Age and education

A blog post by Adam. While waiting in line at the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa (Israel), Melissa and I briefly talked to a retired U.S. engineering professor who was spending a few weeks at Haifa's Technion University reviewing the undergraduate curriculum.  The greatest difference between the U.S. and the Technion? Not so much the curriculum, but rather the students - the students at the Technion were several years older than American undergrads. Due to military service and traveling, the average student began university between 20 and 23 years old.  These few years and the experiences that accompanied them meant a much more mature student body.

This is proof that we did indeed visit the Baha'i Gardens. It is pretty much irrelevant to this post.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I find myself interviewing a 19-year-old recent university graduate in Santo Domingo. She had completed high school by age 16, and university only a few years later. The young woman was intelligent and given her challenging upbringing, mature beyond her years. Still, she seemed young, and I wondered how her lack of years impacted her.

After sharing her story with our host mother, we learned that Dominicans didn't usually graduate at such a young age.  Her age was a sign of her hard work, but it seems to also be a reflection of the poor educational system in the Dominican Republic.  With 36% of Dominican children not completing 8th grade, and the highest teen pregnancy rate in the Americas, the educational levels in the DR are low to begin with. But even those who do complete school may get a subpar education.  This was our host mother's explanation - sure the young woman was smart but she also went to mediocre schools where early graduation was possible. How different the system was from Israel or even the United States. This surely would be one of many reminders of the wealth and education disparities between the DR and so many other places in the world.