By Susannah O’Grady

An independent report on the progress of education in Central America and the Dominican Republic has revealed Honduras to be consistently one of the lowest performers and investors. Titled ‘It’s Time to Act’, the study released last week investigates a wide spectrum of educational issues including average years of schooling, public spending per student and illiteracy rates.

Twenty percent of the population fifteen years and over were discovered to be illiterate with public spending per primary student lower than El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

The report is the first of its kind with in-depth, independent data retrieved and collated on behalf of the Central American Commission for Education Reform’s initiative Program of Promotion for Education Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean (PREAL). The amount of data collected was so voluminous that it has taken three years to collate and analyze.

The report details four recommendations to improve education in Central America and the Dominican Republic. The first is the transfer of a wide quota of responsibility in the management of school education and administration to students´ parents, teachers and the local community. Currently, Honduras’ education system is managed wholly on a national level.

Data from a study in Comayagua demonstrated that children have a better chance of passing language and math class when their parents actively participate in their schooling. Josefina Gomera, Director of the Pre-basic Education program at Interactive Radio Instruction explains that currently Honduras has yet to create its own model of decentralization, but other countries such as Chile, are adopting management strategies on a municipal level with good outcomes.

“In different countries decentralization has different meanings, and we are yet to find our own solution but local organizations are in agreement that direct participation with children provides better results.”

However the commission is aware of the importance of maintaining the central government’s function within the education system, particularly in areas with little resources. The second recommendation is to increase public investment in primary and secondary education by a minimum of 5 percent of the gross national product (GNP) in each country.

In the year 2000, four percent of the GNP was spent on education with an increase of just 0.5 percent since 1995. The report also reveals that more money goes towards secondary education then towards primary education.

“We are investing more money in superior education and are neglecting primary spending. It’s about inequality, the poorest children are reporting lower education levels, it is obvious why many children from more privileged backgrounds are getting better grades,” Gomera said.

Statistics also illustrate the vast gap between those schooled in rural areas compared to those in urban cities. In 1999, just 0.3 percent of fifteen to twenty-four-year-olds questioned had thirteen or more years of education. In comparison, urban areas reported 6.2 percent of the population receiving the same amount.

The next bracket of ten to twelve years of schooling also showed considerable differences with 5.2 percent in rural areas and 19.9 percent in urban areas. The majority in both regions averaged at receiving 6 to 9 years of education, with urban areas at 57.7 percent and rural areas at 49.1 percent. The category highlighting this inequality most is 0 to 5 years of education, with 16.3 percent in urban areas but 45.5 percent in rural areas, a difference of 29.9 percent.

Results of school achievement in urban and rural areas have also been compared. Fourth grade language and math results indicate a difference in performance with 227 students passing language in rural areas and 249 in urban areas. In math 225 students passed in rural areas, 239 in urban. The standardized average is 250 per zone. Gamero explains that it is not just lack of funding that has created this divide.

“In some parts we have a low level of nourishment and nutrition. When children are weak they cannot concentrate and this affects their academic performance. Our national degree of academic achievement is very low,” she said.

The third recommendation focuses on reforming the teaching profession by increasing salaries based on performance and improving the quality of initial training. The fourth establishes common and widely consented standards, plus a unified system of measurement, correlation and divulging of results. Gomera says that reaction to this report has been mixed with both encouraging and disappointing responses.

“When we released the report in Tegucigalpa on Thursday, just the local minister of education attended, but on Friday in San Pedro Sula, politicians, representatives from local schools and businessmen and women attended and they recognized the problem. They realized they needed to address the issue and they suggested reforming an inter-institutional commission. They assumed responsibility collectively.”

Gomera believes that the report is a great opportunity for people working in education to gain insight and find solutions to previously unknown problems.

“This is the only external report that we have, it has great value and gives us an idea of what is going on outside of government sources,” she said.

Brain drain saps developing countries

By Jorge Gallardo Rius

In 1979, Abdus Salam became the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. He earned a Master’s Degree from a Pakistani college and, in 1951, a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University in England. That same year, he returned to Pakistan, where he tried for three years to start a research institute without backing. Eventually he had no choice but to leave his country and go on to work as a researcher at the Imperial College in London, where he earned the Nobel Prize.

However, continuing his dream to help struggling physicists in third world countries, Dr. Salam founded the International Center of Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. The Center gives “Associateships” to deserving physicists in poor countries. They receive paid family trips to the Center, where they exchange ideas with peers from other parts of the world. ICTP also supports the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS), which has produced scientific studies that benefit developing nations around the world.

Salvador Moncada is a Honduran doctor who is world renowned as a researcher and director of important medical institutes, such as the Welcome Institute of Biomedical Research and the Wolfson Research Institute. He is widely quoted in scientific journals and his work has contributed to two Nobel Prizes.

“Either I became a scientist or I stayed in Honduras,” Moncada said when he returned to Honduras for the First Scientific Congress in February 2003.

“Honduras must invest growing quantities in education and higher education,” he said.

There is talent in Honduras, but Hondurans must be given the opportunity to study abroad and then come back to stay, Moncada explains.

The Honduran government must make investment in infrastructure a high priority so that these people don’t stay abroad. Instead, they could come back to the country and contribute to scientific development.

Salam and Moncada are two scientists from developing countries who have contributed to mankind with their scientific research. But they had to do so in Europe, having found no support in their own countries. This is what is referred to as “The Brain Drain.”

Today, the relationship between higher education, research and development with a nation’s economy is best explained in the business theory of “clusters”. Clusters are regional agglomerations of similar businesses and suppliers in a network that competes and collaborates according to their best interests.

Dr. Michael Porter coined the term “industrial clusters” in an article for the Harvard Business Review. His theory says that in order to compete in the global economy, one of the keys to success is constant innovation. In clusters, innovation results from the regional interaction between businesses units and organizations such as universities, research centers, think tanks and standards-setting organizations.

Important examples of clusters are the Silicon Valley microchip and the Napa Valley wine clusters in California, the Mutual Funds cluster in Connecticut and the pharmaceutical cluster in Northern Europe. Wellcome and Wolfson are two North European pharmaceutical companies that understand about innovation, which is why they invest in the research centers where Dr. Moncada works.

For most Africans, Philip Emeagwali is the Father of the Internet. During a civil war in Nigeria, his birth country, he lived in a refugee camp. But he won a scholarship and went on to study in the United States. Emeagwali invented the formula that lets computers make 3.1 billion calculations per second. This formula was crucial for the creation of the Internet.

Like Salom and Moncada, he emigrated to a developed country to work.

In an interview with the Voice of America he talked about the negative impact of the brain drain on the economy of developing countries and of the importance of reversing it. “African universities are actually training one third of their graduates for export to the developed nations,” he said.

“We are operating one third of African universities to satisfy the manpower needs of Great Britain and the United States. The African education budget is nothing but a supplement to the American education budget.”

In essence, Africa is giving developmental assistance to the wealthier western nations which makes the rich nations richer and the poor nations poorer.

Emeagwali said the problem began in the early 1980s, when many African countries underwent structural adjustment programs (SAPs) which required them to devalue their currency and cut public expenditure. A teacher who was making US$ 1000 a month was now making US$ 50, thereby increasing the pressure to migrate.

“The primary cause of the brain drain is unreasonably low wages paid to African professionals,” he said. “The contradiction is that we spend US$ 4 billion annually to recruit and pay 100,000 expatriates to work in Africa but we fail to spend a proportional amount to recruit the 250,000 African professionals now working outside Africa. African professionals working in Africa are paid considerably less than similarly qualified expatriates.”

We live in a two-class society with a massive lower class that is largely unemployed and extremely poor. The few very rich people are mostly corrupt government officials and the business associates that pay out the bribes.

“Brain drain makes it difficult to create a middle class consisting of doctors, engineers and other professionals,” Emeagwali said. “Brain drain gives rise to poor leadership and corruption.”

He said when the medical doctors emigrate to the United States, the poor are forced to seek medical treatment from traditional healers while the elite fly to London for their routine medical checkups. Nigerian government officials are using tax payer’s money to travel abroad for routine medical check-ups and malarial treatment. Overseas medical check-ups are a national disgrace and banning them would force Nigeria to re-hire those medical doctors that emigrated to Europe.”

Dr. Felix Ivan Herrera is a living example. He is a surgeon at the Hospital Escuela in Honduras. Working with a group of graduate students, he created a “craniotomus”, a high-speed drill used in certain medical operations.

Whereas, in Honduras, a brand name “craniotomus” costs about US$ 40,000, Herrera’s can be produced locally for about US$ 800. The World Association of Neurosurgeons expressed interest in the drill after it won a scientific prize in El Salvador and believes it can be used to help other developing countries.

Dr. Herrera needs facilities and investors to mass produce the gadgets and export them. If he finds them in his own country, Honduras may become an exporter of “craniotomii”, with all the benefits that local production implies.

Otherwise, Hondurans will buy them abroad, making the country an importer of a “Honduran” product. Or, Dr. Herrera could become a footnote in history like the Mexican who allegedly invented color TV, while transnational companies harvest the profits.

Businesses are always looking for a competitive advantage. In the new global economy, “anything that is available to rivals elsewhere is nullified as a competitive advantage” according to Dr. Porter. Location is still important but for a different reason. He said, “Clusters reveal that the immediate business environment outside companies plays a vital role.” Participating knowledge organizations within the region are the key to innovation and success in a cluster.

Herrera and his team of scholars are proof that talent is alive and well in developing nations. If they can create an invention that benefits all mankind inspired by the needs of a third world public hospital and an amateur knowledge of electro mechanics, how much more could we all benefit if talented persons in developing countries received much needed support?

Send comments to: jgallardo515@yahoo.com

By ROSIBEL PACHECO

Fredy Vides is a 22-year-old man studying mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), where he also works in the computer sciences department. It’s common to see him walking along the halls on the second floor of Building 4A making sure the computer lab is in order and the internet is functioning well.

Vides has a quality that makes him stand out from his fellow students: he is an investigator in the field of mathematics. In our department, we’re not accustomed to the term “investigator”, and if we are, we tend to see it one-sidedly: doctors investigate, as do sociologists and so forth.

Vides’ main field is linear numeric algebra and the numeric solution of differential equations. We’ve observed the theory of differential equations repeatedly in Vides’ investigations. As he explains it, “wherever one looks and observes phenomena, a differential element can be perceived, and the sum and interaction of such elements are like the calligraphy with which one writes the music of life.”

In his investigations Vides enthusiastically points out that they contain a broad range of action: signal analysis, bridge oscillation, sea movement analysis, and membrane deflection, among others.

Vides began his investigations a year and a half ago with the support and supervision of the math career coordinator at UNAH. He presented his work at UNAH’s 14th annual Scientific week last year. This year he presented his progress at the 15th annual fair. Not only have Vides’ concepts matured, but he’s also developed new ones.

“One of my favorites,” he said, “is the fundamental theorem of sub distributions.” According to Vides, even though this theorem is in itself simple, its implications are very important in non classical functional analysis.

He is currently working on Latex versions (technical language for scientific text creation) to give his papers the best format possible, so they can circulate in the scientific community on the web.

The math department is organizing a large international event on computer mathematics, II Pasi and V Panam, for June 2004. Vides is very optimistic.

“ I have good expectations and optimism about it. The event will finally show that in Honduras we have reached the supercomputer era; we have not done much in the country, but at an international level this is a highly regarded field.”

Using the power of high performance computers to solve different kinds of problems, plus that which refers to differential equations, is one of the challenges that most motivates Vides.

He also tells us of his interest in Quantum Mechanics and eigen-value problems. As he speaks of his auxillary interest in Quantum Mechanics and eigen-value problems, his passion and enthusiasm are evident.

“The enchantment of mathematics captured me,” he said, “I want to dedicate the rest of my life to its study and application.”

The works Vides presented in the 15th scientific week were: “The specter method in the numerical analysis of reduced waves,” and “the orthogonal wavelets of compact support in signal numerical analysis.”

Vides reflects on the possibility of creating a working team, a goal we hope to achieve. If we are successful, we also hope that our work will have a multiplicative effect.

“There is no limit. Much determination and discipline are needed, as well as being willing to pay the price. When you dig deep, the fruit is always good.”