GiveWell wrote about education in developing countries here. Also, Giving What We Can wrote about education in a more accessible manner here. However, Giving What We Can’s report is from 2013 and may be outdated.
I heard the podcast before, but it helped to go through it again. I learnt about LAYS (Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling) and went through the links for articles, interesting stuff. Thanks.
Hello, thanks for the links, I read through them. Giving What We Can depends strongly on Give Well. Both of them conclude or assume that education has no intrinsic value Give Well says “We do not place much intrinsic value on increasing time in school” and Giving What We Can says ”...suggests that years in education does not itself increase happiness”
This is really puzzling since EA community is highly educated (from elite universities?) Education is what I value most in my life.
Why does the EA community think “Global health and (economic?) development” is more important that Global Education or atleast equal in importance?
Thinking that education has intrinsic value is might be more rare than you expect. Spencer Greenberg tried to “make a fully comprehensive list of intrinsic values that people report having” here and none of 112 items mention education, although few are related (e.g. “humanity continues to makes progress discovering things that weren’t previously known”, “people all around the world believe the truth rather than false things”). Are you sure that you value education intrinsically? That is, do you really value education for itself, not merely for its consequences? Would you continue to value it even if it were to cause nothing else? See more on what that means here.
I see education as oxygen or water, those are not mentioned in the list either. That is a very western, developed world list. In the poor parts of the world I assume they might say lack of hunger, malaria, ill-treatment etc..
Are you sure that you value education intrinsically?
I see basic education (high school equivalent) as an intrinsic value. (I watched the video)
It is also interesting that the video says that money does not have intrinsic value, but Global (economic) development is a headline priority for EA.
We value oxygen because of its consequences (help us stay alive), not intrinsically. If, for example, we would modify ourselves to survive without oxygen, we wouldn’t care about it, hence it’s not an intrinsic value. We care about global development because of its consequences too. E.g., we want fewer people to suffer from poverty and its consequences (hunger, easily preventable diseases, etc.). The core intrinsic value here is minimizing suffering.
Thanks saulius. Another way of thinking about oxygen is that is fundamentally important for our life. Likewise I see basic education as necessary to participate in daily life in this global world.
Caring about global development is one thing, but EA community gives it headline space in one of its 3 main causes/focus areas (Global health and development, X-risk, Animal welfare). I believe education should be added for its intrinsic value.
If we care about Global development for its consequences, I feel that it is getting too much headline space.Education allows individuals to avoid preventable diseases, hunger (via better participation in the industrial economy). Therefore “Global Health, Education and Development” makes sense and dropping it seems to be a mistake.
Also Human Development Index consists of three parts
“life expectancy, education, and per capita income” if the most widely used index for thinking about human welfare uses education as one of its three components, why does EA retain two of them and drop education without a solid explanation?
It seems to me that you don’t value education intrinsically so much as valuing it as a tool to increase ability to contribute economically, ability to contribute intelligently to public discourse, and ability satisfy basic needs like food and health. Twelve years of public schooling like what is currently taught might not be the best way of improving those things.
It changes outlook towards life, how people participate in everyday society, what hopes and dreams they have. What choices they make in their lives.
Illiterate women in agricultural societies gain autonomy via education.
It allows them to (partially) resist patriarchy, to choose to have small families, any yes to participate in public discourse, and industrial economy.
Women’s suffragette movement picked steam after women became literate/educated
Civil rights movement happened after African American’s became literate/educated
All the independence leaders of colonial countries were literate/educated.
Every single society that became rich, first became literate / educated. And countries that did not educate themselves stayed agricultural/poor. Argentina is a good example of this, a hundred years ago it was on par with UK in terms of money, but was behind in terms of education.
It consistently did not prioritize education and can now be compared to china instead of UK.
If education is good because it promotes autonomy, that is an instrumental value, not an intrinsic one. It would be intrinsically valuable if people said “I care about education even though it doesn’t promote autonomy or health or anything else valuable.”
Education has instrumental value, it more importantly has intrinsic value.
From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article
One of the most comprehensive lists of intrinsic goods that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena ….consciousness,.… truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom;
All of which in various forms are based on the foundation of basic education. I have consciousness of the world and universe because of my education, without which I would have less consciousness.
intrinsic value has been characterized above in terms of the value that something has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.”
For me education is valuable “in itself”, “for its own sake”, “as such”, “in its own right.”
I notice that I used the language of intrinsic value, the question uses
“for its own sake” before I was aware of the SEP article.
Also “development” has no intrinsic value, why is it headlining EA efforts?
I would prefer EA to emphasize “Global Education and Health” over “Global Health and Development”
Indeed, development does not have intrinsic value. EAs who support global health and development do so generally because they believe it is effective for reducing suffering (and possibly increasing autonomy, etc.)
What kinds of education do you think are most valuable? Is precalculus equally valuable as ethics philosophy? Or is it whatever that particular person feels most interested in? Is the astonishingly high rate at which students forget the material after the course ends something that should be ameliorated with spaced repetition, or is it better to spend the time learning new material? Should mindfulness and sports education be considered education and thus intrinsically valuable? Are there things that aren’t generally taught that should be?
I fully support Global Health as a cause priority, health has intrinsic value.
Education also reduces suffering (and is valuable for its own sake, has intrinsic value), why is it excluded in EA?
Education in agricultural societies is in terrible shape, even that education is valuable for kids who would otherwise have no education. I have no expertise on what should be in that curriculum. My take is simpler: give kids 12 years basic education, whatever is the norm in those societies (and also take relevant global input). Yes that includes playing sports at school.
There is no straight line from money to well being. See my downvoted example below comparing South Africa and Philippines. Another example is life expectancy in USA vs other industrial countries. Or maternal mortality rate is USA vs other industrialized countries.
This may be nit picking, but I think that education itself is not an intrinsic good. Understanding, knowledge, wisdom, etc. are all things that I hold intrinsically valuable, and are all attainable by education. Though, if these things are all what you mean by the word “education” then yes, I completely agree that there is intrinsic value in education.
Why do we build space telescopes? Why do we build particle accelerators? Why do we fund philosophers? Why do we fund theoretical mathematicians? Yes, there is a potential for these things to generate extrinsic value, but it is very low. I think the simpler reason to fund these things and people, is because many people find the knowledge and understanding they generate to be intrinsically good.
GiveWell wrote about education in developing countries here. Also, Giving What We Can wrote about education in a more accessible manner here. However, Giving What We Can’s report is from 2013 and may be outdated.
You may be interested in this 80,000 Hours podcast: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rachel-glennerster-best-buys-in-international-development/
I heard the podcast before, but it helped to go through it again. I learnt about LAYS (Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling) and went through the links for articles, interesting stuff. Thanks.
Hello, thanks for the links, I read through them. Giving What We Can depends strongly on Give Well. Both of them conclude or assume that education has no intrinsic value Give Well says “We do not place much intrinsic value on increasing time in school” and Giving What We Can says ”...suggests that years in education does not itself increase happiness”
This is really puzzling since EA community is highly educated (from elite universities?) Education is what I value most in my life.
Why does the EA community think “Global health and (economic?) development” is more important that Global Education or atleast equal in importance?
Also see
Thinking that education has intrinsic value is might be more rare than you expect. Spencer Greenberg tried to “make a fully comprehensive list of intrinsic values that people report having” here and none of 112 items mention education, although few are related (e.g. “humanity continues to makes progress discovering things that weren’t previously known”, “people all around the world believe the truth rather than false things”). Are you sure that you value education intrinsically? That is, do you really value education for itself, not merely for its consequences? Would you continue to value it even if it were to cause nothing else? See more on what that means here.
I see education as oxygen or water, those are not mentioned in the list either. That is a very western, developed world list. In the poor parts of the world I assume they might say lack of hunger, malaria, ill-treatment etc..
I see basic education (high school equivalent) as an intrinsic value. (I watched the video)
It is also interesting that the video says that money does not have intrinsic value, but Global (economic) development is a headline priority for EA.
We value oxygen because of its consequences (help us stay alive), not intrinsically. If, for example, we would modify ourselves to survive without oxygen, we wouldn’t care about it, hence it’s not an intrinsic value. We care about global development because of its consequences too. E.g., we want fewer people to suffer from poverty and its consequences (hunger, easily preventable diseases, etc.). The core intrinsic value here is minimizing suffering.
Thanks saulius. Another way of thinking about oxygen is that is fundamentally important for our life. Likewise I see basic education as necessary to participate in daily life in this global world. Caring about global development is one thing, but EA community gives it headline space in one of its 3 main causes/focus areas (Global health and development, X-risk, Animal welfare). I believe education should be added for its intrinsic value.
If we care about Global development for its consequences, I feel that it is getting too much headline space.Education allows individuals to avoid preventable diseases, hunger (via better participation in the industrial economy). Therefore “Global Health, Education and Development” makes sense and dropping it seems to be a mistake.
Also Human Development Index consists of three parts “life expectancy, education, and per capita income” if the most widely used index for thinking about human welfare uses education as one of its three components, why does EA retain two of them and drop education without a solid explanation?
It seems to me that you don’t value education intrinsically so much as valuing it as a tool to increase ability to contribute economically, ability to contribute intelligently to public discourse, and ability satisfy basic needs like food and health. Twelve years of public schooling like what is currently taught might not be the best way of improving those things.
Education has intrinsic value.
It changes outlook towards life, how people participate in everyday society, what hopes and dreams they have. What choices they make in their lives.
Illiterate women in agricultural societies gain autonomy via education. It allows them to (partially) resist patriarchy, to choose to have small families, any yes to participate in public discourse, and industrial economy.
Women’s suffragette movement picked steam after women became literate/educated
Civil rights movement happened after African American’s became literate/educated
All the independence leaders of colonial countries were literate/educated.
Every single society that became rich, first became literate / educated. And countries that did not educate themselves stayed agricultural/poor. Argentina is a good example of this, a hundred years ago it was on par with UK in terms of money, but was behind in terms of education. It consistently did not prioritize education and can now be compared to china instead of UK.
If education is good because it promotes autonomy, that is an instrumental value, not an intrinsic one. It would be intrinsically valuable if people said “I care about education even though it doesn’t promote autonomy or health or anything else valuable.”
You might like to read this SEP article about the difference.
Education has instrumental value, it more importantly has intrinsic value.
From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article
All of which in various forms are based on the foundation of basic education. I have consciousness of the world and universe because of my education, without which I would have less consciousness.
For me education is valuable “in itself”, “for its own sake”, “as such”, “in its own right.”
I notice that I used the language of intrinsic value, the question uses “for its own sake” before I was aware of the SEP article.
Also “development” has no intrinsic value, why is it headlining EA efforts? I would prefer EA to emphasize “Global Education and Health” over “Global Health and Development”
Indeed, development does not have intrinsic value. EAs who support global health and development do so generally because they believe it is effective for reducing suffering (and possibly increasing autonomy, etc.)
What kinds of education do you think are most valuable? Is precalculus equally valuable as ethics philosophy? Or is it whatever that particular person feels most interested in? Is the astonishingly high rate at which students forget the material after the course ends something that should be ameliorated with spaced repetition, or is it better to spend the time learning new material? Should mindfulness and sports education be considered education and thus intrinsically valuable? Are there things that aren’t generally taught that should be?
I fully support Global Health as a cause priority, health has intrinsic value. Education also reduces suffering (and is valuable for its own sake, has intrinsic value), why is it excluded in EA?
Education in agricultural societies is in terrible shape, even that education is valuable for kids who would otherwise have no education. I have no expertise on what should be in that curriculum. My take is simpler: give kids 12 years basic education, whatever is the norm in those societies (and also take relevant global input). Yes that includes playing sports at school.
There is no straight line from money to well being. See my downvoted example below comparing South Africa and Philippines. Another example is life expectancy in USA vs other industrial countries. Or maternal mortality rate is USA vs other industrialized countries.
Here is an example where straight relationship between money and health does not hold
Figure 2. Perspicuous contrasts: The Philippines does more with less
(Data from the 2010 UNDP Human Development Report)
Source Sen’s Capability Approach
This may be nit picking, but I think that education itself is not an intrinsic good. Understanding, knowledge, wisdom, etc. are all things that I hold intrinsically valuable, and are all attainable by education. Though, if these things are all what you mean by the word “education” then yes, I completely agree that there is intrinsic value in education.
Why do we build space telescopes? Why do we build particle accelerators? Why do we fund philosophers? Why do we fund theoretical mathematicians? Yes, there is a potential for these things to generate extrinsic value, but it is very low. I think the simpler reason to fund these things and people, is because many people find the knowledge and understanding they generate to be intrinsically good.