Book, not oil!  

'Pass the books. Hold the oil' is an interesting article by Thomas L Friedman (published in The New York Times).  It is an insightful article that this scribe read five years back. It is related to the quality of education that the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) picked up as one of the important planks of performance of the countries across the globe.

We shall try to present Thomas L Friedman's views first, and then submit comments on the quality of education in Bangladesh. Friedman writes, "Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of -- it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction -- yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence -- men and women. Because Taiwan developed the habits and culture of honing its people's skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today".

A team from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has just come out with a fascinating little study mapping the correlation between performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam -- which every two years tests math, science and reading comprehension skills of 15-year-olds in 65 countries -- and the total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of GDP (gross domestic product) for each participating country.

The results indicated that there was "a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population." It is observed, "Today, Israel has one of the most innovative economies, and its population enjoys a standard of living most of the oil-rich countries in the region are not able to offer."

So hold the oil, and pass the books. In the latest PISA results, students in Singapore, Finland, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan stand out as having high PISA scores and few natural resources, while Qatar and Kazakhstan stand out as having the highest oil rents and the lowest PISA scores. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and Syria stood out the same way in a similar 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test, while, interestingly, students from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey -- also Middle East states with few natural resources -- scored better.

"Add it all up and the numbers say that if you really want to know how a country is going to do in the 21st century, don't count its oil reserves or gold mines, count its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students. Today's learning outcomes at school are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run."

Economists have long known about "Dutch disease," which happens when a country becomes so dependent on exporting natural resources that its currency soars in value and, as a result, its domestic manufacturing gets crushed as cheap imports flood in and exports become too expensive. What the PISA team is revealing is a related disease: societies that get addicted to their natural resources seem to develop parents and young people who lose some of the instincts, habits and incentives for doing homework and honing skills.

By contrast : "In countries with little in the way of natural resources -- Finland, Singapore or Japan -- education has strong outcomes and a high status, at least in part because the public at large has understood that the country must live by its knowledge and skills and that these depend on the quality of education. Every parent and child in these countries knows that skills will decide the life chances of the child and nothing else is going to rescue them, so they build a whole culture and education system around it."

Or, as my Indian-American friend K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, likes to say: "When you don't have resources, you become resourceful."

That's why, countries with the most companies listed on the Nasdaq are Israel, China/Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, South Korea and Singapore -- none of which can live off natural resources.

Coming to Bangladesh, the sky of quality education in Bangladesh is overcast with clouds.  The Directorate of Primary Education conducts National Students Assessment (NSA) once in two years. Instead of all subjects taught at primary level, only Bangla language and Mathematics are tested. The latest NSA conducted in 2015 shows that about two-thirds of the third grades achieved the competencies at the level of their grade which reduced to about one-fourth when they reached grade five. In Mathematics, 41 per cent of the students of grade III had competencies at the level of their grade which reduced to 10 per cent when they reached grade V. This indicates that as the students move up to upper classes, their performance goes down in terms of learning achievement. This raises the question about teaching-learning methods in the primary classrooms.

The writer is a former Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.

[email protected]