When the Georgian Olympic women’s beach volleyball pair came out for their showdown with Russia last week, there was more at stake than simply sport. While most coverage focused on the political side to the clash, one other interesting development was playing itself out. Both girls were Brazilian. They were not recruited because they are Georgian or members of the Georgian émigré community. However, they were good and available at the right price: they are mercenary athletes.
This year’s Olympics were marked by a rise of the mercenary athlete. By the time the London Olympics come around, the mercenary athlete is likely to be a well-entrenched, possibly not well-loved, feature.
In the past two weeks, American commentators have become extremely agitated by the sight of US athletes lining out for Russia and Germany. This is a bit rich as the US was the first country to practise the habit of ‘naturalising’ brilliant foreign sportsmen and women and making Americans out of them.
Our interest here is not the moral, ethical or indeed nationalistic credentials of the mercenary athlete, but the notion that what we are seeing in the Olympics is part of a wider pattern. As the world becomes more globalised, top talent will move to where it is in most demand.
And as a result, migration patterns are likely to change dramatically over the coming years. Only the very brilliant and the very destitute will migrate. The very brilliant will go so that they, like the mercenary athletes, can compete at the highest level. The very destitute will leave because they have been shut out of ever earning a living in their home towns. For the former, the gravitational force is more pull than push; for the latter it is more push than pull.
This pattern is repeated in many areas. For example, when I was doing the Leaving Cert, it was practically unheard of for an Irish school child to aspire to go to the likes of Cambridge. Our world view, if we were going to college, was limited to universities in Ireland. In contrast, these days it is commonplace for bright Irish children to go to Oxford or Cambridge, Stanford or Harvard as undergraduates.
The reasoning is simple: Harvard is, by repute, the best university in the world and why shouldn’t the best Irish children go there? The implication of this is that, far from the world being flat, as argued by many proponents of globalisation, there is a natural tendency for the opposite to be the case. There is now an inbuilt dynamic where the best universities, hospitals and companies will get even better talent and thus will have a huge comparative advantage over the others.
If this is so, the countries whose talents are seen to be the best, the most cutting edge and offering the best opportunities will also get the lion’s share of mobile talent. It is a cliché to talk about a global talent war, but it does seem to be true. To get the best people and to prevent your own best people from leaving, a country has to benchmark itself against other countries across a whole variety of indicators.
The most fundamental indicator, indeed the cornerstone of any country’s social policy, must be education. If you can educate the most people possible to the highest level possible, then everything else will follow. In the week before our political parties gather for their annual think-ins, it would be refreshing if this fundamental principle were embedded in every speech, every press release and every initiative.
At the moment we are slipping way back. Our universities talk about creating ‘world-class fourth-level institutions’, yet they hardly employ any foreign academics. How can you be the best in the world if you don’t fish in the talent pool of the best in the world? Our failures seem to be across the board. For example, according to the Irish Primary Principal Network — an organisation representing the principals of our primary schools — most state primary schools have to fund raise from parents every year just to keep the heating on in the winter. Anyone reading this who has a child with learning difficulties will also know that getting any extra help is extremely difficult and is usually something that you end up having to do on your own.
Furthermore, our curriculum needs to be constantly monitored, re-jigged and changed. A company would not offer the same training to its employees in 2008 as it did in 1988. Such a company would have collapsed years ago. We simply need to keep up with the times. How can we create a flexible, creative workforce if we have a rigid, unyielding education system? If the main obstacles to change are insiders, such as the teachers’ unions, these people must be persuaded to adapt. We need to drive home the fact that once a country gets education right, so much else falls into place.
Ireland has many natural advantages and the Irish have an ability to be creative and entrepreneurial. Our education system isn’t bad at all if you are one of the 70pc who do the Leaving Cert, but we are leaving far too many behind. The social cost alone of these underachievers is enormous, irrespective of where you stand on issues of equity and fairness.
If you doubt the connection between education and other indicators, look at the leaders in the OECD Pisa tests for education and then examine the countries and cities ranked highest on a broad range of quality-of -life indicators and we see an almost complete overlap.
In a world of mercenary athletes/students/computer programmers where talent moves to where it can find the best opportunity and the best blend of career and lifestyle, education is the most crucial foundation.
Let’s hope that the downturn serves to focus the minds of our political class on this big picture. Let’s hope that next week when they sit down for their think-in, that they try to consider Ireland’s place in the world. Do we want to be the best and compete or do we want to settle for less? Ireland must choose.
Thomas Friedman has a
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27friedman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
“Do we want to be the best and compete or do we want to settle for less? Ireland must choose.” Great question. we seem to be choosing a third way, settling for less whilst kidding ourselves it’s the best. We mock other countries tendency towards insularism, yet our behaviour is comparable and indeed has more serious consequences for us as we rely on international trade more than they do. Take sport as an example; witness the rise in marketing/corporate spend behind the All Irelands or even the club championships vs. the lack of sponsorship/support/recognition for our world class athletes. Or… Read more »
Excellint article as usual. Diddo to John H’s link. It’s like the result of putting an emulsified liquid thro’ a centrifuge. We’ll have layers from most to least talented – a dystopian future (not unlike Huxley’s brave new world) of hi-tech and market driven feudalism/eliteism. And I think there’s grounds for thinking it’s getting worse – we could have a few countries or secure islands where there may be only 30-40% employment (just for the elites) and others where this will be far far worse. The next question will be …How do we keep the 50-70% continiously unemployed under control?… Read more »
Oh wouldn’t it be fine. The problem is that the Irish elect politicians without an eye for generational change. The delivery timeframe is always the next election. I fully agree with DMcW, get education right and everything will follow – but it might take 30 years. Oh for a politician with the foresight, the party behind them and an electorate that voted with their brains and not their hearts. Philip, you’re right, what David describes is a talent-driven rat race. His point is that that is becoming the new world reality. That is the race in which we must compete… Read more »
David: It’s very timely to write about education at the start of the new school year. Parents are staggering home carrying expensive parcels containing new school uniforms, books and other educational paraphernalia. You have their attention as they wince at the cost of pushing wee Seamus yet another step towards his golden goals. Yet, though you headline It’s time to get education right , you offer scant guidance about how this should be done. – that if Seamus wants a really good education, his ambition should be Harvard, Oxford or the Cambridge tripos. And if he’s slated to attend a… Read more »
The budget for the Department of Education (and Science) is €9.3 billion for 2008 – that’s up ‘300%’ since Bertie’s government was elected for a 2nd time in 2002. With less than 1 million pupils across all 3 levels of publicly funded education, equivalent to nearly €10k per student or € ¼ million per class. There must not be another country in the world which spends as much per student/pupil – I’d say we are ‘gold medal’ winners when it comes to spend. The key challenge for Batt O’Keefe is to allocate this ‘scarce’ tax payers money efficiently so we… Read more »
Excellent article! There appears to be two strategies to “play” the talent game. To nurture talent at base and to attract talent. Both could be pursued. Most comments relate to nuturing talent. My 2 cents: Going high up in the chain (thus creating a significant 4th level base) requires more own resources, more creativity/flexibility and critically, a sustained political will to invest with low initial returns (e.g. setting up research and development “supply”). This may be unattainable. A way-off alternative (not claiming it to be my idea!) could be to promote Ireland to US private educational institutions as a base… Read more »
Great article, David. @fergal, l agree with you on learning Irish. I found all the time spent doing this should have been better spent on more useful subjects. I wonder today how much better many of us would be at maths or science or French if all that time had not been spent on Irish. Parents can find other ways of instilling a love for the original mother tongue if they choose. Start a rethink by making it an optional subject at school. @Wessel: nurturing talent at base and attracting talent can apply to school-teacher supply too. Why not attract… Read more »
Hi David, Yes, education is an important part of our talent creation, our creation of capability and our competitiveness. As has been pointed out, improving our education systems is a long-term project (30+ years) and needs constant attention (every 5 years!). By many benchmarks, we may not be doing that bad in global terms with our current education system. But of course it has faults. Big ones. Our report would be “must try harder”. In terms of strategy though, we have options. We can aim to create an improvement in our base levels or else improve the median/average levels, or… Read more »
Folks, the reason for my Pro Irish stance is that I firmly believe we as a nation will always find it difficult to think for ourselves independent of other cultural influences. Call it a cultural “quite space”. I think the current training & upskilling in Irish competency is a disaster and I utterly empathise with the mindnumbing effects of having to suffer Peig. If any of you saw the series on comedian Des Bishop learning his Irish, I think you’ll see what I mean. Like many on this board I have spent many years living around Europe and I know… Read more »
Its not about the Gaeilge lads .. I “use” Irish a lot more day by day than say I calculate the Doppler effect, yet no one would suggest dropping Physics. The same arguments were made about dropping Greek and Latin, yet did people go on to learn French, Italian, German. Spanish as a result … Learning the Irish language is worthwhile as education though not a training (unless you become a teacher). And who understands this? Step forward once again those PISA garlanded Finns. Even though only 5per cent of the Finns are ethnic Swedes, the whole country has to… Read more »
@Philip: “one only has to listen to our mostly inarticulate political leaders to know they are hampered in some manner. I think they are using a language that is misaligned to their way of thinking.” Ah come on now, Philip, surely no one would claim that Behan or Synge or Yeats or Keane or O’Casey used language in a way misaligned to their way of thinking. More likely their way of thinking reconstructed English to suit their purposes. You are being too charitable to our politicians, I fear, for such a freedom is surely open to them too. If your… Read more »
@mishko – Fully agree with all you say. Educated / Intelligent Irishmen have best mastery possibly of english there is. Youve hit Chomsky’s point on the head. It is a level playing pitch and english dominiates it and as a result dominates global thinking. But english is far from being a universal grammar. It just dominates. I think this is dangerous for developing minds where some level of message management is needed at the early stages. But I probably am way out of line here. I an just chancing my arm here.
Interesting heavy read (for me) link reviewing Chomsky’s book on mis-education..http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev109.htm
It’s not just a matter of throwing money at it…media, power of information etc are all wrapped up in it and one could easily make things a lot worse just following the rat race. Basically, I do not trust the Dept of Education or any other associated sector trying to rip off hard pressed parents of their hard earned euros for false promises.
Excellent Article here David ,
No argument with you on this one !. A solid education system is fundamental to our economy, whether or not the T.U.I or I.N.T.O. would agree to change is though another thing. They would probably have to be financially compensated and would no doubt request more ‘teacher in house training days’ and for sure more time off to assess their work load. We can only hope some one within the educational department will take note before their up coming think in .
Philip, that’s a very interesting link. Like the writer, I think Chomsky can be a bit too paranoid and biassed to the Left, but at the same time he acts as a good counter to the neo-cons. As I understand it, Chomsky has always been at pains to underline how the powers-that-be influence the thinking of those they govern, including through the education system. It will therefore be interesting to see how he reacts to Obama’s education policies. And of course it would also be interesting to see what he thinks of Fianna Fail’s education policies. But to be honest,… Read more »
You are asking the Uni’s to do way too many things, most of which they do very well indeed. And if you will find that most have MA or and PhDs from the very places you refer. Most of the time the Uni is dreaming up Hdips and MA’s for a employer who does not need the employee to hold and are little more than a weeding indicator for CV’s. It is time for exact goals, for each and every aspect. And defined budgets for those aspects. It may then become clear where and why along with the what of… Read more »
‘And if you will find that most have MA or and PhDs from the very places you refer.’
Should read, ‘And you will find that most have MA or and PhDs from the very places you refer’.
@mishko. I too think there is no real hidden agenda or conspiracy other than perhaps the odd harebrained marketing scam coming from some MNC to customise footers with logos on student not paper. Young people are too smart – as you say. Neither do I think there is any spooky FF/RTE/Indo agenda other than the usual marketing hookery – which is fair. My main concern centres around the 13-17 yr olds who have the max brain power but the poorest judgement. They need very careful management or we run out of good stock for the 3rd and 4th levels. Maybe… Read more »
Philip> I have yet to meet a fluent Irish speaker who was not utterly fluent in English – Irish does not hamper education… I have met several people from the gaeltacht that didnt have any english, never mind fluent english, so there goes your theory. Granted they were old and that was a few years ago, but they did exist. And not that very long ago gaeltacht people emigrated to the UK and were severly hampered by not having enough english. Only in recent decades as the young people have learned english as their mother tongue in the gaeltachts has… Read more »
There are maybe 50,000 people in the whole country who use Irish on a regular daily basis. I was privileged to be in a meeting with a several dozen of them last night, where I was the only attendee with zero understanding of the language. Fortunately the main speaker delivered in English.
If you want to see the future of the Gaeltachs then read ‘The Last of the Celts’ by Marcus Tanner published by Yale University Press. He discusses the Celtic languages demise in ireland, Scotland, IOM, Wales Brittany, Nova Scotia and Argentina. He paints a bleak picture.
Thanks for the info on the increased spend Johnny, we’re putting out money where our mouth is on this anyways… Agree with you 100% on Irish MK. By all means we should be proud of our culture; our language, games and music show we have something unique and special here. But, and this is looking at it critically, our music alone has what it takes to ‘compete’ internationally — it has influenced music all over the world. Neither the language nor the games have taken root anywhere despite having been seeded on all continents. There is a fine line between… Read more »
@Mk I think the reason the Finns/Scandos are good on the global stage has less to do with english and more to do with their strong heritage in engineering, trade and shipping. Their design, creativity and method of managing themselves has more to do with their tough climatic environment (freeezin) and Calvinistic work ethic. Nokia, Ericsson, Volvo, Bang & Oulfsen are not products of the english language.
@Mk The studies you refer to show correlation. I doubt if cause and effect has been proven. I’d say kids ability to express themselves and spell and write effectively has more to do with the “educational method” and the environment these kids find themselves in rather than Irish or any other language for that matter. Anyway, I was just kicking a ball in the air about the legitimacy of the english language to infiltrate every aspect of our lives without question – and bringing in Irish to mitigate this was probably a stupid idea – sorry!. Anyway, PISA 2006 results… Read more »
David, I agree, generally, with what you wrote here. However, I wonder where you got the idea that “…it is commonplace for bright Irish children to go to Oxford or Cambridge, Stanford or Harvard as undergraduates.” I cannot speak about the first three institutions, and do not know how many Irish students are presently at Harvard College. But the complete list of Harvard College graduates from Ireland, or now living in Ireland, is below, with the year they graduated. Perhaps when the Irish educational system again has a single course in Ancient History or Latin, there will be more students… Read more »
With regard to Gaelscoil, they have become very trendy, however i think it is unfair on children to put them through gaelscoil, science, engineering, computers have developed over the last 150 yrs whilst irish as a spoken language has declined therefore concepts in these subjects cannot be explained adequatly using irish, however the main point is that parents are deciding that their children must learn through irish , without regard to the fact that the children might not have any aptitude for languages, it should be left to the children to gravitate towards irish if they like it, also an… Read more »
@Aidan. If kids might not have any aptitude for language wouldn’t they be mute? By the simple virtue of them being able to speak and write English they have an aptitude for language. They are not being taught the way they learned English in the first place. The system is blind to the human brain. A dog catching a ball can do geometry and physics and has an aptitude for them. The difference between the dog and the kid is the dog can’t write but the innate ability is there. I would not say that Finns or Koreans are smarter… Read more »
Quoting B: “My own pet theory about house prices is connected to education. Not being able to work out discounting APR, interest rates and compound interest has meant that people have made decisions based on emotion rather than their own brains and logic.” Couldn’t agree more. It took me years later in life to learn about simple mathematical rules such as compound interest doubling your money after 10 odd years at 7%, and I was good at Maths at school. But not good at the important things, I found out later, because the maths I got was very poorly related… Read more »
What I found that kept me grounded during the boom was the simple calculation of multiplying the price of the house by 3 to include the full cost of servicing the loan all the way to the end and then the 300k house was in reality a 900k house etc etc and I asked myself the simple question. Would I pay 900 grand for this? No way. We need to teach kids how to feed themselves, how to exercise, how to manage money and how to learn. Learning “subjects” is fundamentally backwards. Do we want to control kids or teach… Read more »
To supplement an education policy we need a re-education policy. Many of those who drifted or were pushed into subjects like the Law, Media Studies or Geography, and end up with 2:2s or 3rds, have scant prospects of professional employment these days. Previously they had the fall-back option of becoming Estate Agents. Now that even that option is no longer available/attractive, they might like to consider fundamental re-training in IT. Talking to one of the biggest employers in that field last night, he said that his expansion is limited only by the availability of suitably qualified graduates. Irish youngsters don’t… Read more »
Malcolm, Agree with all except the bit about IT. Was chatting to lead CIO chief info officer the other day where he was at a conf with a lot of other CIOs of sizable operations. Not one of them would have their darlings pursuing a career in IT. It’s a dead end profession as it is currently defined. Lots of buisnesses want it, but are not willing to pay for it and the belief is it can be trivially outsourced. I could find you tomorrow a shedload of IT professionals who have been laid off over the last 5-6 years… Read more »
Philip: Put simply, there are four kinds of ‘IT’ employees in Ireland that might tend to be lumped together, even by CIOs whose career was based merely on a knowledge of Windows/Ethernet. They are: Call Centre staff; Cablers, Pluggers and Assemblers; single program technicians and the whizzes who can make Unix do useful things or design chips. Some Call Centres can be moved to other English speaking countries; wireless LANs on cheap Mac servers can replace many of the CPA people. Single program specialists are too narrowly focussed, but good Basic, Unix and 3D-dynamic programers and chip designers will always… Read more »
@Philip: Yes, I agree with you that its how things are taught that make the biggest difference. Yes, most kids do have the capacity to learn several languages, but there is a limit. For those that are being taught in a school system with limitations, “forcing” many kids to learn a language such as Irish which has no use beyond our own culturalism is shocking really. Esperanto and Klingon have more global use – Klingskol? @B: > If kids might not have any aptitude for language wouldn’t they be mute? By the simple virtue of them being able to speak… Read more »
given the sound byte “knowledge based economy” that is being bandied about at the minute: what has been made of the many many millions pumped into research over the last 10 years? i.e. how many businesses/commercial enterprises have emanated? Not many How many businesses with a reasonable global presence have evolved from the Smurfit School of business? Not many Who is looking at the RETURN ON INVESTMENT of all the research activities? It seems to me that (in the relatively recent past at least) other than the 2 Collison brothers from Limerick (a 16 and an 18yr old) who successfully… Read more »
Mishko, you mention the pressurized school environment in Korea. My guess is that they have very high rates of myopia as a direct result of this. Is this the case? My son is 7 and attending a Gaelscoil and gets tons of homeworkt. I do my best (without ‘Er Indoors hearing me of course) to get him to skimp as much as possible but it’s an uphill battle. You’re seldom far off the mark, MK, but I think you’ve taken a wrong turning over children learning languages, In Luxemburg kids do their first few years of schooling in Letzerbuergesch (which… Read more »
Coldblow, I don’t know if Koreans’ and other Asians’ myopia, while common, is a result of excessive study, or caused by genetic factors. The research seems to be inconclusive. But early action to treat it is certainly beneficial. And I wouldn’t tell your child, as it’s too good an excuse to skip lessons! You haven’t really proved MK to be wrong about the hampering efffects of the whole population learning Irish. In Luxembourg, the language you compare to Irish is a dialect of German, one of the two major languages of the country and of course an international language. Also,… Read more »
Mishko, you’re right to say that the Lux. case is not directly comparable as they speak it as their mother tongue. I can’t think of another example where a country teaches a language spoken by just a handful of native speakers (except Israel some years back when there had been no native speakers since the exile to Babylon). It is increasing uncommon to hear native Irish speakers under my age (50) with a command of the language, or even an accent, that is noticeably better than those who have learned it well at school and I I fear it is… Read more »