"Democracy vs. Totalitarianism - The Nobel Peace Prize & Education"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Democracy vs. Totalitarianism – The Nobel Peace Prize & Education”

December 8, 2010

While there has been much discussion about a bifurcated electorate in the United States, receiving less attention is the increasing, and more dangerous, chasm between liberal democracies and totalitarian regimes.

What draws attention to this fact (apart from the antics emanating from North Korea) was the report yesterday in the on-line New York Times and the BBC that eighteen countries (besides China) have chosen to boycott (“for various reasons”) the ceremony on Friday, at which the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese dissident. Mr. Liu is serving an eleven-year sentence for subversion. Additionally, according to BBC News, the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navi Pillay, has indicated she will not attend. As the report in the Times reads, “China has been incensed by Mr. Liu’s award.” Neither he nor any member of his family will be in Oslo to accept the prize on December 10. As the Times notes, the last time there was no one present to accept the prize was in 1936 when Nazi Germany prevented recipient German journalist and pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky from leaving the country. Herr von Ossietzky died in 1938, allegedly of tuberculosis, while still in police custody at the age of 48.

The importance of this growing schism between democracies and totalitarian regimes should not be underestimated. While the United States is the leader among democracies, China is the largest and most notable representative of totalitarian states. China’s economic successes have surely not gone unnoticed by countries in the developing part of the world, including those like Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Cuba who have chosen to boycott the ceremony. Emulating China’s economic success is sure to be on their agenda.

And we also know that education and prosperity are inextricably linked. In another news item yesterday, the results from global tests in science, reading and math were released by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA.) Unlike most countries which merged their results into a single country score, China released results from three cities – Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao. The tests were given to fifteen-year olds by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in sixty-five countries. Students from Shanghai scored first in all three categories; Hong Kong was third in science and math and fourth in reading. Macao scored less well, but above the United States in all categories except reading. Those in Shanghai were overseen by the Australian Council for Educational research, a nonprofit testing group. The New York Times, in a front page article yesterday, reported that Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD’s international educational testing program said, “…international testing experts have investigated them [the test results] to vouchsafe for their accuracy, expecting they would produce astonishment in many Western countries.” Nevertheless, those in the West are aware that Shanghai is a magnet for the best and the brightest from China and certainly the scores are not representative of the country as a whole.

However, if the scores from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea didn’t astonish, they should have. The United States was 30th in math, 17th in reading and 23rd in science – a dramatic condemnation of our educational system. It was not just the Asian nations that beat us. Finland, Estonia and Poland, for example, scored better than the U.S. in all three categories.

If the United States, the leader of the free world, the most prosperous nation on earth, home to the world’s greatest universities is failing its youth in subjects so basic as reading, math and science, that failure, especially in comparison to China, portends poorly on our future economic results, and reflects badly when democracy is compared to totalitarianism by emerging nations. As globalization has become ubiquitous, the world has become far more competitive. As a nation, the single most important investment that we can make is in education. The President is obviously concerned. The Times quoting Mr. Obama speaking of the billions of people in India and China “suddenly plugged into the world economy…that nations with the most educated workers will prevail. As it stands right now, America is in danger of falling behind” – a call which we must heed.

An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal attempted to put a positive spin on the report. They quoted Stuart Kerachsky, deputy commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Department of Education that administers the PISA test in the U.S. “There were some bright spots. In mathematics, no country moved ahead of the U.S. American students were inching ahead.” That observation is like putting “lipstick on a pig”, as someone once remarked. The U.S. was 30th on the list with a score of 487, ten points below the average, and lower than countries such as Canada, Iceland, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Those scores are not only embarrassing, they are, as the President suggested, dangerous.

The majority of nations boycotting Friday’s award ceremony in sympathy with China did not participate in the PISA tests this year: Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Four countries that support China did take the test: Russia, Colombia, Tunisia and Serbia. None of them scored above the U.S., which means that they were all below average. So while 15-year olds in three large cities in China did very well on the tests, students in totalitarianism regimes generally did not perform well. But that may change. China has re-set the bar. Perhaps these countries have small cadres of students that perform spectacularly, but democracy, on balance, did better. Nevertheless, American students scored abysmally and that should be the take-away. Education is the key to long term economic growth, and historically economic success has been partnered with democracy. The scores should serve as a wake-up call to American parents, educators and politicians; for if the world is to be split among democracies and totalitarianism it is imperative that, if we are to win the war, we must first win the battle for education.