Every second year fifteen-year old students from around the world take an exam given by the Program for International Student Assessment. The PISA exam measures the achievement of students from sixty-five countries in math, science and reading comprehension. This year the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECP), who administers the test, followed up with a fascinating study. The OECP wanted to see how student performance on the PISA correlated to each country’s total earning on natural resources. Put succinctly, how does a country’s score on the PISA compare to how much wealth the country has in oil, gas and diamonds.
Surprisingly the more wealth a country has in natural resources, the less likely it is to do well on the PISA exam. That didn’t make sense to me. I would think a wealthy country would produce the most educated citizens. I looked a little further and came across an article by Thomas Freidman in the New York Times explaining this seemingly contradiction.
Mr. Freidman wrote about why he admires Taiwan, a country sitting on a barren rock in the middle of typhoon alley with no natural resources, but a high standard of living. Having little wealth that can be dug out of the earth, Taiwan considers its people to be its most valuable resource. Over the years Taiwan has invested heavily in developing a highly skilled population and a culture of achievement. In the PISA exams Taiwanese students score in the top tier. Taiwan has no oil, gas or diamonds, but it does have an invaluable and renewable resource. It’s highly educated and skilled citizens.
Countries like Singapore, Finland, South Korea and Japan rank high on the PISA results and correspondingly have limited natural resources. Countries with great wealth in natural resources such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman do not score well. While Countries in the same region, but without the benefit of oil and other natural resources, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, do much better on the PISA.
In countries like Finland, Israel, Singapore where there are minimal natural resources, education becomes the coin of the realm. The citizens of these countries know they need a technological skilled and highly literate population to compete in the world market. For them education is an essential survival tool.
In these difficult economic times, it is tempting to cut back on government funded education programs, but the only way to sustain growth is by ensuring people have the knowledge and skills to compete in a world that grows more technologically dependent every minute, every day. As Thomas Freidman says in his article, “Sure, it’s great to have oil, gas and diamonds; they can buy jobs. But they’ll weaken your society in the long run unless they’re used to build schools and a a culture of lifelong learning.”
There is only so much gold you can dig out of the earth, but education is like alchemy. It’s the magic that can make a country rich over and over again.
