Geek Heresy (43 page)

40
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There are scholars who question the value of education. Some cast doubt on any correlation between education and national growth. Benhabib and Spiegel (1994) and Pritchett (1996) argued that additional years of education do not correlate with economic development at a national level. But research since then, for example, by Krueger and Lindahl (2001), has cast doubt on the quality of data from which Benhabib, Spiegel, and Pritchett worked. Even as Pritchett himself offered, school enrollment doesn’t necessarily translate to good education. Obviously, educational quality is what matters, not whether a child has technically enrolled in school.

A related, more realistic problem is that education by itself may have little economic value in contexts where jobs are limited. See, for example, Bhide and Mehta (2004), Deininger and Okidi (2003), Krishna (2010), and Scott (2000). But economic value isn’t everything. There’s still an argument to be made that education makes it more likely for people to demand changes to a system limiting their opportunities. Friedrich Engels (1844 [1968]), p. 125, wrote that “the middle class [who own the means of production] has little to hope, and much to fear, from the education of the workers.” The French and American revolutions were fanned by deep thinkers writing pamphlets against monarchy. A cleverly titled book called
The Dictator’s Handbook
notes that “no nondemocratic country has even one university rated among the world’s top 200” (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2011, p. 109). The authors continue, “Highly educated people are a
potential threat to autocrats, and so autocrats make sure to limit educational opportunity.”

41
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There are occasional debates about how much luck and other factors (e.g., skill, effort, personality) contribute to various ends (see, for example, Frank 2012). However, while these questions have academic value, precise measures are not important for the sake of practical action. In fact, for certain things, better outcomes can result if you believe (or act as if you believe) something that is factually wrong or exaggerated. Optimists are less realistic than mild pessimists, for example, but they’re more likely to take the risks necessary for success and more likely to be happy (Seligman 2006). This is true of any quality you have control over when it occurs in opposition to luck. It’s interesting, for example, that a lot of self-made people emphasize how important it is to make your own destiny, and belittle the role of luck. What that proves is not that their model of the world is accurate, but that personal success is more likely to come if you
act as if
you believe – correctly or not – that it’s all up to you.

42
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Coleman (1966). The Coleman Report was controversial when it came out because the effort/luck difference was found to cut across racial lines, which was no surprise then because of the strong correlation between race and socioeconomic status in 1960s America. Conservatives seized on the report as proof of bad culture among blacks; liberals reacted with claims of “blaming the victim.” Ever since then, American society has been unable to have an intelligent conversation about culture and personal virtues. I return to this issue in Chapters 8 and 9.

43
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See, for example, Elizabeth Kolbert’s (2012) descriptions of a six-year-old girl from the Matsigenka community in the Peruvian Amazon acting like a very responsible adult.

44
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See, for example, the Agricultural Self-Sufficient School by Fundación Paraguaya (n.d.). Also, prior to widespread formal education, apprenticeships were a common method of handing down knowledge and wisdom (De Munck et al. 2007).

45
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This is a bit of a generalization about Japanese education, which, like any educational system, has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, as a result of misguided
yutori kyoiku
(“relaxed education”) policies in the 1990s, Japanese student achievement fell for a while (Brasor 2001). Attempts to return to the previous state of rigor have just recently begun (Kato 2009). On the other hand, there are continual efforts to improve the way in which teachers teach, such as more recent efforts to have students think and discover mathematical algorithms on their own (Green 2014). On the whole, however, much of basic Japanese education is about rote memorization, especially compared with what I have experienced in American schools.

46
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Wai et al. (2010) hypothesize that greater “educational dose” is one key to a good education. In addition to quality of education, variety of experience may be critical. Mahoney et al. (2006) provide a thorough review of the literature on extracurricular activities for children. They find that on the whole, and contrary to worries of over-parenting, a richer set of organized activities is correlated with better child adjustment and self-esteem – except when piled on to excess.

47
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Pal et al. (2009).

48
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Plutarch (1992), p. 50. Thanks to O’Toole (2013).

49
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Prahalad (2004), p. 16.

50
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Data on government expenditure per student is from the World Bank (2012c). The figure varies depending on how it’s calculated, but $250 is a conservative upper bound. Using figures available or extrapolated for 2011, per capita GDP was $1,489; primary-school pupils numbered about 150 million; secondary-school pupils, about 110 million. During the past decade, and for years in which data is available, education expenditure per student as a percentage of per capita GDP was highest in 2003, when India spent 11 percent per primary-school student and 21 percent per secondary-school student. This comes to about $226 per student. However, while primary-school enrollment is 116 percent (due to children outside of the age bracket who attend school), and secondary-school enrollment is 63 percent, there are still 45 million school-aged children not in school. Thus, government expenditure per school-aged child is closer to $192. Meanwhile, using the total government budget of $47 billion for all education, and dividing it among the school-aged population (305 million), results in only $154 per student, even though this includes the budget for tertiary education.

51
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Inglehart et al. (2008).

52
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Shanti Bhavan has a policy of only accepting one child per family. Although this strikes some westerners as unfair, it aligns with cultural norms in rural India, where families tend on their own to invest in a single child. In fact, many Indian people would consider it less fair if more than one child per family were given the opportunity to attend Shanti Bhavan. Why should one family receive so much, when there are so many families in need?

53
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I have encountered many stories of child sexual abuse in impoverished and less-educated communities. There seem to be complex reasons for this, ranging from co-sleeping family members to weaker social norms against abuse. However, this issue is all but invisible outside of those communities, and there is surprisingly little documentation of the phenomenon, either in scholarly papers or popular journalism. Two exceptions: National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (2003) discusses the domestic US context; and Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (1997) discusses South Africa. Similar findings probably hold in many other countries.

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An effect analogous to this was established by economist Rob Jensen (2012) in an experimental study in North India. In rural villages that witnessed some women getting jobs in the relatively lucrative outsourcing industry, other women were “significantly less likely to get married or have children during this period, choosing instead to enter the labor market or obtain more schooling or postschool training.”

55
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Awuah (2012).

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Actually, it would take about thirty-six years and four months at a 10 percent growth rate per year. At 9 percent, it would take more than forty-one years. The poverty rate for a single household in 2014 was $11,670 (US Department of Health and Human Services 2014).

Chapter 8: Hierarchy of Aspirations

The Evolution of Intrinsic Motivation

1
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Sandberg (2014), pp. 296–297.

2
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Economists will point to the behavioral scientists in their midst and insist that their field knows money isn’t everything. But it’s telling that even the behavioral economists’ favorite piece of evidence for this claim is the game of Dictator, in which one person allocates a pot for two players – a pot of money. In the most common form of Dictator, one player (the dictator) is given some cash – say, $10 – along with instructions to split the money in whatever way he chooses with the second player (see, for example, Camerer and Thaler 1995). Over many experiments in various contexts, and to the jaw-stretching astonishment of mainstream economists, it has been found that people in the role of the dictator frequently choose to give the other player some of the money (Henrich et al. 2004). This fact upends the standard “rational agent” model of economics, which assumes that people are moved purely by self-interest and would therefore keep the entire pot for themselves.

3
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Oxford English Dictionary
(2013).

4
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The sample survey was conducted by market-research firm Synovate. Nathalia Rodriguez Vega helped me analyze the data. The exact wording of the survey question was, “Among those things that you have some control over, what would you most like to change about yourself or your life over the next five years?” Over the years, I’ve found this wording to work best even in translation. (The word “aspiration” itself can be confusing or hard to translate.)

It’s possible that people might not mention aspirations they have that are less than good, but if so, the responses still show that people know what a good aspiration is (i.e., the response reveals something true even if the respondent has what psychologists call “social desirability bias”). Even when similar questions are asked
of gang members, mafioso, and dictators, they typically reveal positive intentions, though their means to achieve them might be crooked. See, for example, Venkatesh (2008).

5
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Deci and Ryan (1991).

6
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For an overview of these results, see Sheldon and Houser-Marko (2001) and Sheldon and Elliot (1999). Sheldon and Elliot (1998) also find that people persevere more at intrinsically motivated goals. The finding that the greatest gains come from following intrinsically motivated goals occurs in Sheldon and Kasser (1998).

7
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This process is also confirmed by Sheldon and Elliot (1999): “Those who are progressing well in their goals during a period of time are accumulating activity-based experiences of competence, autonomy, and relatedness during that time, more so when their goals are self-concordant.”

8
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Richard Auty (1993) first identified and named the resource curse. Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner (1999) linked the resource curse to economic stunting.

9
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The “Dutch disease” was so named by
Economist
(1977), according to Wikipedia’s article on “Dutch Disease” (n.d.),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
.

10
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Erling Larsen (2004) discusses how Norway appears to have avoided the resource curse, though there are indications that it’s not fully clear of Dutch disease. Meanwhile, Norway’s admirable contributions to international aid are documented in many places. Revkin (2008) notes how it upped its aid contributions during a recession.

11
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Agyare (2014).

12
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I met Awuah when I taught math at Ashesi in 2002, and we’ve had many discussions since then about university education, Ghana, and development. The stories of Awuah and Ashesi throughout this book are based on our conversations over the years as well as stories I heard from other Ashesi affiliates, including Nina Marini, Ashesi’s founding vice president. More about Awuah and Ashesi appears in the following: Easterly (2006), pp. 306–307; Dudley (2009); Lankarani (2011).

13
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The quotation is at best a very loose translation of Goethe from what first seems to appear in Corelli (1905), p. 31. Lee (1998) provides a fuller explanation.

14
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See Easterly (2006), pp. 306–307. Awuah has otherwise won a number of honors for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore in 2004; the John P. McNulty Prize in 2009; and the Integral Fellow Award from the Microsoft Alumni Association.

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This oft-cited finding goes back to Isen and Levin (1972) and was popularized by, among others, Schwarz and Strack (1999). I mention this pioneering work not because its conclusions are wrong or unimportant, but because it is a prominent example that emphasizes the short-term impact of the external
environment. No such single study is a problem in itself – the problem is that such studies are increasingly prioritized (because they’re easier and cheaper to run) over studies of slower-changing, internal traits and are becoming disproportionately influential in policy.