In a recent article published in the Beirut Daily Star, Atlas vice president for international programs, Tom Palmer, and Raja Kamal of the University of Chicago, assert that massive public spending on “shameful traditional education systems” in Arab countries has failed to prepare students for modernity and the global economy. Palmer and Kamal use Saudi Arabia as the most flagrant example:
The Saudi religious curriculum, which couples rote memorization of texts with uncritical acceptance of tribal practices, keeps the country backward…Despite the flood of billions and billions in oil money to public education, Saudi students consistently score among the worst in math and science.
Palmer and Kamal argue that education reform resembling that in the United States or India is crucial for preparing Arab students for productive lives. They cite a study by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz of Harvard University showing that market-based educational systems emphasizing critical thought earn enormous returns on investment and drive prosperity. In Arab countries, this critical thought is suppressed:
Each year thousands of students graduate from universities with degrees in Sharia (Islamic law) or Arabic literature. The vast majority of them will be unemployed, underemployed or employed in the bloated government sector, which will further contribute to already bloated and inefficient government. Thinking for oneself — a precondition of both entrepreneurship and of democratic participation — is suppressed.
The authors also reference research by Atlas partner James Tooley of the E.G. West Centre and Newcastle University, who has long worked to provide the world’s poorest children with alternatives to public education:
That liberating force [of education] has not been merely state-funded [in India], as James Tooley…has demonstrated in his field research and his recent book “A Beautiful Tree.” The poor invest heavily from their meager resources to secure education for their children. One result of such skill- and critical-thought oriented education has been the growth of high-tech industries in India, a prospect undreamed of only a few years ago.
(The E.G. West Centre received Atlas’s Templeton Freedom Award in 2007 in the Free Market Solutions to Poverty category.)
Read the full article here.
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[...] more on Prof. Tooley and his new book, see here and on the E.G. West Centre’s Scholarship for [...]