By the WFWP Italy Editorial Team
When we speak about security, our thoughts turn almost automatically to armies, borders, weapons and the ability of states to protect their citizens.
This is a real and necessary dimension of security. But there is another, less visible form of security, one that is built slowly in schools, families and communities.
A society that fails to educate its children may be able to defend its present, but it risks weakening its future.
The starting point for this reflection comes from Mondo Capovolto, a newsletter published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
In its September 10 edition, Sara Gandolfi draws on the results of the international PISA assessments to raise, indirectly, a question that is both simple and crucial: while we compare the skills of students who attend school, what happens to the millions of children who cannot even go to school?
International education statistics are often treated as a vast ranking system.
We compare students' achievements, their mathematical, scientific and language skills, and the quality of education systems.
But before asking how well children are learning, perhaps we should ask what happens to those who never have the opportunity to enter a classroom.
According to UNICEF figures cited in the newsletter, approximately 93 million children are out of school because of crises affecting different regions of the world.
Wars and displacement can interrupt education for months or even years.
Between 2005 and 2025, the United Nations verified more than 15,000 attacks on schools in conflict-affected areas. More than 1,600 were recorded in 2025 alone.
Furthermore, in countries affected by war, more than 90% of children are reportedly unable to read a simple text by the age of ten.
Behind these figures lie more than missed lessons.
There is a part of the future that may never be built.
A child who remains out of school certainly loses knowledge and skills, but may also lose something more difficult to measure: the opportunity to imagine a different path from the one imposed by the circumstances of their birth.
And war is not the only cause.
In 2025, more than 171 million students, approximately one in ten, experienced disruptions to their education because of climate-related hazards.
Three-quarters of those affected live in low-income or lower-middle-income countries, where weaker infrastructure makes it much more difficult to respond to extreme weather events.
In some cases, the problem is not simply missing a few days of school.
School buildings are damaged or destroyed, families are forced to move, and the most vulnerable children—particularly girls—may never return to the classroom.
This is where education becomes a matter of security.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SECURITY?
In recent years, the world has once again focused heavily on defence.
Ongoing wars, geopolitical tensions, terrorism, regional instability and competition among major powers have brought the ability of states to protect themselves back to the centre of political debate.
It would be unrealistic to deny this need.
A state has both the right and the duty to protect its citizens and guarantee their security.
But precisely for this reason, it is worth asking a broader question:
Should a society's security be measured only by the resources it devotes to defence, or also by the opportunities it provides for its children?
The newsletter reminds us that education was already chronically underfunded within humanitarian assistance even before recent aid cuts.
It also points out how troubling this situation is at a time when governments are increasing military expenditure.
There is no need to turn this observation into a simplistic opposition.
The choice is not between schools and security.
Rather, we need to understand that a school can itself be considered part of a society's security infrastructure.
A school does not directly protect a border, and it certainly cannot stop a missile.
But it protects something equally essential: the possibility of building a society in which fewer people become vulnerable to extreme poverty, crime, radicalization, exploitation or despair.
SECURITY THAT BEGINS BEFORE A CRISIS
One form of security responds when danger is already present.
Another seeks to prevent certain conditions of instability from developing in the first place.
Education belongs primarily to the second category.
A functioning school provides knowledge, but also relationships, critical thinking, experience of living alongside others and opportunities for participation.
It can help a person find employment, give girls greater independence, make manipulation more difficult and create conditions in which young people do not have to regard leaving their country as their only possible future.
Of course, no school can stop a war, defeat corruption or eliminate poverty on its own.
It would be naive to attribute to education a power it does not possess.
But when education is absent, many of these problems become more difficult to address.
In this sense, we can speak of preventive peacebuilding.
Peace does not begin only when diplomats sit around a table to end a conflict.
It begins much earlier, when a society succeeds in giving young people the tools to build a dignified life and participate responsibly in the common good.
THE CONNECTION WITH MIGRATION
This point becomes even clearer when we consider migration.
Public discussions often concentrate on the final stage of the journey: the border, the port, the reception centre or the asylum application.
But the journey begins much earlier.
It begins in the places where people try to understand whether there is still any possibility of a future for them.
For this reason, investing in education, vocational training, universities and infrastructure in more vulnerable countries is not merely a policy of solidarity.
It is also a policy of stability and, in a broader sense, security.
Forward-looking international cooperation should help create conditions in which people have not only the freedom to leave, but also the freedom to stay.
When schools function, when employment opportunities exist, when institutions are trustworthy and when families can imagine a future in their own country, migration can become more of a choice and less of a necessity.
This does not mean believing that education can eliminate migration, or that doing so should be its purpose.
Rather, it means creating conditions in which leaving one's country is not the only possible path towards a dignified life.
WHAT, THEN, IS THE COST OF NOT EDUCATING A CHILD?
The answer cannot be expressed in financial terms alone.
The cost may become apparent many years later: in a generation with fewer skills, greater economic dependence, social instability, forced migration or a society in which too many people feel excluded and without prospects.
Ultimately, it may result in a more fragile peace.
For this reason, education should not be regarded merely as an item in social expenditure budgets.
It is one of the great, often invisible, foundations of the common good.
Investing in schools certainly means investing in a country's future economy.
But it also means investing in social cohesion, the quality of institutions and citizens' ability to take responsibility.
DEFENDING THE PRESENT, BUILDING THE FUTURE
Every society must protect itself against the dangers that threaten it.
But security cannot be limited to the ability to respond to crises.
It must also include the ability to create conditions in which some crises can be prevented.
An open school does not eliminate the world's conflicts, nor does it make the instruments through which a state protects its citizens unnecessary.
But every child who can enter that school receives something that no defence system can replace: the opportunity to become an active participant in shaping their own future.
Perhaps this is where we can broaden our understanding of security.
A secure society is not only one that can defend what it possesses, but also one that knows how to create conditions in which future generations can live with greater freedom, dignity and hope.
And so the initial question—what is the cost of not educating a child?—takes on a different meaning.
The cost does not fall only on that child.
Sooner or later, it affects us all.
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