The movie Schooling the World gives inputs on how imposing western style education to developing countries may not necessarily be helping them and could be damaging.

In Ladakh, a town where people live in a closely-tied community and is famous for their joyful way of living, people are now educating their children differently then they traditionally used to – sending their children to school.

This questions about what development is in the first place. Who defines development, and is the definition of development the same throughout the world? The speakers in the movie questions the universality of the concept of development.

While most of the developing countries value educational background as one of the key components of success in life, and the idea of higher level of education will ultimately lead to better paying jobs, and luxurious life, and this is partially because living expenses may be quite expensive in developing countries. But the situation is not the same in developing countries.

Education may be one of the solutions that could bring better living standards to people. However, what the movie was trying to say was that before anybody from the industrialized countries try to promote the western style education to a developing country, even with good intentions, need to throw away the bias that education is the solution to the development of their societies, and have to remember to evaluate the culture and see what they value.