EDUCATION AND LITERACY

What happened a few hundred years ago that gave Europe and those countries that built on the European experience the edge, the advantage that allowed them to expand then dominate? How is it that Nations built on this European experience have given their people the greatest freedoms and highest standards of living? How did they eclipse earlier, greater civilisations and empires?

The great civilisations in China, which first discovered just about everything from the screw, the compass, and gunpowder; or the Islamic world with its great libraries, hospitals, irrigation schemes, philosophers and early tolerance and cultural respect which saved the ancient mysteries and noble learnings from Greece and Rome for mankind while Europeans lived through a barbaric dark age? These older civilisations turned inward, no longer outward-looking and curious. However, something else happened. Some say the invention of property rights, the genius of the limited liability company which preserved savings, protected a family’s investment, protected intellectual property, allowed borrowing and minimised risk, allowed an explosion of commercial adventurism. This Dutch invention quickly transported itself to England. Perhaps it was the fundamental decision that separated Church and State during the enlightenment and the Reformation. A simple proposition? Why do we believe in equality? Well, if we are all the children of God, therefore we must be equal. A profound principle. If we have the right to speak to and hear from God without the middle man, the Church, then we must be able to read and write. At this point in Scotland, each church became a school. Education, literally, was established as a basic principle of citizenship, a basic responsibility of society.

Technology leaped forward, the Church and priests had a monopoly of information, mainly because only they could read and write and interpret God’s words through the Bible. The printing press empowered ordinary people to challenge en masse these centuries-old assumptions. Calvin could turn out hundreds of books and pamphlets. The genie, once out of the bottle, could not be returned although violent, oppressive leaders from Popes to Emperors, to Hitler and Stalin tried. They rose to fall and fail. Education, literacy, is the key weapon to freedom, development, and opportunity still.

Recently I spent a few days in Abu Dhabi as the guest of the United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Education, the savvy and smart Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan. The UAE was host to an international conference of students on education, splendidly entitled "Education Without Borders". Nobel Prize-winners, an astronaut, Ministers, and lesser lights such as myself, gave speeches and papers. The students compared papers and networked. I reflected that all their attributes of learning and literacy which were fought so hard for centuries ago, are now a click away. My mind drifted back to a conversation I had with a person in Papua New Guinea in the 1980’s when I, as Foreign Minister of New Zealand, had begun the peace talks between PNG and Bougainville. Anyhow, this guy told me of how his father had not seen a white man until he was 20, and that he had been to University in Australia, and his son was on the computer chatting to kids in Boston. Then I thought of a conversation I had with an extremely wealthy Saudi businessman who cheerfully admitted he knew nothing of New Zealand and then asked, "What is your telephone system like?" This was before the internet, the cell phone, or fax. Curious question, I thought. "Why do you ask," I questioned? "Because I judge an economy and make investment decisions based on how the communications system works." was his answer. It took me 10 years to understand how profound and smart that question was. My point is this. Would the Reformation, the enlightenment, have been successful without the push that the printing press gave? The internet, the world wide web, is a revolutionary opportunity to construct understanding and solidarity between people that will be more profound and enduring than dreamers from Marx to Saint Paul could ever have imagined. The artificial walls that separate people and cultures are crashing down.

Most of the projects suggested by the students at the conference were about how to assist the poor and how to drive up equality and opportunity. Last year, the prize for best paper was won by a young South African who has no electricity in his home village. This year, the winner was a blind Austrian girl with a paper on how to empower disabled people. I enjoyed speaking with the students. As you get older you have the overpowering need to tell young people what to do. This is unique among the planet’s species. We so much want them not to make the mistakes we made. Perhaps we think we become immortal if our ideas live on in others.