Four hundred years ago, the English philosopher Francis Bacon determined that “Knowledge is power”. If you look in the dictionary, the word “knowledge’ means “facts, feeling, familiarity, or experience retained by a person or a group of persons.”
Knowledge comes from information, and information comes from input. In this context, input is the collection of independent facts about an occurrence. Capability then refers to the ability to turn input into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into practice.
The basic principle of education lies in bringing about both knowledge and capability in people.
This is why every nation considers education critical to economic competitiveness and a prosperous livelihood, and makes it compulsory for people. In the 500s BC, Confucius taught that everyone has equal rights to education. This notion was enshrined by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, and Maria Theresa, Queen of Habsburg, who established a formal education system that allowed everyone to receive education regardless of their background – regardless of whether they were herders, farmers, or noblemen.
Mongolia has a small population and is geographically sandwiched between two superpowers. Therefore, knowledge is not only the source of our prosperous livelihood, but also the leverage to preserve our culture and traditions, which secures our sovereignty and independence.
There are two things that would enable us to differentiate from our neighbours, to improve our competitiveness, develop our economy, and establish our place in international labour market. The first is fluency in native and foreign languages, and the second is digital literacy at national level.
Language fluency first
The last 20 years show that the key prerequisite for learning a foreign language is achieving fluency in mother tongue, establishing thinking sequence, and understanding our own history and traditions. Some families focus on teaching a foreign language to their children more than ensuring they speak their native language fluently. As a result, the children grow up substantially disconnected from Mongolian language and culture. Even though they speak a foreign language and learn associated culture, their competitiveness is brought down due to not knowing their own culture and language.
Finland’s example is proving that the priority for children in primary schools should be on developing right behaviours, principles, and skills to co-exist with others rather than focusing on knowledge in the classroom context.
The European Union pursues a ‘1+2’ policy to have people speak their mother tongue and learn two other languages. For instance, this would include Scandinavian countries where kids start learning their first foreign language from Grade 3 and the second foreign language after primary school. This means that students learn two foreign languages in their high school education. There is little debate that English should be the first foreign language. Seventy per cent of all information on the internet is in English, and 55 countries declared English as an official language. And, the world has 750 million people speaking English. Most importantly, our two neighbours are trying to speak to each other in English instead of Russian or Chinese. Also, there already is a Mongolian government resolution that says English is our first foreign language.
The second foreign language could be the language of either one of our neighbours. Our key to progress is knowledge, and foreign language is what unlocks the ways to obtain knowledge.
Small countries enter the global market by learning English or the language of neighbouring countries and doing business in other countries.
Good examples would be Switzerland, Holland, and Singapore. Almost everyone in Switzerland speak German, French, Italian, and English. Neutral and landlocked, Switzerland is the world’s wealthiest country that has become a global banking and finance center and leads the world by production of cement, chocolate, and watches. If you look at Dutch people, they speak English, German, and French in addition to Dutch. Holland is a global leader in sea transport, international commerce, and financial services. Also, Holland is where the first ever stock exchange was opened and a publicly owned company set up. Besides being Asia’s financial center, Singapore has now become a hub of headquarters of international corporations. It is largely because they speak four languages in Singapore.
Having understood the advantages of learning foreign languages, small countries with big neighbours have historically been encouraging their people to learn other languages, supporting them to do business in other countries, and maintaining a neutral position politically. These priorities do not undermine native language and traditions, but strengthen them. When such policies come into effect, people start thinking globally and tend to be more successful in international markets than those who are from the big neighbours.
Digital literacy second
Digital literacy is the ability to receive information and interact with others using devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers. It is one of the four ‘21st century’ capabilities along with critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. The ongoing revolution in information and communications technology is offering a rare and unique opportunity for developing countries to achieve socio-economic development rapidly.
Mongolia has put forward an objective to ‘create a knowledge-based society and capable Mongolians’ by 2030 and prepare a skilled workforce to meet the demands of the domestic labour market and build a higher education system that prepares internationally competent professionals. However, our current situation clearly shows that we have an enormous gap to fill to get there.
When 63 countries were ranked in a competitiveness report, Mongolia had one of the lowest scorers in higher education, innovation, and knowledge transfer, and came second to last in internet users, power density, number of valid patents, cyber security, quality of air transport, and protection of intellectual property. The ranking shows how much change we need. The underlying condition to develop our human resources and prepare a highly skilled workforce is the general education of people, and most importantly its quality.
In the 2016/2017 academic year, we had a total of 562,000 students studying in 798 high schools. In Ulaanbaatar, 6,300 students in 24 high schools were taught in the third shift in the 2015/2016 academic year. This number rose to 9,923 students in 34 high schools in the 2016/2017 academic year. Schools in the capital city are struggling with the high number of students, while rural schools are looking for students.
It is impossible to foster a high quality education system without well-trained, skilled, and energetic teachers who are well-supported. When teachers who are ‘creating Mongolians’ struggle to have a livelihood, it is clear that the outcome of their job will not be tremendous. On the other hand, teachers are now required to grow and develop themselves in today’s world. We are spending 5-6 per cent of our GDP, which equals one fifth of the public budget, on the education sector, but we are still unable to meet our needs.
Self-reflection
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) evaluates education systems in member and non-member countries by doing a worldwide study every three years. The study, which is called the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), measures mathematics, science, and reading competencies in 15-year-old pupils. The key purpose lies in determining whether high school education is providing students with knowledge and capability that meet the needs of economic development. PISA is given a lot of importance by many countries because it reflects the quality of their education system.
The 2015 PISA report ranked Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taiwan, and Finland in the first five places while Germany was in 16th place.
Mongolia has already put the objective on paper to participate in PISA in 2021. However, nothing has been done on this front, and there is still no clear accountability on who is taking this important goal forward. We need to participate in this study, reflect on where we are, and start fixing things.
2018.04.11