Simple Yet Effective: Yet One More

I have written previously on this website about the power of simple educational inputs in increasing schooling outputs. Thus, previous reports have been consolidated into a full primary school intervention targeting providing reading glasses to the 10 percent of primary school children who cannot see correctly. Such a simple idea, requiring the simplest of solutions; if children cannot see, they cannot learn; and if 10% of children cannot see, we are automatically forfeiting 10% of our young populations' futures.
However, as is the case with all aspects of educational quality which have been examined on this website, incentives and and their proper understanding and integration into policy design is absolutely critical. Though the intervention was shown to be incredibly efficient in raising educational outcomes for the targeted children, equivalent in some cases to an additional one half year of school, adoption of the glasses by communities, parents, and children was hindered because proper insight was not given into the role of incentives and internalization of change theory.

According to the intervention, "Visualizing Development: Eyeglasses and Academic Performance in China," (Glewwe, Park, and Zhao, 2012), eyeglasses as an educational intervention are easy and efficient, as has "...immediate gains," and are, perhaps most crucially, have the ability to create positive change even in larger, failing macro-climates which commonly impede other interventions. However, community norms, expectations of the necessity of future eyeglass purchases, and parents' simple perceptions of eyeglasses means that even when provided for free, 30% of needy children did not accept the lenses.
However, what about the role of incentives and change theory in the adoption of new technology? The authors have not analyzed the basic human fundamentals behind change itself; the status quo, even when detrimental to youth, is much easier to maintain than to change. Thus, incentives for change must be examined; these incentives can be either monetary or non-monetary in nature. Parents, the obvious gatekeepers in such interventions, must be educated and incentivized to induce needed change for such beneficial and simple interventions as the Gansu Eyeglass Project.
http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/better-vision-education

Popular Education and Its Practical Applications: Thoughts and Openings

The work of Brazilian educationalist Paolo Freire has resounded for decades; his "popular education" approach seeks to liberate the oppressed, to open dialogue between the teacher (or facilitator) and students, to create a space for questioning and empowerment, and to eradicate formalized structures which seek to "bank" knowledge from the teacher to the students. Freire saw formalized education as further regimenting the oppressor-oppressed structures of society, as disparaging creativity and critical thinking. Freire talked of "education as the practice of freedom."

A "Simple Solution" to Refugee Education
Thus, there are many practical ramifications and implications for popular education, for educationalists in the formalized arena, as well as NGO's seeking community dialogue and a participative approach. One interesting area of application is in the immediate response to refugee crises (a topic that I have recently written about for coursework here at The LSE), as popular education can, in my theoretical argument, most effectively fill the gap between crisis and formalization of educational services in these complex emergency situations, playing a vital role in psychological protection and empowerment, simplification of teacher training, and in providing educational services that are not highly administratively and financially dependent.

However, practical deployment in mainstream pedagogy is neither widespread nor appreciated by many educators, especially in the developing world, in which formalized educational structures are one of the lasting colonial legacies. Popular education requires training and empowerment of teachers, which, in many cases, is beyond the writ of limited administrative structures.

A "Simple Solution" To Progressive Teacher Training:
Despite these limitations, I will argue that the popular education approach has been mimicked by progressive educationalists throughout the world (acknowledged or not),  and is a critical component of engaging critical thinking and progressive, project-based evaluations of students. And, the lessons and components are not administratively difficult nor difficult to train teachers to implement. Foremost, the approach aligns with individual teacher incentives. Limited additional training provides teachers with a tool that can take the burden off of their "chalk and talk" burden for class periods, provide autonomy and self-learning for students, and not be resource-dependent (the key failing of educational technology initiatives that mimic the popular education approach, though with technology as the medium/go between).

Thus, popular education approaches need to be integrated into school curriculum in LDC's, as a compliment to the formalized structure that has burdened these systems, overwhelmed teachers, and led to extremely limited educational outcomes for many primary and secondary school students. New strategies do not need to be complicated; complication breeds failure in resource starved environments where individual incentives of teachers and administrators are not aligned with educational outputs. Tools need to be simple, effective, non-threatening to authority, and ease the  burden on teachers.

Simple Solutions: Education Innovation, Made Simple

In our search for innovations and answers to seemingly insurmountable questions concerning school quality and educational advancement in the developing world, we often overlook the simplest of factors that can have an enormous impact on the learning cycle for children. The work of the MIT Poverty Action, highlighted many times on this website, has shown that small, incremental changes can be made within existing frameworks that have dramatic effects. This gives hopes to the jaded reformers, weary in their quest for large scale institutional reforms, that positive change is impossible, this is simply a notion of removing unnecessary barriers that are in place, sitting back, and marveling at the effects.

Stephen Dubner, from Freakonomics fame, has been working in China to introduc a simple remedy, glasses, to the student populace in Gansu Province, China.
Here is a transcript from a recent interview of Dubner on NPR:

Bob Moon: The strain on budgets is squeezing education spending. And that's bound to put a premium
on innovative -- or, shall we say, cheap -- fixes to teaching problems. Stephen Dubner, from Freakonomics,
always has his eyes open for these sorts of solutions. Today, he's sharpening his focus on a surprisingly simple solution to an education problem in China.

---

Stephen Dubner: Gansu province, about 1,000 miles west of Beijing, is mostly rural and very, very poor. So, for a kid growing up there, a good education is important.
Here's an eighth-grade teacher in Gansu named Long Qingyi.

Long Qingyi: Sometimes I have to call the students up to the blackboard in order to read. And other times, I just have to walk over to the students myself to give them extra attention.

As classroom problems go, this is as basic as they get: It's tough to learn if you can't see the chalkboard. An estimated 10 percent of primary school students in the developing world need eyeglasses. But an academic study in Gansu found that, of students who need glasses, only 2 percent had them.

Albert Park: Well, I think that was obvious when we visited schools.

That's Albert Park, an economist at Oxford. He and Paul Glewwe, an economist at the University of Minnesota, set out to fix what seemed like a pretty straightforward problem.

Park: We explain that we are going to provide them with free eyeglasses, and then we have to, of course, get the permission of their parents and get their own agreement to participate in our program and to accept the glasses.

Park and Glewwe were going to hand out eyeglasses to 1,500 students. Each pair cost just $10 to make -- and, because the researchers had grant money to work with, the glasses were totally free for the kids. But it wasn't just a goodwill mission; it was also an educational experiment. Park and Glewwe set up a control group of another 1,000 students nearby. After one school year, the kids with glasses had learned 25 to 50 percent more than the control group. There was just one wrinkle: A lot of kids who needed glasses wouldn't take them.

Park: We actually were pretty surprised.

Four hundred and sixty-two families turned down free glasses for their children. Why? It's hard to say exactly. Some parents thought that glasses might make their kids' eyes weaker, which most optometrists say is a myth. Others might have been wary of a handout from Western academics. And then there's the old "four eyes" stigma. Regardless, Park and Glewwe learned something interesting. Here was an education reform that was simple, cheap, and it worked. It was also unusual because -- instead of addressing the supply side of education, as most education reform does -- this addressed the demand side.

Park: I think that a lot of the people going around trying to think how can we improve education and learning tend to focus on how we can improve schools, and teachers, or textbooks, etc. This problem is a little bit different, because it's really about the behavior of students and their parents.

Park thinks more families would have accepted the glasses if the researchers had better explained the program, if they had cultivated demand. So how do you make having four eyes cool?

Harvey Moscot: In America, eyeglasses are the coolest thing you can put on your face right now.

He would say that. That's Harvey Moscot, an optometrist and president of a New York eyewear institution called Moscot. Every year, Moscot sells about 300 pairs of vanity glasses -- with clear plastic lenses -- for around $225 a pop. In the industry, they're called "planos." According to one estimate, some four million Americans wear planos everyday. Not to see better; just to look better. I asked Moscot why there's such a difference in eyeglass culture between the U.S. and Gansu Province.

Moscot: Famous Chinese icons probably are not wearing their glasses like they are in America. From any hip-hop star to any idol of a sports star that wears them influences children's perception of eyeglasses.

You hear that Chinese celebrities? Please, put on some eyeglasses. Hey, I wear mine every day.
I'm Stephen Dubner for Marketplace.