Education
About half of Sudanese children go to school, falling as low as 20% in some areas. Most schools are in urban areas. Many have been destroyed in the last 20 years of disorder. Most education is primary-level. The literacy rate is around 60%, and improving.
Female education was one of the priorities of the colonial government, despite considerable cultural suspicion, and progress continued after independence in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman arose out of this movement.
In September 1990 the new Bashir government ordered that Arabic should replace English in all education, and changed the curriculum to an Islamic-based system.
In Southern Sudan the Jesuit Refugee Service has been building schools.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Sudan
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“There must be a profound recognition that parents are the first teachers and that education begins before formal schooling and is deeply rooted in the values, traditions, and norms of family and culture.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)