Blog Entry #3

This week I couldn't choose between the film Girl Rising and the talk from Raul Diaz. I have been internally struggling all week to come to a conclusion on how to create better educational opportunities for girls in less fortunate situations. It seems that education has had nothing but positive benefits, as shown by the film, but at some point giving girls an education often violates cultural or religious values. I was also interested in Raul's work in re-entry. I think helping incarcerated individuals reenter the work force is an extremely under appreciated and underfunded field. As a country, the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. I think this may have a connection to the amount of gun violence and shootings we see in the States. As a classmate in my small-group discussion about violence and terrorism on Friday pointed out, the world has become highly armed. To be safe, many people claim you should simply "carry a gun in your purse" to protect yourself. A highly armed world without properly transitioning incarcerated individuals back into society is a dangerous one.

Regarding the first topic, it is clear education has obvious benefits to our advancement as a human race. However, as a human race, we have to at some point define what our innate human rights our. I don't believe we can guarantee or provide a free education to everyone on the planet, but I think everyone should have the right to pursue an education if they have the means. I don't think this equates to Western hegemony. I think the UN should determine education to be a human right, and although it may not be enforceable initially, recognizing the importance of education could go a long way in influencing the developing world.  Secondly, Raul's work demonstrates the kind of change I think we need to fix the violence issues discussed in this week's readings. We need to look for a solution that prevents the problem. Unless people feel they are included in society, they won't hesitate to lash out violently towards society when they feel disenfranchised. Our culture needs to shift into being more willing to "pay it forward" to prevent the problem rather than sit back and blame the individuals that eventually lash out without understanding where they are coming from. I admire Raul's compassion and willingness to try to understand difficult people and give them a second chance to make things right in their lives.

I would love to know statistics on how aiding reentry for incarcerated individuals affects their likeliness to be involved in violent crime after reentry. It would be really interesting to see how big of an effect people like Raul have on preventing crime and violence. If given unlimited resources, I would hope to influence the UN to put in place some kind of global human "right" to education. Perhaps trade embargoes could be used to force countries to allow education and allow women to live their own lives freely. I would be against using force or violence to enact this but I think through using Western influence we could make a huge difference in the world.