Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development Shashi Tharoor said here today that "education of girls" is the answer to the difficult question, about what could possibly be the single most important thing that ought to be done to improve the world.
"It, really, is that simple. There is no action proven to do more for the human race than the education of a female child," the Union HRD Minister said, addressing a conference on women's empowerment, organised by a private educational institution.
"Scholarly studies and research projects have established what common sense already told us -- that if you educate a boy, you merely educate a person -- but if you educate a girl, you educate an entire family and benefit an entire community," Tharoor said, to drive home the point.
He said that a girl who has had more than six years of education is better equipped to seek and use medical advice, to immunise her children, to be aware of sanitary practices, right from boiling water, to the importance of washing hands.
He said that a World Bank project in Africa established that children of women with just five years of schooling had a 40 per cent better survival rate than the children of women who spent less than five years in school.
Similarly, a Yale University study showed that height and weight of newborn children born to women with a basic education are consistently higher than those of babies born to uneducated women.
