Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
The quotes below are from Wolf, A. (2002) Does Education Matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London: Penguin Books. They are self-explanatory.
Education, in one of the many unexamined, intuitive and incorrect assumptions of politics, has been held to be an engine of economic growth. Wolf challenges this assumption and maintains that, a) Average education and economic growth are unrelated except that b) Richer nations spend more on education than poorer ones. Egypt went from the forty-seventh poorest country to the forty-eighth poorest while increasing its educational participation rates substantially.
“….the countries which have done most to increase the education levels of their population have, on average, grown less fast than those which have devoted fewer resources to education. What can be going on here?” (p. 39)
“As Ron Dore has explained this is far less about education than about providing the world’s most ‘enormously elaborated, very expensive, intelligence testing–and elite selection–system.” (p. 208).
Wolf points out that there are two assumptions at the base of government policy….”the belief in a simple, direct relationship between the amount of education in a society and its future growth and the belief that governments can fine-tune education expenditures to maximize that self-same rate of growth. Neither is correct.” (p. 244).
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
