the prevalence or threat level of violence. In a report from 2018, the Inter-American Development Bank shares that, “Although the [LAC] region does not have any armed conflicts, it shows high levels of violence with the highest homicide rate in the world: 22.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the global average of 5.3 in 2015” (Chinchilla and Vorndran 2018, p. 11). They add that “an estimated 43% of the population is constantly afraid of being a victim of crime,” and young people are particularly vulnerable as they are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of violence (ibid.). Other factors come into play as well, such as gender and poverty.

Educational Reform Can Make All the Difference

While billions of dollars have been poured into efforts to increase security by force, widespread education reform may actually hold the key to reducing youth violence, improving educational access and attainment, and transforming communities or entire societies through sustained social and political action. The conceptual framework in Figure ES.1 shows the theory of change developed in the USAID’s Evidence Review of the effect of education programs on violence, crime, and related outcomes, demonstrating how an education system “can help children and youth to lead productive lives and prevent divergence onto negative pathways where  violence and crime play a part” (Bagby et al., 2021, p. 3). The findings suggest that continued access and engagement in school, as well as the social-emotional skills they develop in the process, make children and youth more likely to avoid risky behaviors, violence, and crime. 

(Bagby et al., 2021, p. 3)

Education reform, in this region and context, should begin with a strong commitment by State governments to increase access to education among LAC youth, ideally with the support of international, civil society, and nongovernmental organizations. It must emphasize expansion so that programs extend to reach rural communities, the restructuring of curriculums to improve their relevance and build connections with students at primary and secondary levels, and investment in the quality of education by strengthening the training of teachers and distributing resources and learning tools. Additionally, by linking this renewed pedagogical approach with a radical humanist framework, States throughout LAC can promote widespread engagement with their youth. This is no simple feat, but if managed properly and executed successfully, it would build capacity in children and adolescents to develop a better understanding of themselves and their place in society, particularly in areas that have traditionally been underserved by or left out of formal education processes entirely. Ultimately, this “critical consciousness” and democratization of education would likely inspire higher rates of social and political involvement and lower rates of youth violence, slowly transforming communities, and eventually, entire societies.

In an environment like this, even youth growing up in less than ideal circumstances might feel like they are a part of something: a community bigger than themselves and those in their immediate surroundings. With the right educational system in place, featuring institutionalized values of self-discovery and individual agency, they can feel that they are indeed visible. 

References:

Bagby, E., Murray, N., Felix, E., Liuzzi, S., Aldredge, J. M., Ingwersen, N., Abracar, P., & Aponte, A. (2021). Evidence review: The effect of education programs on violence, crime, and related outcomes. USAID. Retrieved February 23, 2023, from https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00XGXS.pdf. 

Chinchilla, L., & Vorndran, D. (2018). (issue brief). Citizen Security in Latin America and the Caribbean. Inter-American Development Bank. Retrieved February 23, 2023, from https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LChinchilla_CitSecEng_Nov2018.pdf. 

Pinkney, C. (n.d.). The real roots of youth violence. TEDxBrum. United Kingdom; United Kingdom. Retrieved February 23, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWNTMmktoCQ. 

Wagner, D. A. (2017). Chapter 3: Learning as Development. In Learning as development: Rethinking international education in a Changing World (pp. 54–77). Routledge.