Empty Promises Behind Haitian Govt’s "Free School" Program

February 17, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

D26_tentschool

Students at a public school in Croix-des-Bouquets. Credit: Haiti Grassroots Watch/Marc Schindler Saint Val

Correspondents

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 17 (Haiti Grassroots Watch) – Ever since his election in 2011, Haitian President Michel Martelly has touted his "free school" program as one of the government’s major accomplishments. "A victory for students!" banners and posters boast.The Program for Universal Free and Obligatory Education (Programme de scolarisation universelle gratuite et obligatoire – PSUGO) is a program that costs 43 million U.S. dollars per year and aims to send over one million young Haitians to school every year for five years.

A two-month investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in Port-au-Prince and Léogâne, however, found more children in school but also discovered a long list of unkept promises, inadequate funding levels, late payments and even suspicions of corruption.

"In my opinion, the PSUGO is a failure!" exclaimed Jean Clauvin Joly, director of the Centre Culturel du Divin Roi, a private school in Croix-des-Bouquets about 15 kilometres north of the capital of Port-au-Prince. "Last year, we suffered under that program. One of the many terrible things was that we were paid late. Thanks to the delay, a lot of our teachers quit."

At Joly’s school, first and second graders share the same room and the same teacher, Francie Déogène. A thin sheet of plywood that also serves as a "blackboard" separates her classroom from others. Dérogène doesn’t have a desk. She piles everything on a plastic chair. Facing her, on four benches, ten students repeat together "a pineapple, a melon…" This is a writing course.

‘The state guarantees the right to education’

During the 2011 presidential elections, "lekòl gratis", or "free school", was a favourite refrain of singer-candidate Joseph Michel Martelly. But in Haiti, the guarantee of free education is not just a politician’s promise; it is an obligation. According to the Constitution, the state "guarantees the right to education… free of charge".

The PSUGO program aims to keep that promise by paying school fees for primary school children: 250 gourdes (about 6 U.S. dollars) for public school students and about 3,600 gourdes, or 90 U.S. dollars, for those at private school. (In Haiti, slightly more than 80 percent of schools are private.) PSUGO is also supposed to open new schools and ensure that students have supplies and books and that teachers are properly trained.

The government claims 1,287,814 new students are in school this year through the PSUGO program, an impressive number considering that Haiti has only about 3.5 million young people aged 14 and under. HGW was not able to confirm this figure and has reason to doubt it, first and foremost because it is only one of many.

HGW did not have access to the PSUGO budget, nor could it visit all of the 10,000 schools allegedly inscribed in the program. But journalists did visit 20 schools, most of them staffed by angry or frustrated teachers.

Jean Marie Monfils, a teacher and also the director of a school in Léogâne, about 30 kilometres west of Port-au-Prince, is furious about PSUGO’s false promises. "They talked about a uniform, about hot lunches, and other things. But from where I am sitting, I can say we haven’t gotten hardly anything. We are the ‘forgotten’ of Léogâne."

Monfils’ experience is not unique. Hercule André, a man in his fifties who directs a public school in Darbonne, outside Léogâne, lauds the initiative but adds, "The only benefit that the students get is that they don’t pay anything. Apart from that, there’s nothing. The students come to school, but they don’t have the books that were promised so that they can follow courses."

HGW’s investigation in the capital and around Léogâne discovered that only two of the 20 schools visited reported receiving school supplies and books. As of late November 2012 – ten weeks after classes had started – only one of the 20 schools reported having been paid for the current school year, and 16 out of 20 said the school still had not received the final payment for the previous school year.

"I can’t even tell you if we are part of the program or not," Monfils admitted with an air of desperation. "At the moment I am speaking to you, we haven’t gotten anything from the authorities. It’s a really huge problem, because many of the schools that signed up with PSUGO haven’t even gotten what was due them for the 2011-2012 school year."

The National Confederation of Haitian Teachers (Confédération nationale des éducateurs et éducatrices haïtiens – CNEH), one of the country’s national teachers’ unions, confirmed the claim.

"The fact that the government hasn’t disbursed the money on time has been a big problem for school directors, who haven’t been able to pay their teachers," reported Edith Délourdes Delouis, teacher and CNEH General Secretary.

Quality control and fraud

Apparently, the government has also been unable to supervise new teachers to the degree it claimed it would. Despite the announcement that 2012-1013 would see a "turn towards quality" with more supervision, directors of schools visited by HGW said they could do virtually whatever they want. Of 20 schools visited, 25 percent had not received a single visit and another 24 percent had received only one.

Guillaume Jean, director of the Collège Chrétien in Léogâne confirmed, embarrassed: "We haven’t gotten many visits. They just call to get information."

Perhaps because of its large size and even larger budget, the PSUGO program appears to have attracted cheaters.

In July 2012, a regional MENFP official in Port-de-Paix allegedly stole over five million gourdes (over 119,000 U.S. dollars). According to media reports, he used a group of young men as fake "school directors", and wrote them checks of 200,000 and 300,000 gourdes. The official implicated fled to the Dominican Republic.

HGW does not have the means to investigate potential PSUGO fraud at the national level, or even in the capital. However, journalists did discover one school name on the MENFP list as having received payments, even though it had never functioned.

"Soon – the Justin Lhérisson College!" a small dusty sign announces on the Darbonne road near Léogâne.

"That was a project one of the local mayors set up when he was a candidate," a neighbor claimed. "Once he got elected, he dropped it."

A study from the Civil Society Initiative (CSI) last year concluded that the program had created number of "phantom schools".

"We discovered that a third or a quarter of the schools being paid by the government hadn’t even been officially approved," CSI Director Rosny Desroches, a former minister of education, told HGW.

At another school with both PSUGO money and foreign assistance, it’s almost noon. Under a blazing sun, scores of students focus on their work. The Charlotin Marcadieu national school was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and today functions in 14 tents arranged in three rows. Gravel crunches under students’ feet. Before heading into his "classroom", one of the teachers says bitterly, "After 10 in the morning, these tent-rooms are like furnaces."

*Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Education, Latin America, Report Tagged With: ,

This Is What a Humane Economy Looks Like

February 3, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Inés Benítez

MÁLAGA, Spain, Feb 02 (IPS) – The severe crisis crippling Spain is also sparking some creative responses, such the Okonomía project, a teaching initiative that helps individuals and communities to understand the workings of the economy and make more informed decisions to manage their finances."Things have gotten so bad, with people out of work, losing their homes and watching their savings vanish, that something has to be done to economically empower people," said activist Raúl Contreras, one of the academics behind this initiative that in February will open its first school in Benimaclet, a multicultural neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Valencia.

Contreras – an economist who also heads the company Nittúa, which sponsors this project – spoke with IPS about the powerlessness and fear that is taking hold of many people who do not understand how the economy works and how it affects their lives, and are thus made vulnerable to manipulation.

"Doubts, ignorance and fear – in some cases spread intentionally – lead to mistakes, anxiety and difficult situations that could be avoided if people are better informed and equipped to make decisions or choices," Nittúa’s website reads.

One out of every four economically active persons is currently unemployed in Spain, where dozens of families are evicted daily from their homes for failure to meet their mortgage payments, and the measures implemented by the right-wing government of Mariano Rajoy to address the crisis involve huge cuts to health, education and other basic services.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Spain fell prey to "preferential shares" and other financial product schemes and lost all their savings. As the crisis deepened and banks became desperate for cash, they convinced more and more savers to buy these products, taking advantage of their lack of understanding of the ins and outs of investment, and using misleading and distorted sales pitches.

Okonomía – which is financing its start-up needs through a crowdfunding campaign – calls itself a "popular economics school" that "develops dialectical educational processes, building on the reality and economic knowledge of each participant, to enable participants to understand their economic situation so that they can make informed and conscious decisions, both individually and collectively, that will lead to the transformation of society through economic empowerment."

The school is formed by professionals from the fields of economics and education and its activities include training multiplying agents who will spread their newly-acquired knowledge in their immediate social environment.

"The school won’t solve people’s problems, but it will provide a toolbox to help individuals make more informed decisions based on their specific needs," Contreras explained, highlighting the project’s cross-cutting approach to solidarity economy, as it emphasises sustainable alternatives.

While the head of Nittúa stresses the solidarity aspect of this economic model, he says it is not the school’s intent to preach any one model or solution. Rather it seeks to give participants an understanding of economics in general, including a range of economic alternatives, such as ethical banking, responsible consumption, fair trade and the cooperative model.

"A large part of society has realised that a different way of teaching economics is needed," Carlos Ballesteros, a lecturer on consumer behaviour at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, told IPS. "Ninety-nine percent of the world’s business schools stick close to the neoliberal paradigm," which is profit-driven and based on maximising earnings.

Ballesteros said that while Okonomía’s target public is civil society as a whole and its main objective is to teach and inform, on the understanding that "the economy is everyone’s responsibility," it also aims to gather and systematise knowledge on solidarity economy practices that may prove useful to people working in that field.

Okonomía offers semester courses, with in-person classes held every two weeks. The methodology is based on the popular education model developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), who believed that "to teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge."

In each session an issue is presented and material is provided to facilitate reflection. "The learning process is a group activity. The classes are not lectures, but rather dialogue-based and interactive," Contreras said.

He added that after each session the conclusions drawn from the group’s discussions are published online and posted in an intranet, which will form a database of the school’s results, a sort of "Wikipedia of Popular Economy".

Economist Arcadi Oliveres, one of Okonomía’s advisers, said this project is valuable because it "seeks to reveal to the people the underlying workings of the economy" and "because we’re really in the dark" when it comes to the financial world, he told IPS.

Oliveres, a professor of applied economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, believes that "people don’t know that there are alternatives to the traditional economic system" and calls for critically aware citizens who can make informed decisions.

Independently of how financial markets and governments behave, the actions of common citizens also have an impact on the economy, so that people must be conscious that they too can make irresponsible choices as consumers or that their deposits can go to financing environmentally-harmful corporate activities, the economist argued.

"We have to start asking ourselves where our money goes – what do I do with my savings, where do I deposit them and why? – and learn to take control of our finances," Contreras said.

The aim of the school is to help people "understand and then make free, but conscious decisions," he added.

The expert noted that he has not found similar projects anywhere else in the world and that Okonomía, which combines a methodology inspired by Paulo Freire with social innovation methods, has the potential to be replicated outside of Spain "with the support of the social fabric of neighbourhoods and communities".

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economic Crisis, Education, Europe, Poverty, Report Tagged With: , ,

Qatar: A Higher Education Strategy based on branch campuses importation

November 17, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

By Mehdi Lazar, Ph.D

The globalization of higher education is growing across the planet, boosting emerging new players like Qatar, which has promoted a voluntary policy of higher education over the past fifteen years.

This policy of attracting prestigious foreign universities is partly explained by the will of the emirate to project into the post-oil era. For this, the objective of Qatar is to create an academic and industrial structure conducive to the development of a sustainable knowledge economy. Its financial strength due to income from liquefied natural gas, of which it is the world’s largest exporter, certainly provides the country with a solid foundation from which to build a long-term development through education. This economic diversification will work to address the key challenges facing the emirate: an economy dependent on the export of oil, a largely foreign-born workforce, regional threats and uncertainty, as well as aridity, drought, and desertification.

Having modern educational facilities and being internationally competitive is seen by Qatar as means to ensuring social and human development[1], but also to create a more diversified and innovation-driven economy by 2030. To link these two dimensions, Qatar has established a specific educational platform whose function is to host foreign institutions and branch campuses.

An educational platform to meet the strategic needs of the country

Through the Qatar Foundation, Qatar invited foreign universities to come and provide their services near Doha. These establishments are large and prestigious research universities visible in the international rankings. This serves a double purpose: to have attractive facilities for the training of national and regional students but also to develop research in strategic areas expressed as a priority.

In this context, these include expanding economic opportunities in relation to the exploitation of hydrocarbons especially natural gas, but also developing, scientific programs related to high end research. Three areas are particularly well represented: Biomedicine (especially with the Weill Medical School of Cornell University and the new Sidra Medical Complex), energy and environmental conservation (with research programs at Texas A&M) and computer science (at Carnegie Mellon). There are also specialized programs in universities in other policy areas: engineering and materials science, communication and media (taught at the Northwestern University, in relation with the television station Al-Jazeera), international relations (in Georgetown University, to support the ambitious foreign policy of the emirate), business administration (with Carnegie Mellon, and since 2011 HEC) and archeology and heritage conservation (since 2012 taught at University College London) as the emirate wants to become a world center of Islamic culture in the twenty-first century.

By 2017, the Qatar Foundation hopes therefore to have a critical mass of researchers who will provide patents corresponding to innovations and their commercial exploitation. In addition, through programs in the arts or social sciences, the country hopes to see changes and societal development of a new form of tourism. The next phase of development is for Qatar to become a knowledge economy by 2030, changing its economic structure to be more reliant on income from upscale service sectors, from the development of local expertise in strategic sectors, and from the communication and collaboration between large corporations and universities. Moreover, a spin-off of best practices and synergies are also anticipated between facilities on the campus of Education City and the National University of Qatar, Qatar University.

In terms of human resources, importation of educational capabilities can restrict the phenomenon of brain drain. The implementation of quality universities also encourages students to pursue higher education, particularly young women from traditional families who could not go abroad. In addition, hosting foreign institutions and branch campuses will allow eventually Qatar to attract highly skilled migrants, particularly from the Middle East and Asia. Finally, the foreign branch campuses are a safe means of attracting and retaining high-level expatriates who have the opportunity to educate their children at universities with international standards.

The role of Qatar foundation

The Qatar Foundation, created in 1995, is the instrument that allows Qatar to implement its strategy of attracting foreign universities, which is based mainly on financial arguments. The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a nonprofit organization that is financed by the emirate of Qatar. Through it, local authorities finance institutions and academic establishments. In 2012, the Foundation supports a network of more than twenty training centers, most hosted on the Education City site, an educational platform of more than fourteen square kilometers, to the West of Doha.

The first international institution to settle on the campus of Education City was Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) who since 1998 has offered degrees in fashion, graphic design and interior design. In 2002 the Weill Cornell Medical College was established on the campus. In 2003, Texas A&M began to offer undergraduate courses in engineering, while in 2004 Carnegie Mellon University opened degrees in business administration and computer science, and in 2005 Georgetown University offered a program in international affairs. The most recent American university to open a branch campus in Qatar was Northwestern, whose first class of students in journalism and communication graduated in May 2012. The two most recent universities are European. HEC Qatar established a branch campuses in 2010 and University College London in 2011.

International universities invited to Education City offer their degrees under service agreements of ten years with the Qatar Foundation. Those branch campuses are fully financed by the Qatar Foundation who provides the infrastructure (with high quality buildings designed by renowned architects) and cover the full cost of operating and managing the institutions. Therefore there is very little financial risk for the home institution in opening a branch campus in Qatar. Furthermore, universities offer courses identical to those taught at the home campus, they recruit students based on identical selection criteria, and they provide the exact same degree to successful graduates.

The fundamental objective of the Qatar Foundation since its inception has been to improve the quality of education in Qatar, but also the level of health care in the country. As already stated, further objectives of the Qatar Foundation are to diversify the economy from its dependence on oil and to promote private sector growth and human development. Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) whose mission is to pool research capabilities of Education City – especially between branch campuses and local and international firms – is therefore present to produce patents.

The limits of the imported branch campuses in Qatar

For Qatar, the quality of education is at the initial stage. Since all of the invited universities are prestigious institutions who offer strategically aligned course, the country has set itself up well for a successful future knowledge economy. Nevertheless, the local conditions of practice facilities are different from those of the country of origin and it is difficult to reproduce a model of excellence from scratch.

Even though Qatar is not as far along the branch campus path as a China and the branch campuses are small, the country is tiny and for some areas of research, adaptation is fairly smooth, although the lack of doctoral programs and connections to global research circuits are problematic. The question of the origins of the student population is also important because it affects the dynamics and quality of the campus. Indeed, if for now in terms of educational capacity building, the fact that the student population is mostly local ultimately does not impact Qatar so much because local students have access to a quality education without leaving their country and “best practices” will be transferred to local institutions, however it is better to be able to attract bright students on its soil. Now, the priority for Qatar is focusing primarily on training nationals in the context of the post-oil and Qatarization jobs. But in the future, institutions will need a diversified student body in order to ensure the educational dimension that is part of the success of the immersive Anglo-Saxon model: the effects of virtuous circles that are incurred through interactions between diverse selections of students. Right now this effect is truncated when students have a profile too similar because coeducation little works.

Conclusion

Qatar has developed an ambitious higher education policy of attracting world-class universities in order to accelerate the completion of its goal of becoming a knowledge economy and a developed country by 2030.

For Qatar, the importation of educational structures avoids the slow and difficult construction of developing its own capabilities while transferring some of the imported expertise to institutions across the country. The emirate would like to successfully transition in a few years from being a net importer of technology to being a net exporter. For this, the country must form a highly skilled adaptable workforce, able to develop innovative technologies and adaptable to local and global issues. Thus the foreign branch campuses are encouraged to offer courses consistent with Qatar’s long-term development goals. This policy may also serve the Qatarization of the labor market and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign labor.

This ambitious strategy of Qatar is not accessible to all countries as it is clear that the financial strength of the Emirate has led to the development of many foreign branch campuses. However, when possible this model appears effective because the act of importing educational capabilities that are missing from a state allows him to save time. Moreover, the experience of Education City will in the future allow the emirate to become a center of higher education and research in the Middle East and thus enhance its regional influence.

[1] General Secretariat for Development Planning, Qatar 2030 Strategy, General Secretariat for Development Planning, 2003.

© Copyright 2012 Mehdi Lazar. All rights reserved.

This article should not be republished or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.

Mehdi Lazar is a geographer based in Los Angeles. He was formerly an education inspector for the French Ministry of Education. M. Lazar has completed a PhD in Geography at Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, and is the author of “Qatar, une Education City” (l’Harmattan, Paris, 2012). E-mail: mehdi.lazar@gmail.com.


Filed Under: Development, Education, Featured, Middle East Tagged With:

Brazilian Favela Becomes a Living Museum

April 20, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 20, 2012 (IPS) – The history, daily life and folk artistry as well as spectacular views of this southeastern Brazilian city are all part of a living museum created by community leaders in a favela that is displaying its cultural heritage as well as its wounds.

"At one time, before there was electricity in the favela (shantytown), the local people would come out on the street at night to talk to each other by moonlight," Rita de Cassia Santos Pinto told IPS, seated in front of a mural that is part of a series painted on the walls of local houses.

As a journalist, Santos Pinto says she doesn’t normally like to be interviewed. But when the topic is the history of her community, she is enthusiastic and her words flow freely. As we tour every corner of the Morro do Cantagalo favela’s crowded dwellings clinging to valleys and hillsides, the walls and houses also start to speak.

One mural depicts the history of samba, the musical genre that originated in the favelas; another shows episodes from the 1964-1985 military dictatorship against the backdrop of bare brick, tin-roofed dwellings.

The series of more than 20 murals by graffiti artists from Cantagalo and other parts of Rio de Janeiro tells the story of the community in colourful pictures.

The houses-cum-canvases are on the circuit of a fee-paying tour of the favela which includes, depending on the interests of the tourists, kite-making and -flying workshops, lessons on playing the "cavaquinho" (an instrument similar to the ukulele and the key to producing rhythm and harmony in Brazilian samba and choro music), visits to stores selling arts and crafts, and local eateries.

"We want to break down the barriers of national museums that only exhibit the works of famous artists," said Santos Pinto, who as well as being a reporter is a tour guide, social facilitator, "curator of memories", and one of the community leaders who founded the Museu de Favela (MUF – Favela Museum).

The first ever all-encompassing favela museum seeks to depict and value the identity of Cantagalo’s 20,000 people on the basis of their own accounts of their lives, and to integrate them into the society that has kept them at arm’s length for so long.

From the impoverished Northeast to the favela

One of the posters on display at the MUF – part of an itinerant collection which is also touring traditional museums in Brazil – tells the story of Santos Pinto’s parents, who are now in their eighties, in their own words.

Her father, Feliciano da Silva Pinto, a migrant from the northeastern state of Bahia who worked in the city of Rio de Janeiro as an electrician, fell in love with Eunice Santos whom he used to see coming down from the "morro" (hill) every day to fetch water and carry it home in a jerry can on her head.

"To win her heart, he started giving her water himself," to shorten her journey, Santos Pinto said, breaking into laughter.

This is one of many stories about the migrants from poor areas of the country who built the humble dwellings in Cantagalo, now numbering 5,300, that are connected by what seems to the outsider to be an endless and unfathomable maze of alleys and steep stairways.

An elevator, recently constructed under the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC) launched by the left-wing government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), now eases the climb and saves favela residents and visitors over 60 metres of climbing, up hundreds of steps.

"Everybody’s memories are worth recording," said the journalist, who takes down people’s oral histories to try to reconstruct the earliest history of the favela and "give a voice to those who have never had one."

The history of Cantagalo and two adjacent favelas, Pavão and Pavãozinho, which have merged into one complex, is bound up with the origins of Brazil’s major cities, and includes fugitive slaves hiding in the Cantagalo hills, as well as the flimsy shacks built in the first decade of the 20th century by migrants from poor regions seeking work in Rio.

The trio of favelas grew up as an enclave between Ipanema and Copacabana, upmarket residential districts of Rio that are a tourist magnet for visitors, where the grand houses and skyscrapers have often been built by poor and illiterate migrants like the parents of MUF cultural director Marcia de Souza.

Souza described another of the museum’s initiatives: every year 12 "warrior women" are elected from the favela, women who "overcame difficulties in their lives, like violence and educating their kids, and who, even if one of their children was in prison for drug trafficking, managed to save the rest of their family and keep them away from violence and drugs," she told IPS.

The symbolic prize for these women is the celebration of their lives, which are reconstructed on the walls through photographs, personal objects and stories.

Peace time

The Cantagalo-Pavão-Pavãozinho group of favelas used to be one of the most violent areas in the south of Rio de Janeiro, with daily shootouts between drug trafficking gangs, until three years ago when police pacification units (UPP) were introduced as part of a campaign to increase security, improve infrastructure and implement social programmes.

MUF was founded as an independent community NGO in 2008, before the arrival of the UPPs, and according to its founding members its early days were an uphill struggle.

Now their complaint is the lack of public funding for their initiative, and they are seeking individuals and organisations or agencies willing to invest in what they describe as their vision of the future.

The museum’s supporters see its future as a collection of open-air galleries, "whose stakeholders will be the residents themselves, who contribute the walls of their homes, their knowledge and their activities."

The idea is to transform Cantagalo-Pavão-Pavãozinho into a significant tourist attraction in Rio, a must-visit "monument" to the history of the favelas, the cultural roots of samba, the culture of Afro-Brazilians and of migrants from the Northeast, and the visual and performance arts.

In that spirit, architects and architecture students from other Brazilian states, and from Argentina and France, are participating in the activities of the living museum.

The group of architects is planning interventions to improve areas of the favela. The solutions need to be creative and inexpensive, such as the installation of a giant screen for projecting movies for the community to be located on the MUF rooftop, which also houses a large water tank.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Culture, Education, Latin America, Report Tagged With: , ,

Over 165,000 Students On Strike in Quebec Over Planned Tuition Hikes

April 16, 2012 by

The Real News Network

Students lead tens of thousands in protests against tuition hikes and neoliberal reforms of Quebec government


More at The Real News


Filed Under: Canada, Economy, Education, Politics, Unrest, Video Tagged With: ,

EL SALVADOR: Giving Young Slum Dwellers a Chance

November 18, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 18, 2011 (IPS) – In a country where hard-line policies have failed to make a dent in soaring levels of violent crime, Salesian priest José María Moratalla has produced good results by offering educational and vocational opportunities to juvenile offenders and young people at risk of falling into crime.

Moratalla, who is better known as Padre (father) Pepe, is the founder of the Instituto Técnico Obrero Empresarial Don Bosco (ITOE), a technical school that provides primary, secondary and vocational education to 450 youngsters from the violent slums on the outskirts of the capital of El Salvador.

"We want to give a chance to those who don’t have any," the priest told IPS. The institute and small and medium-sized cooperative businesses set up by former students are located in the heart of Iberia, a vast shantytown on the northeast side of San Salvador.

"A few days ago a body was dumped across the street, not far from where the soldiers patrolling the community are posted," Padre Pepe said, to illustrate the levels of violence and impunity in the area.

El Salvador, which has a murder rate of 62 per 100,000 inhabitants, is the most violent country in the world, according to the "Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011" released in late October by the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project based in Geneva.

El Salvador is followed by Iraq – occupied by U.S.-led forces since 2003 – and Jamaica.

By comparison, the global average is nine homicides per 100,000 people. And according to the World Health Organisation, any country with a murder rate above 10 per 100,000 people is suffering an epidemic of violence.

The Small Arms Survey found that one-quarter of all violent deaths between 2004 and 2009 occurred in just 14 countries that have homicide rates above 30 per 100,000 population. Of these countries, half are in the Americas.

Since 1999, three successive Salvadoran governments have implemented "strong-arm" or "zero tolerance" policies without success against the increasingly powerful youth gangs known as "maras".

Under these policies, young people can be arrested simply for sporting tattoos that distinguish them as gang members, or for using certain hand signs to communicate. But experts say the policies have failed because they have not included social reintegration efforts.

President Mauricio Funes, who took office in 2009 as the candidate of the leftwing guerrilla movement-turned-political party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), has followed the same policies, and has even put army troops on the streets to carry out joint patrols with the police.

But like the governments of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which governed the country from 1989 to 2009, he has failed to curb the skyrocketing crime rates.

"We have an epidemic of violence, and in an epidemic like this one, repression is needed. But prevention and rehabilitation are also necessary, and these two components have been missing," Padre Pepe said.

He came here from his home country of Spain in 1983, during the civil war between the FMLN and government forces that left 75,000 – mainly civilians – dead, 8,000 missing and 40,000 disabled between 1980 and 1992.

At that time, the priest said, thousands of people from the provinces were fleeing the fighting and flocking to San Salvador, where they built flimsy shacks with scraps of wood, cardboard and plastic on the outskirts of the city and along the banks of the rivers.

"Talking with these people, I started to see the need to give opportunities to those who haven’t had any," he said.

Realising that even if they finished school, young slum-dwellers had few options, he founded the institute in 1985, to offer them training and the possibility of setting up workshops and cooperatives where they can work when they complete their studies.

Of the current student body of 450, 150 are youngsters classified by the authorities as "high risk" – in other words, they have been involved in gangs or criminal activities or are on the verge of falling into crime.

One example is 15-year-old Antonio, who was spending his time on the narrow streets of his neighbourhood with members of the Mara (or Barrio) 18 gang before his parents brought him to the institute.

"I liked hanging out with them," he told IPS. "I wasn’t part of the group, but I looked like I was: I dressed and talked like them. I even did little jobs for them as a lookout."

Now he is in secondary school at the ITOE and wants to become an electrician, one of the trades taught at the institute, along with auto mechanics, carpentry, soldering, and tailoring and dressmaking.

The students include juvenile offenders who were serving sentences but due to good behaviour were referred to the institute by the courts, to study and learn a trade.

That is the case of 18-year-old Ricardo, who was sentenced to four years for rape, three of which he has served in the ITOE. Now he is about to graduate from secondary school and has plans to go on to the university.

"I would like to study to be a lawyer, and eventually become a judge," he told IPS.

With World Bank support, Moratalla is currently organising a project to create a music band made up of youngsters from the institute and from 40 other schools in poor neighbourhoods.

Just under one-third of the institute’s budget comes from the government – which grants it 300,000 dollars a year – and the rest is covered by donations.

The priest said an agreement with three universities will enable the ITOE to set up a business incubator that will be managed by today’s students, who will continue to run it after they graduate.

Moratalla’s work has the support not only of the Funes administration, but of civil society organisations, which see it as an important contribution to violence prevention efforts.

"It is a good example of how at-risk youth can be given tools to become good, productive citizens," Ramón Villalta, the head of the Social Initiative for Democracy (ISD), told IPS.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Education, Health, Justice, Latin America, Report Tagged With: ,

Turning Education From a Privilege into a Right

July 13, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Inaki Borda

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13, 2011 (IPS) – Going to school and receiving an education are opportunities most people usually take for granted. But for 67 million children around the world, such possibilities do not exist.

Girls comprise over half of this overwhelming figure. They are forced to work in the fields and care for family members, deprived of the chance to attend school.

The character-driven documentary "To Educate a Girl", directed by Frederick Rendina and Oren Rudavsky, tries to make this reality more visible to the rest of the world by showing the lives and struggles of six girls in Nepal and Uganda.

The main goal of this documentary is to "educate those in the Western world who have no idea," Rudavsky said. "Those who see the movie see how hard it is to get a step up in the developing world and what the threats are."

"I have found that most people in dire circumstances around the world, when given the opportunity to tell their stories, they really want to, and a documentary gives them a chance to have their voices heard where they otherwise would not be," filmmaker Rendina told IPS.

The movie, supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), aired for the first time on Link TV’s broadcast network on Jun. 24.

Progress and possibilities

Despite the magnitude of this global issue, the situation holds promise of improvement, as the numbers of children unable to attend school are gradually decreasing.

"The world has come from 110 million children out of school – two- thirds girls – to just 72 million with just over half girls 10 years later," Rendina said.

He noted that the newest statistics indicate the number has dropped to 67 million, adding, "No matter how you slice it, that is progress."

He attributes this not only to the effectiveness of grassroots activities like the film, but to the way enrolment and the gender gap have been addressed through the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

All of the characters in the film are victims of "pandemic" issues that prevent girls from receiving even the most basic education: gender bias, conflicts, early marriage, poverty and a lack of teachers – one problem that is not exclusive to girls.

In addition, the movie shows many girls lacking motivation and self- confidence. Even if parents do not foster the growth of these qualities, however, they can be developed through other sources. For instance, "Chatting with my best friend," a popular radio programme in Nepal, tries to offer solutions to girls who have no access to a formal education.

"In some situations, especially with teenagers, just knowing that others have the same problems, and being able to show their parents a simple pamphlet or listen to a show… really does make a difference," Rendina says.

A close partnership and shared goals

The ambitious project started when the filmmakers were approached by UNGEI, a partnership of organisations committed to narrowing the gender gap in primary and secondary education.

"What we do is ensure that the global community speaks with one voice when it comes to advocating for girls’ education and gender issues in education," Cheryl Faye, head of UNGEI Secretariat, told IPS.

Faye herself and the filmmakers share goals and visions, including "to elucidate the issues around girls’ education and hopefully let people know that, while progress is being made, there’s much to be done," Rendina said.

UNGEI’s aim by 2015 is for all children to be able complete primary schooling, with boys and girls having equal access to free, quality education.

"It’s definitely time to start moving quickly. We are looking at not only just scaling up successful programmes, but we’re looking at the most marginalised children. We discovered that many interventions for providing social services sometimes reach those who are the easiest to reach. But those who are the hardest to reach will help the global community meet those numbers more quickly," Faye told IPS.

"These are frequently girls with multiple deprivations. They are from poor communities, from ethnic minorities, children living in rural areas, or even children with disabilities." Specifically targeting those children will, according to Faye, lift the final numbers.

One of the most important methods that UNGEI uses it is social mobilisation, a package of interventions aimed not only at policy makers, community leaders and parents, but at children as well.

"They are programmes aimed at scholarships for girls, programmes that involve legislation, so that girls are not able to get married so early. Also, policies that involve ensuring that if the girl gets pregnant and drops out of school, once the baby is delivered, she is able to go back to school," Faye explained.

One challenge, however, is that at times the quality of the education itself is inadequate. "We are actively engaged in helping to ensure that quality of education systems is strong," Faye said.

As a result, UNICEF advocates for a child friendly schooling that makes schools more welcoming and actual places of learning for children.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Education, Featured, Human Rights

MIDEAST: Palestinians Won’t Learn Israeli Lessons

July 12, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours

EAST JERUSALEM, Jul 12, 2011 (IPS) – Widespread strikes across Palestinian civil society could be in store for East Jerusalem at the start of the next school year, as the municipality moves ahead with its current plan to implement an Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools.

"I expect that the beginning of the new school year will not be a normal one. There will be lots of problems. There will be lots of demands, strikes," Samir Jibril, director of the East Jerusalem Education Bureau told IPS. "All (the Palestinian) institutions are going to stand hand-in-hand against this implementation. Even civil society is demanding to stop this plan by the Israelis."

In March of this year, the Jerusalem municipality sent a letter to private schools in East Jerusalem that receive allocations from the Israeli authorities. The letter stated that at the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, the schools would be obliged to purchase and only use textbooks prepared by the Jerusalem Education Administration (JEA), a joint body of the municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education.

These textbooks are already in use in East Jerusalem schools managed by the JEA. According to Jibril, however, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have at all levels rejected the plan to use them in private schools, since it is viewed as being politically motivated.

"The real reason behind all this story of curriculum is actually political. We’re talking about a radical (Israeli) government that is trying to impose its own identity on the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Knowing that Israel doesn’t recognise Palestinian identity, it is a political reflection rather than (for) any kind of educational or pedagogical (reason)," Jibril said.

The move to introduce the Israeli curriculum came after Israeli parliament (Knesset) member Alex Miller from the far-right Israel Beiteinu party, who heads the Knesset’s Education Committee, stated during a meeting about unauthorised curricula in the education system that, in East Jerusalem, "the whole curriculum should and must be Israeli."

After Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians in the city followed the Jordanian educational system. Then, shortly after the signing of the Oslo II agreement, schools in East Jerusalem began using the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority.

Today, four different authorities govern the education system in East Jerusalem: the JEA, the Islamic Waqf, the private sector, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees.

According to 2010-2011 statistics provided by the East Jerusalem Education Directorate, the JEA runs 50 schools in East Jerusalem, which are attended by 38,785 students, or 48 percent of the total number of Palestinian students in the city. An additional 22,500 Palestinian students attend 68 different private schools in East Jerusalem.

"They are actually pushing towards implementing the Israeli curricula because this will politically mean that East Jerusalem is not an occupied territory and it is just like the 1948 area, Israeli land," Jibril said.

"If Israel succeeds in this step, there will be other successive steps, and they will target all the remaining schools," he added. Israeli authorities have tried to exert added influence in East Jerusalem schools under their control earlier, he said, by willfully omitting certain passages in textbooks and removing the Palestinian logo on book covers, among other measures.

In February of this year, the Israeli Supreme Court gave the Education Ministry and Jerusalem municipality five years to improve the level of state education in East Jerusalem, since recent studies have shown that among other unresolved problems, approximately 1,000 classrooms are missing and more than 4,000 Palestinian children are not enrolled in school at all.

This is despite the fact that East Jerusalem – considered occupied territory under international law – is protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that "the Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children."

Article 13 of the International Convention on Economic and Social Rights also specifies that states must "undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents…to choose for their children schools…(and) ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions."

On Jun. 6, Israeli NGO Ir Amim sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncing the government’s plan for Palestinian private schools.

"The right of the children of East Jerusalem to an education by their culture and national identity is also consistent with the basic right to education recognised in Israeli law and their right to equality in education, freedom and defence of their identity. Israel is obligated not only to avoid violating those rights but also has the positive obligation to support their realisation," the letter stated.

Ultimately, Samir Jibril said, Israel’s attempt to introduce its own curriculum against the will of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem reflects the larger goal of using education to control Palestinian Jerusalemites and harm Palestinian culture and identity.

"Israel keeps on attacking the Palestinians and trying to impose a new kind of education which will serve Israeli ideas, culture and points of view concerning the question of identity and cultural and educational background. There are many indicators that show that Israel is interfering in a very negative (way) and has a very bad impact on education (in order) to keep the Palestinian Jerusalemites down, without education.

"But we believe that it is our right to have our own curriculum that serves our national philosophy and national identity and that will preserve our culture. We are going to defend it until the end."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Education, Middle East, Report, Unrest Tagged With: , ,

PAKISTAN: Schools Rise From the Rubble

June 26, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Jun 26, 2011 (IPS) – Violence in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan has kept students away from school, in some areas for at least two years. Now, officials are trying to make up for lost time by holding classes even under tents or trees.

The 123 students of the Government Primary School in Bezoti village in Orakzai Agency are among thousands who are studying again. "We are overwhelmed to be back in school," said third grade student Jaweria over the phone from Orakzai. The Taliban bombed her school in August last year, she said, leaving students idle.

Orakzai Agency is one of seven "agencies" or tribal units that constitute Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). FATA is the war-torn region between Afghanistan and the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in northwest Pakistan, which has become the base of the Taliban and Al- Qaeda.

Terrorist attacks have left schools in ruins. In Orakzai alone, militants blew up nearly 80 educational institutions, including several schools from primary to high school for boys and girls, and one Degree College for men. Last February, militants destroyed the lone Girls’ Degree College, whose 235 students continue holding classes atop the debris.

"The government is extremely concerned over the disruption (of) the children’s education," Riaz Khan Masood, political administrator of Orakzai Agency, told IPS. "We have started to make operational 33 government schools by providing 172 makeshift tents in their villages to replace school buildings destroyed due to militancy in the area."

The move will put some 4,500 students back on track with their schooling, and employ 192 teachers as well.

"The students study under the shade of trees, while they use the tents to store their bags. This is because there is no electricity inside the tents while outside the students enjoy a good atmosphere," said teacher Shahidullah Khan. At the moment, the students use mats in lieu of school desks, which will be provided in the future, he added.

Khan said the FATA has 5,478 schools and colleges, hundreds of which have been damaged, depriving some 255,000 students of education. The government was forced to shut down another 18 due to violence, leaving more than 300 teachers jobless.

But the damage to schools has not been limited to the FATA. Schools in Swat, one of the 25 districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, suffered the most damage. "From 2007 to 2009, militants blew up 188 girls’ schools and 97 boys’ schools, which affected more than 390,000 students," education officer Kameen Khan told IPS from Swat.

In Mohmand Agency, the militants flattened 108 schools affecting almost 90,000 students. The authorities said they have reopened 44 boys’ and 12 girls’ schools in tents, while the rest are being reconstructed.

These government-run schools are the only source of modern education for students in the FATA. They offer classes from the first to the 10th grade, but students have to source their own books and other school materials. Gibran Khan is another beneficiary of the tent school that was established on May 30. "I was sad when our school was destroyed in January this year but now I am happy," said Khan, a 12-year-old fifth grade student.

Getting students back in school is an urgent need in the FATA, where the literacy rate is 17 percent, as against 44 percent for the rest of Pakistan.

Among the seven agencies, Bajaur has one of the lowest literacy rates, with those for males falling to 12 percent as of March 2011 from 18 percent in 2007 when militancy was at its peak in the region, Masood said.

The number of affected students in Bajaur is almost 30,000, said Bajaur education officer Tajdar Alam.

Statistics for female literacy in the FATA are also disturbing. Neighbouring KP province has a female literacy rate of 30 percent, but the rate is FATA is a mere three percent. The national literacy rate for females is 54 percent.

According to official reports, female enrolment in schools in KP is 3.8 percent and 1.3 percent in the FATA, while nationwide, 22 percent of girls complete primary schooling.

Officials are now offering children incentives to go back to classrooms, although these are, for now, just makeshift affairs. "Now we plan to give school bags and uniforms to talented students. This initiative aims to lure them to complete their education," political agent Masood said.

"We plan to give prizes to students who perform well in the examinations with a view to encouraging enrolment in schools in the FATA," said Shaukatullah, a lawmaker from FATA.

"We have launched a programme in which we are going to reconstruct damaged schools. The government of Japan is assisting in rebuilding 80 schools in FATA," said Ghafoor Khan, education officer of the FATA Secretariat.

Under the plan, a total of 55 schools will be operational within the next three months, while as many schools will be rebuilt in the same period.

"We are rebuilding these schools on an emergency basis because the students have already lost two academic years and now we plan to enable them to catch up with students from the peaceful areas," Khan told IPS over the telephone.

Reconstruction of all the damaged schools is ongoing; the government has allocated 500,000 dollars for the purpose.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Minister Sardar Hussain Babak told IPS that all the damaged schools were being rebuilt with financial assistance from international donor organisations. "Until schools are completed, students will be taught in tents," he said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Development, Education, Report Tagged With: ,

What’s Really Wrong With the Thiel Fellowships

June 20, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

Ian Fletcher

In case you missed it, the Thiel Foundation, founded by Peter Thiel of PayPal fame, just announced the first batch of winners for its “20 Under 20” fellowship program to pay students to drop out of college for two years to pursue entrepreneurial ideas.

Any number of people have criticized this venture for encouraging kids to drop out of college.  Personally, while I think it would be terrible thing if this sort of thing becomes too hip and causes deluded average kids who think the next Google is locked inside their heads to drop out and ruin their educations, it appears that the group chosen is sufficiently elite that a) they may well actually do something useful and b) will succeed no matter what.

Nonetheless, I still think this program is a bad idea, and unlikely to achieve its intended purpose of enhancing innovation in the U.S. (My apologies to the foundation if its purpose is otherwise.)  Why? Because its essential strategy consists in smoothing the path of individual geniuses, and this is simply not where the bottleneck to innovation lies in America today.

It’s easy to be distracted by the glamorous entrepreneurs who appear on the covers of business magazines into thinking that they are the sole essence of innovation. Obviously, what they do is important, and I hope they continue to do it. But unfortunately, individual technological entrepreneurship is only the third stage of an innovation “pipeline” whose stages are, roughly:

1. Advances in basic science.

2. Advances in infratechnologies. (I’ll explain what these are in a minute.)

3. Development and sale of new technologies by entrepreneurs.

In the U.S. today, the principal bottleneck in the pipeline is stage two, not three.

What are infratechnologies?  They are the crucial, but unpatentable and thus unprofitable, advances that must take place before saleable new technologies can be developed. Because they are unpatentable (or if patentable, infeasible to commercialize directly for other reasons) private industry has little interest in developing them.

Because they are not pure science, academic science funded by the National Science Foundation isn’t that interested either.

America simply doesn’t have a bottleneck at stage three. Our culture and institutions are friendly to for-profit business generally, and entrepreneurship especially, in just about every meaningful way. (Granted, one can quibble about imperfections, but by any reasonable international comparison, we’re just about as friendly as one can get, pace politically motivated whining.)

Similarly, America is probably not where it should be with regards to basic science, but we still lead the world. So there’s not really a bottleneck there, either.

To understand infratechnologies, let’s take an example reported by Gregory Tassey, the economist at the National Bureau of Standards and Technologies (NIST) who is America’s foremost expert on them.  In his book The Technology Imperative, he writes:

Measurement-related infratechnologies are a prominent example. For example, a fundamental measurement method called isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS), developed by NIST scientists and others, led to infratechnologies and associated standards in such diverse applications as measurement of sulfur in fossil fuels for compliance with environmental regulations and test methods for cholesterol and other blood elements.

America’s investment in such things for civilian purposes, despite exceptions like NIST, the National Institutes of Health, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, is relatively small, and far below what it should be.

What happens when infratechnologies don’t get enough development?  Tassey provides a case study:

In 1982, Dr Ronald Levy and colleagues at Stanford University succeeded in treating a chemotherapy-refractory patient with low-grade follicular lymphoma by using high doses of MABs [monoclonal antibodies]. This initial success created hopes that the “magic bullet” against cancer had been found.

However, subsequent efforts at developing therapeutic MABs for various cancers failed. The problem was that the generic mechanism of action was not adequately understood. Many guesses were made in order to rationalize proceeding with drug candidate development. For example, some researchers thought that the monoclonal antibody somehow activated the patient’s immune system because successful treatment provided protection long after the antibody was eliminated from the patient, but no proof of this conjecture was developed.

Such guesses were forced by the fact that the generic technology of MABs was only vaguely understood. Without the underlying technology platform in place, subsequent drug development efforts failed. The result of multiple failures was that both companies and investors lost interest in MABs as a promising therapy. The risk of further failure for additional drug candidates was prohibitively high and therefore they became unattractive candidates for venture capital…

Approximately 10 additional years of government funding by NIH [National Institutes of Health] were required to eventually advance the generic technology to the point that once again private capital was induced to flow into antibody drug development. The major advances were the introduction of recombinant antibody technologies and the development of human and humanized antibodies.

Multiply this bioscience example across all our emerging technologies, from nanotech to biofuels, and you have the true bottleneck to American innovation today.  And this is a problem that nurturing young geniuses—whatever else that may accomplish—has very little to do with.

Infratechnologies are, in the language of economics, quasi-public goods. That is, they fall into a difficult category between pure public goods like, say, national security, which it is impossible for any one individual to appropriate, and the pure private goods that are the province of ordinary profit-seeking businesses.  Because they are partly public goods, there is a legitimate argument for—horrors!—big government to be involved in supplying them. 

This fact tends to drive Silicon Valley libertarians crazy.  But if only they would be honest with themselves about the ultimate bases of their own fortunes, they might understand.

© Copyright 2011 Ian Fletcher. All rights reserved.

This article should not be republished or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.


Filed Under: Development, Economic Policy, Education, Opinion, United States Tagged With:
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