Nicholas Kristof: The education crisis you haven’t heard about

You thought Betsy DeVos was bad. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Wednesday, March 28, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Kristof »]( [The education crisis you haven’t heard about]( [These kids should be at the front of the class, tutoring us on the importance of education.]( These kids should be at the front of the class, tutoring us on the importance of education. Michael Stulman/Catholic Relief Services Sixty million kids in the world don’t even go to elementary school. Millions more go, but don’t learn a thing. I visited some classrooms halfway around the world and they underscored that global education is not just under-funded, but the system is broken. The backdrop is one of the challenges of journalism these days: President Trump sucks up all the oxygen in the room. The result is that other important subjects falls through the cracks, and what doesn’t get covered gets neglected. That’s why I veer back and forth, covering Trump for a while and then trying to dash off and cover the genocide against the Rohingya or, today, an education crisis. [Read!]( I wrote it from my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student with me on a reporting trip. [Here’s a piece]( by my winner, a future star journalist named [Tyler Pager]( from Central African Republic. I know some folks will ask how they can help, and one woman has already inquired about sending a roomful of books to a school in Central African Republic. Sadly, there isn’t a good system to send books to poor countries; transportation costs are the big problem, and when it has been tried the shipments have been long on books that nobody wants (like ancient guides to computer programing). So the best way to help is money. If you want to support girls education, I really like the organization [Camfed]( (short for Campaign for Female Education), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a [provocative op-ed]( arguing for repeal of the Second Amendment. Provocative but, I think, wrong. It feeds the N.R.A. narrative that gun legislation is about banning guns and any effort to repeal the Second Amendment would have four consequences: 1.) it would fail. 2.) Gun sales would go up, as they do whenever gun-owners feel threatened. 3.) Resistance to more modest safety measures would also increase, making it harder to achieve universal background checks. 4.) Gun mortality would be higher than otherwise. I just finished an excellent but rather spooky new novel, “[The Woman in the Window]( by A.J. Finn, that has been getting a fair amount of attention. It’s something of a literary mystery with an unreliable narrator and lots of twists and turns. By the way, the novel that I’ve read in the last year that most sticks with me is “[My Absolute Darling]( by Gabriel Tallent. I thought it was unbelievably compelling — and a really troubling window into the paranoid survivalist world. Then again, after I recommended it in a newsletter last year, I was walking down the street and someone stopped me and asked: “Did you REALLY like ‘My Absolute Darling’?” And now [here’s my column]( about the most important global crisis that you may not know about, concerning education. it's horrifying that fewer than one percent of teachers in Niger or Madagascar are qualified to teach. If we want to make the world a better place, the [best leverage we have is education](. ADVERTISEMENT I welcome suggestions for what to include in this newsletter. You can connect with me on [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Google]( [Instagram]( and [Pinterest](. If you have friends who might enjoy this newsletter, forward this email; they can [sign up here](. Send feedback or tech questions to newsletters@nytimes.com. Recent Columns [‘Conflict Is More Profitable Than Peace’]( Perhaps the most devastating blow anyone can suffer is to lose a child. In the Central African Republic it happens all the time. Welcome to the world’s most neglected crisis. [Trump’s Talk Worries Me, Like the Talk Before the Iraq War]( His cavalier approach reminds me of Cheney’s 15 years ago. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NICHOLAS KRISTOF [Facebook] [FACEBOOK]( [Twitter] [@nickkristof]( [Instagram] [nickkristof]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »]( | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Nicholas Kristof newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018