Like they say quality and NOT quantity is the deciding factor for country prosperity. Due to legacy of Confucianism east Asia worshipped education and badgers their young to excel academically. this is turn transform East Asia from basket case into the world most dynamic region. Now more and more people realized this secret sauce.
Latin America will never truly prosper unless its people start to care about education | Opinion
Andres Oppenheimer
Fri, October 8, 2021, 6:56 PM
When people talk about Latin America’s biggest problems, they usually start by citing government corruption, crime and unemployment. However, one of the region’s biggest problems — compared to what I’ve seen in Asia and other parts of the emerging world — is its people’s failure to take education seriously.
I’m not talking just about the region’s governments’ failure to improve education standards, but about the people’s apparent indifference about the issue. A new poll makes it clear.
The poll, released by Latinobarómetro, a Chile-based regional polling firm, shows that education ranked last among the biggest concerns of most Latin Americans, way below the economy, politics and corruption.
Only 4% of Latin Americans cite education as among their countries’ biggest problems, according to the poll of almost 20,000 people in 18 Latin American countries.
In some countries, there is an even more alarming lack of public awareness about the importance of education: In Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, only 2% of the people cited education as a major national problem. In Argentina, Guatemala and Honduras, the figure was just 3%.
The absence of a culture of obsession with education is a key reason why Latin America has lost so much ground to Asian countries in recent decades. While in many families in Asia invest much of their time and money in their children’s education, you don’t see much of that in Latin America.
