Part of "Time for School," the unprecedented, award-winning 12-year PBS Wide Angle documentary project, Back to School visits to seven classrooms in seven countries to offer a glimpse into the lives of seven extraordinary children who are struggling to get what nearly all American kids take for granted: a basic education. The projects, which began in 2002, first captured the children as they entered school in Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya and Romania, many despite great odds. Wide Angle revisited these students in 2006 to film an update, and this film, made in 2009, captures the third visit, as they children make the precarious transition to middle school and continue to face incredible obstacles to education.
These children’s stories put a human face on the shocking fact that more than 75 million children are currently out of school; of these, two thirds are girls. One in four children in developing countries does not complete five years of basic education, and there are nearly one billion illiterate adults — one-sixth of the world’s people.
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