"One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe, it has been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries"
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Holkeri’s line lands with the blunt authority of a late-20th-century internationalist: name the problem, map the world into zones of progress and lag, and imply a policy lever waiting to be pulled. As a politician steeped in multilateral institutions, he’s not reaching for poetry; he’s building consensus. The phrase “one of the biggest development issues” reframes girls’ education away from charity or cultural debate and into hard infrastructure for the state: human capital, public health, economic growth, political stability. It’s the kind of claim designed to travel cleanly through speeches, summits, and aid budgets.
The subtext, though, is a little sharper. By declaring girls’ education “accepted” in the U.S. and Europe, Holkeri performs a familiar moral geography: the West as finished project, “Africa and the developing countries” as unfinished business. That framing flatters donor nations and streamlines responsibility outward, even as it glosses over persistent gender inequality inside the countries he exempts. “Accepted” is doing a lot of work here; it suggests that the main barrier elsewhere is cultural reluctance, not structural constraints like conflict, school fees, safety, or underfunded systems.
Context matters: this reads like the post-Cold War development consensus, when education (especially for girls) became a flagship measurable target for institutions like the UN, tied to population policy, poverty reduction, and “good governance.” Holkeri’s intent is mobilization, but the sentence also reveals the era’s paternalistic shortcut: complex local realities compressed into a single lagging category, ready for intervention.
The subtext, though, is a little sharper. By declaring girls’ education “accepted” in the U.S. and Europe, Holkeri performs a familiar moral geography: the West as finished project, “Africa and the developing countries” as unfinished business. That framing flatters donor nations and streamlines responsibility outward, even as it glosses over persistent gender inequality inside the countries he exempts. “Accepted” is doing a lot of work here; it suggests that the main barrier elsewhere is cultural reluctance, not structural constraints like conflict, school fees, safety, or underfunded systems.
Context matters: this reads like the post-Cold War development consensus, when education (especially for girls) became a flagship measurable target for institutions like the UN, tied to population policy, poverty reduction, and “good governance.” Holkeri’s intent is mobilization, but the sentence also reveals the era’s paternalistic shortcut: complex local realities compressed into a single lagging category, ready for intervention.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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