Education

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah will apparently only put up with so much from his clerics. Sheikh Saad al-Shethry has been removed from the kingdom's highest council of religious scholars by royal decree, after he criticized a newly-opened multibillion-dollar university for being un-Islamic. Shethry had a particular problem with co-ed classes:

"Mixing is a great sin and a great evil," al-Shethri was quoted as saying. "When men mix with women, their hearts burn and they will be diverted from their main goal (which is) ... education."

Abdullah has acquired a reputation as an unlikely reformer after this year's Valentine's Day reforms, in which he sacked the head of the infamous religious police and appointed a woman to his cabinet for the first time. But as Saudi Arabia expert Toby Jones argued at the time, Abdullah is probably less interested in liberalizing Saudi society than he is eliminating threats to his family's power.

The firing of Shethry certainly seems to be an example. The university -- which is named after the king, of course --  is something of a legacy project for Abdullah. He has touted it as a "beacon of tolerance" and as part of his plan to make Saudi Arabia a center of technological innovation. His patience for unsolicited sharia advice from the peanut gallery is likely to be pretty low.

Scott Nelson/KAUST via Getty Images

When it comes to using Holocaust metaphors, the power of suggestion is a loaded and delicate thing. Striking the right chord becomes ever more slippery when, for example, you use the most recognizable image of Holocaust evil, Adolf Hitler, to illustrate the recklessness of unprotected sex. But you just about lose any hope of keeping that line clean and clear when you make a Hitler sex video for an AIDS PSA. Which is what a small German AIDS awareness group called, Regenbogen e.V, did. 

While the Telegraph says the clip appears to be a "typical advert" at first glance, I imagine most American viewers won't agree. The act of intimacy being portrayed is basically soft-core porn. It shows two very naked hard-bodies engaged in some very steamy sex. (Warning: this video ain't for the kiddies and is probably not safe for work.) The commercial's obvious-to-the-point-of-insult message, that unprotected sex is very, very dangerous, is hammered home with a rather indelicate ... bang. As the couple reaches climax, the man's face is revealed -- it's Hitler. Scary, indeed.

Not surprisingly the ad, released in Britain to coincide with World AIDS day, has created a storm of controversy. A spokesman for the National AIDS Trust, the group that coordinates World AIDS Day in Britain, had this to say: 

Of course there are many HIV organisations that run their own campaigns, however I think the advert is incredibly stigmatising to people living with HIV who already face much stigma and discrimination due to ignorance about the virus.

"On top of this it fails to provide any kind of actual prevention message (e.g. use a condom) and may deter people to come forward for testing.

"The advert is also inaccurate because in the UK thanks to treatment HIV is a manageable condition that does not necessary lead to AIDS.

Hans Weishäupl, creative director of das comitee, the group that created the ad for Regenbogen e.V, defended the work:  

A lot of people are not aware that Aids is still murdering many people every day. They wanted a campaign which told young people that it is still a threat," he said. "In Germany, Hitler is the ugliest face you can use to show evil." 

Provocative it may be, but successful? I doubt it. Would it be a gross and malicious misinterpretation to use this ad to say that people who have unprotected sex, or people with HIV or AIDS, are as evil as Hitler? Absolutely. Is it a stretch to say there are folks out there who will do just that? Nope.

Using the evil führer's personage for good is a tricky business, one that should perhaps be left to the Charlie Chaplins of the world. 

Matt Yglesias points to an interesting study by the American Institute for Research. It breaks down mathematics learning scores by state, and benchmarks them to international standards meaning. This means that we know, for instance, 8th graders perform approximately as well in Hungary and Iowa (a 517 score); Slovenia and Kentucky (501); and Norway and Mississippi (469). 

Kevin Carey, on the awesomely named The Quick and the Ed blog, writes, "But the tricky thing about looking at average performance in the United States is that our education system is unusually large, diverse, and decentralized. Parts of it are really good. Other parts are shamefully bad. And in a number of important respects, we can only improve the system part by part. So it's worth knowing just how well those parts are doing."

But, to ask a question of international education wonks, do other large, diverse countries (Brazil, China, Russia, Nigeria) exhibit the same large scoring range? And do other large countries fund and administer schools locally, as the U.S. does? 

Cheating on the gaokao, China's national college entrance exam, has been a perpetual nuisance for test officials for years. A combination of parental pressure, rampant ambition and the highly competitive nature of the exam have contributed to rising dishonesty among millions of test-takers:

The penalties [for cheating] are severe: a student convicted of peeking at a neighbor's paper is never allowed to take the gaokao again, and his name is entered in a public database for prospective employers' perusal.

Still, every year some students come up with innovative efforts to beat the system — 3,000 were caught last year alone. Before this year's gaokao, police raids in the industrial city of Shenyang turned up "cheating shoes" outfitted with radio transmitters."

Chinese educators are beginning to wisen up, however. Ahead of next week's administration of the 2009 gaokao, video cameras are being installed in as many as 60,000 exam rooms.

A guest post from Karl F. Inderfurth, John O. Rankin Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University and former Assistant Secretary of State

I have greatly enjoyed the running exchange on the best films for a foreign policy film festival, started by Stephen Walt and then joined by Daniel Drezner and Fred Kaplan.

But this is not surprising.  Three years ago I began teaching a 13 week undergraduate course at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs entitled "Film and U.S. Foreign Policy."

I am certainly not the first professor to begin a course with Santayana's famous quote: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."   But I may be the first to add - so go see these movies.

The takeoff point for the course is Errol Morris' documentary The Fog of War on the 11 lessons drawn from the controversial life (understatement) of Robert McNamara (i.e. "empathize with your enemy," "rationality will not save us," "proportionality should be a guideline in war," "be prepared to reexamine your reasoning"). Students are asked to draw comparable lessons from the films we see.  Each film is also supplemented with readings to take the students deeper into the subject.

Enough said. Consider the above the trailer and what follows the main attraction.  Comments welcomed.

FILM AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY - FILM & BOOK SELECTIONS
INTRODUCTION -- LESSONS LEARNED

1. Fog of War, An Errol Morris Film

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - WAR / VIETNAM

2.   The Quiet American (Michael Caine version, not the original)  //  Graham Greene, The Quiet American and William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American

3.   Path to War //  Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - COVERT / AFGHANISTAN

4. The Kite Runner //  Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

5. Charlie Wilson's War //  Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - HUMANITARIAN / SOMALIA

6.  Black Hawk Down //  Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (esp. Epilogue and Afterward)

FOREIGN NON-INTERVENTION - GENOCIDE / RWANDA

7.  Hotel Rwanda (also Sometimes in April) /  Samantha Power, ‘A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide.

NUCLEAR THREAT - PAST AND PRESENT

8.   Dr. Stangelove //  John Hersey, Hiroshima.

9.   Thirteen Days // Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev and Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War

10.  Last Best Chance and Dirty War //  Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe

TERRORIST THREAT - SUICIDE BOMBERS

11.  Paradise Now (also a Sri Lankan film The Terrorist) // Christoph Reuter, My Life is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing (also Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism)

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - COUNTERINSURGENCY / IRAQ

12.   Battle of Algiers // Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962

13.   No End in Sight ( besides Fog of War, the only other documentary film shown)/  Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (to be replaced by Ricks' latest, The Gamble: Gen. David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008)

Encouraging news from the kingdom:

An expert on girls' education became Saudi Arabia's first woman minister on Saturday as part of a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle by King Abdullah that swept aside several bastions of ultra-conservatism.

Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, a US-educated former teacher, was made deputy education minister in charge of a new department for female students, a significant breakthrough in a country where women are not allowed to drive.

Abdullah also sacked the head of Saudi Arabia's despicable Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the religious police who once prevented a group of girls from escaping a school fire because they were improperly dressed. It's about time. We can only hope the beatdowns will continue until the commission is dismantled entirely.

It looks like Rwandan school children will soon be trading their copies of Le Petit Prince for Paddington Bear. Rwandan education officials announced this week that French will no longer be the first language of education -- all lessons will be in English by 2011.

It would seem that this latest shedding of French culture by Rwandan officials comes too close on the heels of last summer's controversial accusations to be taken as anything but an insult by France. It was just last August that an independent commission set up by the Rwandan government implicated 33 French military and political leaders in the 1994 genocide and called for them to stand trial. Rwanda's current government, moreover, is led by former rebels who fought and ousted what they saw as French proxies.

Rwandan officials, however, were quick to add that this latest move is not a spiteful jab at France. Vincent Karega, Rwanda's trade and industry minister, said the motive was purely economic: "English has emerged as a backbone for growth and development not only in the region but around the globe." In addition to the English-speaking investors now coming to Rwanda, the country also relies on trade with places where deals are made in English, like East Africa.

Rwanda may be onto something here: The country's state minister for education has already noted that English textbooks are much, much cheaper than the French alternative.

Photo: JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images

It was almost ominous. Writing in FP in 2000, Ben Bernanke imagined the next stock market crisis, and how true recession might be averted. 

There's no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse."

So, how would Bernanke stack up to his own expectations? According to the now Fed chairman's article, central banks must keep banks intact, credit flowing, and interest rates low. In Congress yesterday, Bernanke said this: 

Purchasing impaired assets will create liquidity and promote price discovery in the markets for these assets, while reducing investor uncertainty about the current value and prospects of financial institutions.  More generally, removing these assets from institutions' balance sheets will help to restore confidence in our financial markets and enable banks and other institutions to raise capital and to expand credit to support economic growth."

Great. He passes. But could that be part of the problem?

I used Bernanke's macroeconomics textbook in college, and learned that market ups and downs are natural. Did years of pushing those minor blips into the horizon -- one liquidity injection or interest rate decrease at a time -- cause today's massive build up of bad? The housing bubble, for example, might have been encouraged to shrink before it got too big. Instead, all those bad loans have built up into the torrent of junk in need of a bailout today.

Weigh in on your thoughts in comments. In the meantime, I'm still hoping that the man who taught me macro was right in 2000:

If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily."