The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 26
Текст из файла (страница 26)
Two more daughters were similarly hot-housed. All three obliged their father bybecoming world-class players. The youngest, Judit, is currently ranked 13th in the world, and is by farthe best female chess player of all time.Would the experiment have succeeded with a different trio of children? If any child can be turned into astar, then a lot of time and money are being wasted worldwide on trying to pick winners.America has long held “talent searches”, using test results and teacher recommendations to selectchildren for advanced school courses, summer schools and other extra tuition. This provision is set togrow.
In his state-of-the-union address in 2006, President George Bush announced the “AmericanCompetitiveness Initiative”, which, among much else, would train 70,000 high-school teachers to leadadvanced courses for selected pupils in mathematics and science. Just as the superpowers' space racemade Congress put money into science education, the thought of China and India turning out hundredsof thousands of engineers and scientists is scaring America into prodding its brightest to do their best.The philosophy behind this talent search is that ability is innate; that it can be diagnosed withconsiderable accuracy; and that it is worth cultivating.In America, bright children are ranked as “moderately”, “highly”, “exceptionally” and “profoundly” gifted.The only chance to influence innate ability is thought to be in the womb or the first couple of years of life.Hence the fad for “teaching aids” such as videos and flashcards for newborns, and “whale sounds” ontape which a pregnant mother can strap to her belly.In Britain, there is a broadly similar belief in the existence of innate talent, but also an egalitariansentiment which makes people queasy about the idea of investing resources in grooming intelligence.Teachers are often opposed to separate provision for the best-performing children, saying any extra helpshould go to stragglers.
In 2002, in a bid to help the able while leaving intact the ban on most selectionby ability in state schools, the government set up the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth.This outfit runs summer schools and master classes for children nominated by their schools. To date,though, only seven in ten secondary schools have nominated even a single child. Last year all schoolswere told they must supply the names of their top 10%.Picking winners is also the order of the day in ex-communist states, a hangover from the times whentalented individuals were plucked from their homes and ruthlessly trained for the glory of the nation.
Butin many other countries, opposition to the idea of singling out talent and grooming it runs deep. InScandinavia, a belief in virtues like modesty and social solidarity makes people flinch from the idea oftreating brainy children differently.And in Japan there is a widespread belief that all children are born with the same innate abilities—andshould therefore be treated alike. All are taught together, covering the same syllabus at the same rateuntil they finish compulsory schooling. Those who learn quickest are expected then to teach theirclassmates.In China, extra teaching is provided, but to a self-selected bunch. “Children's palaces” in big cities offer ahuge range of after-school classes.
Anyone can sign up; all that is asked is excellent attendance.Statistics give little clue as to which system is best. Theperformance of the most able is heavily affected by factors otherthan state provision. Most state education in Britain is nominallynon-selective, but middle-class parents try to live near the bestschools. Ambitious Japanese parents have made private, out-ofschool tuition a thriving business. And Scandinavia'segalitarianism might work less well in places with more diversepopulations and less competent teachers. For what it's worth, thedata suggest that some countries—like Japan and Finland, seetable—can eschew selection and still thrive. But that does notmean that any country can ditch selection and do as well.Mr Polgar thought any child could be a prodigy given the rightteaching, an early start and enough practice.
At one point heplanned to prove it by adopting three baby boys from a poorcountry and trying his methods on them. (His wife vetoed thescheme.) Some say the key to success is simply hard graft. Judit,the youngest of the Polgar sisters, was the most driven, and themost successful; Zsofia, the middle one, was regarded as themost talented, but she was the only one who did not achieve thestatus of grand master. “Everything came easiest to her,” saidher older sister. “But she was lazy.”Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.
All rights reserved.About sponsorshipThe World Bank and corruptionMy beautiful laundretteFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionA financial institution tries to practise what it preachesMOST big organisations wash their dirty laundry in private. Not the World Bank. On the website of itsDepartment of Institutional Integrity, soiled garments are on full display. A photograph shows a ruralroad, financed by the bank, that is 30% narrower than it should be; another pictures a hut packed withchildren because classrooms the bank paid for are being used by a local official to store onions. Thisweek, the department issued its first “integrity report” since 2005; it reveals a basketful of bribery,fiddles and frauds.Insiders say the department enjoys a “mystique” among the bank's wider staff, who may have watchedtoo many television dramas about forensic detectives.
In reality, netting baddies is laborious andfrustrating. Over the two years covered by this report (which ended on June 30th last year) thedepartment fully investigated 236 allegations of corruption in the bank's projects. It was able to makecharges stick in just 71 cases (and dismissed them in another 53).
Those two years saw 58 firms and 54people barred from getting bank money. The blacklist included a couple of big names, including ThalesConsulting and Engineering of France, which got a wrist-slapping one-year ban.The department also turned its lens on its colleagues, fully examining 92 allegations of fraud andcorruption against the bank's staff, and substantiating 33. Some cheats fiddled taxes; others doctoredexpenses.
One staffer charged phone-calls from one place, while claiming to attend training in another.The investigators still cite the “cancer of corruption” denounced by James Wolfensohn, an ex-president ofthe World Bank, in 1996. Since then, they have gained a better fix on the malignancy, they say: thesame scams pop up everywhere. But they do not know their extent.Fraud may well be rare among bank people, but endemic in its projects.
Many invite bids for a contract tobuild a road, say, or provide tractors. The bank stumps up the cash, but the borrowing government picksthe winner. In a paper published in 2005, Nathaniel Hobbs, a political scientist, shows how bids wereroutinely rigged. His sources had handled about 90 bank contracts, worth $90m in total, for firms in over20 countries. In every contract, one source said, local officials sought a kick-back, typically of 10-15%.The bank says it has “zero tolerance” for corruption in its ventures. It has a “responsibility to safeguardevery dollar”, says Paul Wolfowitz, the president, whose recent visit to a Turkish mosque (see picture)exposed a willingness to reveal sartorial, as well as institutional, flaws.In any case, by one estimate the bank finances about 45,000 contracts a year.Watching every cent could cost many dollars indeed.
So the bank husbandssome greenbacks more carefully than others. The integrity report talks of“triage”: cases implicating bank staff get its full attention, as do cases that putthe bank's name at risk. It would be quick to act if scandal tainted a jointproject with America's aid agency, USAID, or Britain's DfID. The departmentalso tries to make an example of some miscreants.
A seven-year ban onLahmeyer International, a German firm convicted of bribing an official inLesotho, seems to have scared many others.The department saves energy by offering amnesties to wrongdoers who grasson their accomplices. It no longer waits for allegations to arrive at its door, orover its 24-hour hotline, but screens reams of contracts looking for telltalesigns. Sometimes, a handful of bidders seem to take turns to win contracts.Then there are “rival” bids with identical spelling errors.AFPNonetheless, the department is but a small cog in Mr Wolfowitz's general fightagainst corruption. Mr Hobbs thinks the bank's freedom to wage this battle islimited by a reluctance to offend and a need to lend.
It cannot attack the rot atthe top: that would antagonise poor countries who sit on its board and accountfor most of its custom. Nor can it go for the bottom—if it second-guessed everydodgy contract, it would hobble its own ability to make loans. It thereforethrows punches at the flabby middle (training judges, say, or fixingprocurement procedures) where the bruises do not show.Still, Mr Wolfowitz can claim to have stepped on more toes and poked moreeyes than his predecessors, delaying loans even to the biggest clients.Moreover, the department's $15m budget, though small, has tripled since 2000.His pick as director, Suzanne Rich Folsom, has more clout than her predecessor.But does she have the trust of the staff? The manner of her nominationprompted an objection by the staff association.
An organisation that can look atemployees' expenses and investigate them for tax fraud will never be popular.All is revealed: WolfowitzSome staff have been slow to blow the whistle on projects they oversaw, notin Turkeywanting to embarrass host governments, or nervous of more senior loanpushers. But field officers are more talkative now.
About 30% of allegationscome from staff tip-offs.Ms Folsom wants to dispel the notion that her department investigates only the small fry. The integrityreport speaks tantalisingly of a “high-stakes, and multi-dimensional” probe, still under wraps butapparently involving bank officials at the highest levels. Something to look for next time the bankdisplays its laundry.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipWho are the champions?Feb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionHoward ReadEuropean business seems stuck between awesome America and low-cost Asia.
In fact it isdoing surprisingly well, says Iain CarsonIT IS not difficult to be pessimistic about the future of European business. Compared with the awesomestrength of America and the raw power of emerging Asia, Europe is sometimes portrayed as a has-been,excelling in luxury goods, fine food, wines and fashion but weighed down by too many old industries andold ideas. From microchips to microbes, poor old Europe seems to trail in America's and Asia's wake.America enjoys awesome advantages over Europe.
It is a huge, truly single market with a relativelyyouthful, growing population. It is the world's economic superpower, with much higher productivity thanits competitors (though productivity growth has recently been disappointing, and last year was slightlybelow Europe's). It has world-class universities that work hand in glove with business.
Americans havenot only won more Nobel prizes, they have turned more scientific advances into profitable businessesthan anyone else. Many of these firms have gone on to become the giants of modern business.It may have been a British scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at a laboratory in Switzerland, whoinvented the world wide web, but America is the home of the internet and all the business sectors it hasspawned. And even where Europe is holding its own against America, it seems unable to retain itsadvantage. Boeing drifted badly in the 1990s as Europe's Airbus made strides, but having merged withMcDonnell Douglas the American giant bounced back.
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
