Atlantis, Atalantis, or the Atlantic (Greek: 峒 埾 勎 晃 蔽 较 勧 蕉 蟼 谓 峥 喯 兾 肯 "island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned by Plato in Timaeus and Critias book.
In her notes, Plato wrote that Atlantis lies "beyond the pillars of Hercules", and has a navy that conquered Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9500 years BC. After failing to attack Greece, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in just one day one night."
Atlantis is generally regarded as a myth created by Plato to illustrate the political theory. Although the function of Atlantis story clearly visible to most experts, they debated whether and how much Plato notes inspired by older traditions.
Some experts say that Plato described the events that have been passed, such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan war, while others claimed that he was inspired by contemporary events such as the destruction of Helike year 373 BC or the failed invasion of Athens to Sicily in 415-413 BC.
People often talk about the existence of Atlantis during the Classical Era, but generally do not believe it and sometimes making jokes. The story of Atlantis is less known in the Middle Ages, however, in the modern era, the story of Atlantis was rediscovered.
Plato's description inspired the works of Renaissance writers, such as "New Atlantis" by Francis Bacon. Atlantis also affect modern literature, from science fiction to comic books and movies. His name has become a byword for all that advanced prehistoric civilization (and lost).
Plato Notes - Two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC, contains the first references to Atlantis. Plato's Critias was never completed due to unknown reasons, however, experts named Benjamin Jowett, and several other experts, argues that Plato originally planned to make a third record, entitled Hermocrates.
John V. Luce assumes that Plato - after describing the origin of the world and mankind in Timaeus, and also the perfect community of ancient Athens and its success in defending themselves from attack Atlantis in Critias - would discuss strategies Helenik civilization during their conflict with the barbarians as a subject of discussion in Hermocrates.
The four characters that appear in both records are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates and also philosophers Socrates and Timaeus, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis.
Although all the characters are historical figures (only first three characters are taken), the note may be a work of fiction of Plato. In his written works, Plato uses Socratic dialogue to discuss the opposite position in relation to forecasts.
Timaeus Timaeus begins with the opening, followed by record-making and the structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the opening section, Socrates pondering about the perfect community, which is described in Plato's Republic, and wondered if he and his guests can remember a story that exemplifies the civilization like that.
In the book Timaeus, Plato recounts: "In front of Mainstay Haigelisi Strait, there is a very large island, from there you can go to other islands, in front of the islands is entirely inland sea surrounded by the ocean, it is the kingdom of Atlantis.
When the new Atlantis will launch a major war with Athens, but unexpectedly, Atlantis suddenly experienced an earthquake and flood, not until a day and night, completely submerged under the sea, beyond the great state of high civilization, disappeared overnight.
Critias mention that allegedly historical tale that will provide a perfect example, and followed by a description of Atlantis. In her notes, ancient Athens represents "perfect community" and Atlantis was his enemy, representing the very antithesis of the perfect traits is described in the Republic.
Critias claims that his notes about ancient Athens and Atlantis wing from a visit to Egypt by the poet of Athens, Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on heroglif papiri in Egypt, the Greek language.
According to Plutarch, Solon met with "Psenophis Heliopolis, and Sonchis Saite, the most studied of all the priests" (Life of Solon). Because the distance of 500 years between Plutarch and events which are as a reason or excuse, and because the information is not currently in Timaeus and Critias, this identification is questionable. According to Critias, god Helenik dividing the territory so that each god could have; Poseidon inherit the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Libya and Asia Minor ancient united, but will be drowned by the earthquake and the number of impassable mud, blocking the way across the ocean.
The Egyptians described Atlantis as an island located approximately 700 kilometers, mostly consists of mountains in the north and along the coast, and oblong shaped round grasslands in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia (about 600 km), but in the middle about two thousand stadia (400 miles).
Atlantis native woman named Cleito (daughter of Evenor and Leucippe) live here. Poseidon fell in love with her, then marry the young girl and gave birth to five pairs of twin boys.
Poseidon divided the island into 10 regions, each of which submitted in 10 children. The eldest, Atlas, became king of the island and surrounding ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in honor of Atlas). The name "Atlantis" is also derived from its name, which berari "Island of Atlas".
Poseidon carved the mountain where his girlfriend lived into the palace and closed it with three circular trench width increases, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land which is comparable magnitude. Atlantis nation then build a bridge to the north of the mountains, making the route to the rest of the island.
They dug a large canal to the sea, and beside the bridge, made of stone cave into the ring so that ships can pass and get into the city around the mountain, they made a pier of stone wall trench.
Every entrance to the city guarded by gates and towers, and walls surrounding each ring of the city. Wall was established from the red rocks, white and black are derived from the trench, and covered with brass, tin and orichalcum (bronze or brass).
According to Critias, 9,000 years before his birth, war between nations that are outside the Pillars of Hercules (generally thought to Strait of Gibraltar), with people who live in the Pillar. Nations conquered Atlantis Egypt and Libya as far as the European continent as far as Tirenia, and made its inhabitants slaves.
Athenians led an alliance against the empire of Atlantis, and when the alliance was destroyed, Athens against the empire of Atlantis itself, liberating the occupied territory. However, later, came the earthquake and flooding in Atlantis, and just in one day one night, the island of Atlantis sank and disappeared.
Other ancient records - Timaeus and Critias addition, there are no ancient records of Atlantis, which means every other records of Atlantis based on Plato's record.
Many ancient philosophers consider Atlantis as fiction, including (according to Strabo) Aristotle. However, there are philosophers, geographers and historians who believe in the existence of Atlantis.
Crantor philosopher, pupil of the pupil of Plato, Xenocrates, tried to find evidence of the existence of Atlantis. His work, comments on the Timaeus, is lost, but another ancient historian, Proclus, reports that Crantor traveled to Egypt and found the column to the history of Atlantis written in letters heroglif.
Plato never mentions that column. According to the Greek philosopher, Solon saw the Atlantis story a different source that can be "taken for granted".
Another part of the 5th century commentary on the Timaeus Proclus gave descriptions of geography Atlantis. According to them, there are seven islands in the sea at the time, the holy land to Persephone, and also the other three with a big huge, one of the holy land to Pluto, another to Ammon, and the last of them to Poseidon, with an area of thousands of stadia .
Residents add-keep-their memories of their ancestors on the big island of Atlantis ever existed and has been in power for all islands in the Atlantic sea, sacred to Poseidon. Now, it has been written in Aethiopica Marcellus. " Marcellus still not identified.
Historians and other ancient philosophers who believe in the existence of Atlantis is Strabo and Posidonius. Notes to Plato on Atlantis also has inspired several imitations parodik: only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of the region called Meropis.
Description of this region is in Book 8 Philippica, which contains a dialogue between King Midas and Silenus, a friend of Dionysus. Silenus describes Meropid Nations, the human race is growing two times the normal body size, and inhabit two cities on the island Meropis (Cos?):
Eusebes (Εὐσεβής, "city Pious") and Machimos (Μάχιμος, "city-Battle"). He also reported that the armed forces as much as ten million soldiers across the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but leave this proposal when they realized that the nation is a nation Hyperborea in the world. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath stated that the story of Silenus is plagiarism story of Atlantis, Plato's idea to disassemble reason to mock.
Zoticus, a Neoplatonic philosopher in the 3rd century, wrote a poem based on Plato's record of Atlantis. The 4th century historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, based on the work Timagenes (historian of the 1st century BC) is missing, writes that the Druids of Gaul, Gallic said that some of the residents migrated from the distant islands.
Note Ammianus regarded by some as a claim that when Atlantis sank, its inhabitants fled to western Europe, but Ammianus says that "Drasidae (Druids) called back that portion of the population is indigenous but others also migrated from the islands and territory across the Rhine" ( Res Gestae 15.9), a sign that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north and east, not from the Atlantic Ocean.
Hebrew treatise on astronomical calculations in the year 1378/79, which is a paraphrase of early Islamic works of unknown, offensive mythology of Atlantis in discussions regarding the determination of longitude zero point calculations.
Modern Notes - Francis Bacon's 1627 novel, The New Atlantis (New Atlantis), describing the utopian community called Bensalem, located on the west coast of America. The characters in this novel gives the history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's record. It is not clear whether Bacon called the North America or South America.
Novel In 1728 Isaac Newton, The Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended (Chronology of Ancient Kingdom Developing), studying the various relationships mythology with Atlantis.
In the mid and late 19th century, some Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon, states that Atlantis was associated with the Mayan and Aztec civilizations.
In 1882, Ignatius L. Donnelly publish Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. His work attracted many people of Atlantis. Donnelly took Plato's record of Atlantis seriously and stated that all ancient civilizations known to have come from the high Neolithic culture.
During the late 19th century, the idea about the legends of Atlantis are combined with stories of "lost continent", such as Mu and Lemuria. Helena Blavatsky, "Grandmother Movements New Era", wrote in The Secret Doctrine (Secret Doctrine), that the Atlantis is a cultural hero (in contrast to Plato who describes them as a military problem), and "Root Race" to-4, which passed by "Aryan Race".
Rudolf Steiner wrote of cultural evolution of Mu or Atlantis. Edgar Cayce, Atlantis was first mentioned in 1923, and later explained that the location of Atlantis was in the Caribbean, and declare that the Atlantis is a high evolved ancient civilization, has now sunk, which has ships and aircraft using the energy in the form of a mysterious crystal energy.
He also predicts that part of Atlantis would rise to the surface in 1968 or 1969. Bimini Road, found by Dr.J Manson Valentine, is a sinking rock formation that looks like a road on the north side of North Bimini Islands. This road was found in 1968 and claimed as evidence of a lost civilization and is still studied.
It has been claimed that before the era of Eratosthenes in 250 BC, Greek writers state that the location of the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily, but there is no sufficient evidence to prove it.
According to Herodotus (circa 430 BC), finish expedition had sailed around Africa on the orders of Pharaoh Necho, sailed into the southern Red Sea and Indian Ocean and the north in the Atlantic, re-entering the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules.
Description in the northwest African explains that he locate the Pillars of Hercules to the right where the pillars of Hercules are currently located. The belief that the pillars of Hercules which had been placed in the Strait of Sicily, according to Eratosthenes, has been quoted in several theories of Atlantis.
The concept of Atlantis draw attention Nazi theorists. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler organized a search in Tibet to find the rest of the nation's white Atlantis. According to Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934), the Atlantis is superhuman (Übermensch) Hyperborea-Nordic from the North Pole (see Thule). Alfred Rosenberg (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) also speaks of the head race "Nordic-Atlantis" or "Aryan-Nordic".
Recent hypotheses - With the theory of continental drift was widely accepted during the 1960's, most of the theory of "Lost Continent" Atlantis began to dwindle in popularity. Some recent theorists propose that elements of Plato's story comes from early mythology.
Location Hypothesis - Since Donnelly, there are dozens - even hundreds - the proposed location of Atlantis. Several hypotheses are archaeological or scientific hypothesis, while others are based on physics or other.
Many of the proposals that have similar characteristics with the story of Atlantis (water, major disasters, the relevant time period), but none proved successful as the real story of the history of Atlantis.
Most of the proposed locations are at or around the Mediterranean Sea. The island like Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus and Malta; cities like Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey, and Israel-Sinai or Canaan.
The eruption of Thera in the 17th century BC-16 or to cause a large tsunami that destroyed civilization allegedly Minoa experts around the island of Crete which further increased the belief that this disaster may be the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis.
There is a region on the Black Sea which proposed as the location of Atlantis: the Bosporus and Ancomah (legendary place near Trabzon). Around the Sea of Azov was proposed as another location in 2003.
A. G. Galanopoulos stated that the time scale has been changed due to errors of translation, the possibility of translation errors Egypt to Greece; the same mistakes will reduce the size of the kingdom of Atlantis Plato became the island of Crete, who left the city with the size of the crater of Thera. 900 years before Solon was the 15th century BC. Some hypothesis states that Atlantis was on the island that has been submerged in Northern Europe, including Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in Atland, 1672-1702), or in the North Sea. Some have suggested al-Andalus or Ireland as a location.
The Canary Islands are also stated as a possible location, west of the Strait of Gibraltar but closer to the Mediterranean Sea. Various islands in the Atlantic also expressed as a location as possible, especially the Azores Islands. Spartel Island who had drowned in the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.
Antarctica, Indonesia, under the Bermuda Triangle, and the Caribbean Sea has been proposed as the location of Atlantis. The story of the continent "Kumari Kandam" missing in India has inspired some to describe it in parallel with Atlantis.
According to Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, there is a link between Atlantis and Aztlan (residence Aztec tribal ancestors.) He claims that the Aztec tribe pointed to the eastern Caribbean as the former location of Aztlan.
http://chickocut3.blogspot.com/2010/09/lost-continent-of-atlantis.html
I’ve been in Hanoi for all my life but believe it or not, it was my first time trying the legendary egg coffee at Giang Cafe. Shame on me! I have tried egg coffee at other places but not until recently did I tasted the original flavor at Giảng Coffee Shop, where the famous drink was invented. And let me tell you: I do like it!
For coffee lovers in Hanoi, Giảng Cafe has always been “the one.” Those who haven’t tasted it, dream of it, those who tried the creamy drink, even only once, praise it! Coffee drinkers even treasure it more of the whole rich history behind.
It is told that the owner of Giảng used to work as a barista for Hotel Metropole Hanoi, a French luxury five-star hotel brand opening from 1901 in the capital of Vietnam.
During the 1930s to 1945, milk was of scarcity, so he thought of replacing milk by egg, inventing a novel coffee drink based on the cappuccinos’ recipe, named it egg coffee. The drink immediately gained fame in not only residents in the old quarter but coffee lovers everywhere.
Although the café has been relocated twice, its egg coffee recipe is almost the same as in its early days, with its chief ingredients being chicken egg yolk, Vietnamese coffee powder, sweetened condensed milk, butter and cheese.
The coffee is brewed in a small cup with a filter before the addition of a well-whisked mixture of the yolk and other ingredients. The cup is placed in a bowl of hot water to keep its temperature.
Having tasted it or not, almost Hanoian knows more or less about the egg coffee. Back to the first time that I heard about it, that was when I worked for a coffee shop as a waitress.
On a not so busy evening shift, we gathered around the shop owner to discuss new offerings. To my surprise, the shop owner, sometimes playing as an amateur barista, told us that the egg coffee was for those “that do not know how to enjoy coffee.”
I was shocked at first. Now when I think about it, it may be true on some levels. Well, the blame was on the drink itself: Too yummy, too fancy for a plain caffeine juice. That so-called coffee for non-coffee drinker has its own step-by-step drinking guideline.
The most simple way is just to drink it. This way you can experience the difference between the sweet, creamy foam on top and the bitter, flavorful coffee beneath. Well, I have to admit this way does not work for me as the egg cream is way too sweet, even for a sweet tooth like me.
Sometimes the bitterness of the coffee is cast away by the sweetness of egg and sugar. Then we have a sweet dessert rather than a cup of coffee. The other way is to stir things up before taking a sip, which allows us to enjoy the smooth combination of egg and coffee. Be careful not to overdo, or the micro-foam will go away.
The most important is Giang’s coffee must be tasted at its location, a small shop full of coffee flavor located once at Hang Gai street, now at Nguyen Huu Huan – Both of which are a few steps away from the icon of Hanoi, Hoàn Kiếm – Sword Lake.
It is no wonder that the fame of Giang’s egg coffee goes far beyond Vietnam’s border. The drink has evolved to become an icon, heritage, and the culture of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam with a thousand-year history. Needless to say, the taste of the Egg Coffee is the taste of the city.
https://deedeekee.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/the-legendary-egg-coffee-at-giang-hanoi/
Vietnam’s performance in the latest round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has created a stir among education experts and policymakers around the world.
The country’s 15-year olds participated for the first time in the 2012 assessment and ranked 17th in mathematics, 8th in science, and 19th in reading among 65 participating nations, placing Vietnam above the OECD average.
At a time when Western countries are striving to replicate East Asia’s success in education, Vietnam has outranked the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In doing so, it has become an exception to the argument that educational excellence is not possible without a high level of economic development.
This is all the more surprising because Vietnam still faces a multitude of the same kinds of problems that have been blamed for a low level of student learning in other developing countries.
A sizable proportion of children still remain out of secondary schools. The level of corruption in Vietnam is higher than it is in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Vietnam’s higher education system also lags far behind those of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. A recent World Bank report “Skilling up Vietnam: Preparing the workforce for a modern market economy” even warns of a shortfall of critical thinking, team work, and communication skills among Vietnamese graduates.
Echoing a report by The Economist, the World Bank blames the limited supply of such skills on the nature of classroom practices “which often focus on rote learning and memorization.”
Vietnam’s achievement in PISA is stunning when examined in terms of the performance of socially disadvantaged children. According to the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, “almost 17% of Vietnam’s poorest 15-year-old students are among the 25% top-performing students across all countries and economies that participate in the PISA tests.
By comparison the average across OECD countries is that only 6% of disadvantaged students are considered ‘resilient’ by this measure.” This is also consistent with our preliminary analysis of the PISA data.
When a like-for-like comparison is made (holding differences in socioeconomic background constant), Vietnamese children do just as well as South Koreans. In other words, equalizing for socioeconomic differences among students from the two countries would give Vietnam an even better performance in the PISA.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgR0FHelsAE/?taken-by=fitgoddess1
Independent assessments of learning outcomes inside Vietnamese classrooms confirm that the country’s PISA rank does not simply reflect test-taking skills or an education system that is only good on paper.
According to the findings of the Young Lives project, student performance in Vietnam is truly exceptional. Around 19 out of every 20 10-year-olds can add four-digit numbers; 85 percent can subtract fractions.
When compared to student performance in India, a country with similar per capita GDP, 47 percent of Indian grade 5 pupils were unable to subtract even two-digit numbers.
Some commentators have identified years of government investment in education as an important contributory factor to Vietnam’s success – the country invests 21 percent of government spending on education, higher than any OECD country. Yet similar levels of financial commitment haven’t produced the same result elsewhere in the region. One of the country’s richer neighbors, Malaysia, lags far behind in PISA despite decades of heavy investment in education. If anything, Malaysia’s performance is on the decline in other international assessment exercises. Vietnam’s surprising rise in education is not about resources. Instead, the explanation lies in the careful choice of education policies and in political commitment and leadership.
In a recent commentary published by the BBC, Schleicher, who coordinates the PISA program, attributes Vietnam’s success to forward-thinking government officials, a focused curriculum and higher social standing and investment in teachers.
He also draws attention to Vietnam’s curriculum, which has been designed to allow students to gain a deep understanding of core concepts and master core skills as opposed to the “mile-wide but inch-deep curriculums” of countries in Europe and North America.
Teaching is viewed as a highly respectable profession in Vietnam and math teachers, particularly those working in underprivileged schools, are exposed to more professional development than the average in OECD countries.
Vietnamese teachers are able to build a positive learning environment, fostering positive attitudes towards learning among students and maintaining good discipline in the classroom. However, a culture that encourages hard work is likely to have aided policy initiatives in bringing high returns on public and private investment in schooling.
According to Schleicher, teachers are also supported by strong parental commitment and high expectations for their children’s education, and societal values of hard work and a good education.
These views are shared by Christian Bodewig of the World Bank, who also talks about teacher quality and the level of professionalism and discipline in Vietnamese classrooms.
An additional endorsement of Schleicher’s assessment comes from Javier Luque of the Inter-American Development Bank. Having reviewed the PISA questionnaires that were distributed to school principals, Luque highlights two additional factors.
First, most schools in Vietnam offer extra learning activities. For instance, 95 percent of school principals stated that their schools offered extra learning activities in mathematics, the third highest rate in the PISA sample. Second, the level of pressure parents exert on school academic standards is very high.
Of the 65 countries that participated in PISA, Vietnam ranks 8th in terms of the level of parental pressure, reflecting a high level of commitment and parental aspirations for their children’s education.
Students also value a good education – 94 percent of students agree with the statement in PISA study that “It is worth making an effort in math, because it will help us to perform well in our desired profession later on in life.” This implies that Vietnam’s success may also have much to do with its strong Confucian values and influences. Vietnamese parents value and invest in education for their children both at home and overseas. This is evidenced from the fact that in the U.S., Vietnam ranks 8th among all countries sending post-secondary students.
Such high parental aspirations for educated children may be a key reason why returns, in terms of student performance in PISA, on steady public investment in education have been high.
Today, the advantages of cultural traits emphasizing education are seen by many as key to the success of children of Asian heritage in the U.S., creating the so-called Asian-American Advantage.
Exactly what has driven Vietnam’s progress in PISA, despite a centralized education system and widespread poverty, will continue to be debated.
But irrespective of the causes, the progress has been remarkable – Vietnam is a beacon of hope and should be closely studied by policymakers from the country’s ASEAN neighbors.
Three ASEAN countries in particular, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, have remained trapped in the bottom third of countries in the PISA ranking for years.
A key lesson from Vietnam is that a higher budgetary allocation will not on its own move these countries out the bottom third without policy innovation and a willingness to learn from others.
ttps://thediplomat.com/2015/11/vietnams-pisa-surprise/
A version of this post was first published in Research Intelligence, the British Educational Research Association’s termly magazine. When the PISA 2015 results were released in December last year, Vietnam was one of the countries that stood out as doing remarkably well. (PISA is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial assessment of 15-year-olds around the world.)
In particular, Vietnam was ranked 8th out of all participating countries in science, with an average score of 525 test points. This was significantly higher than the average score for the United Kingdom – 509 – which came 15th in the PISA science rankings.
Should we copy Vietnam? This is not the first time that Vietnam has apparently excelled in PISA, with a strong performance from this country in the last round, conducted in 2012.
Indeed, Andreas Schleicher, the OECD education director who runs PISA, wrote an article for the BBC in 2015, discussing reasons for this developing country’s stunning success.
But does Vietnam’s amazing performance in PISA, given that it is still a low-income, developing country, mean we should rush to copy what they are doing in their schools – much like what the Department for Education has naively done in its attempts to copy Shanghai? No!
Vietnam’s PISA results, and the league tables so beloved by policymakers, are giving us an inflated perspective on how well this country is doing in educating its young people.
To understand why, we first need to recall what the PISA study is trying to do. It is attempting to measure the reading, science and mathematics skills of the in-school population of 15-year-olds across the world once every three years.
The key words in the sentence above are ‘in-school population’. What about young people who are not in school, or have already left the education system completely? Simple – they are excluded from the group PISA is attempting to measure.
To put this problem into context, let’s say PISA was a study of 17-year-olds rather than 15-year-olds. How would the UK do? My guess is pretty well, because many of our lowest-achieving pupils leave the education system at age 16 – and hence would be excluded from the study. Suddenly, the UK would have higher average scores and less educational inequality than many other countries across the world.
This is exactly what happens with the PISA results for Vietnam. According to the OECD’s own figures, only 48.5% of Vietnam’s 15-year-olds are actually included in the PISA study (see table A2.1).
Those who don’t feature in the study (e.g. children who have left school early) are likely to be academically weaker than those who have actually been tested. Thus Vietnam’s PISA scores are artificially inflated, making its education system appear to be much stronger than it really is.
Quantifying the impact - Can we get a handle upon how much impact this is likely to have had? Digging through the many hundreds of OECD PISA tables, it’s possible to find an alternative set of PISA results (see table I.2.4d) where it is assumed that, in each country, 15-year-olds who are not included in the study all perform below the national average.
Using this information, we can compare these alternative results to the headline PISA findings, and consider the difference. This is exactly what I do in the chart below, with results referring to the 75th percentile of PISA science scores.
The horizontal axis presents the headline figures from PISA, while the vertical axis provides the alternative results after all 15-year-olds in the country have been included, with the assumption that those not in school perform below the national average.
As we can see, Vietnam is a major outlier. Specifically the ‘real’ performance of Vietnam is probably between 50 to 60 points lower than that reported in the headline PISA rankings.
In fact, in these alternative results, Vietnam is now well behind the UK, with a score of 519 versus 566, with Vietnam ranked a lowly 47th in these revised rankings. (The UK would be in 17th position.)
Lessons from this - It is critical to note that this result is not about an issue with sampling for PISA in Vietnam. Rather it is a limitation of the way in which the study population has been defined.
Either way, Vietnam serves as an important case study of just how hypnotic international rankings like PISA can be – and how easily they can lead us astray.
Much deeper and more considered interpretation of the results, and analysis of the data, is needed for PISA and other international studies to really be useful for education policy-making. At the moment, there continues to be far too much hysteria surrounding what often turns out to be some quite flaky results.
So, what is the percentage of the in-school population (out of the whole) that the PISA tests cover in Shanghai? Dont know for shanghai specifically. But can pull out the figure for “china” in pisa 2015 (four provinces that took part).
If you look at the graph in the blog, the other outlier is china. So it has a reasonable impact there as well (around 20 points or so) but not as much as viet nam. Are Canada’s good results contaminated with any known sampling or other biases?
The UK is just making excuses for doing not so well. From a Vietnamese: Not totally agree with this. Vietnamese students have a tradition of learning, and are learning pretty hard at math and science. I have contact with students in VN an US and see that on the same scale, VNese students can actually outdo US student in a test.
China and Vietnam are essentially “cheating” themselves in this PISA scores because they’re essentially have high percentage of missing students. It’s not like other Asian don’t have a tradition of learning.
Indian, Chinese, Japanese.The US missed 16% of its expected coverage, which is kind of lousy. Not as bad as Vietnam (51% missing), Mexico (38%), or China (36%).This mean the government deliberately don’t allow average performing schools to participate and only hand selected the best one.
Countries in Europe and East Asia(Singapore,HK) are the most honest. In the test PISA and Olympiads Vietnam students have always result better or the same like US students.
I don’t agree with the author’s analysis either. I am sure that if you put all the Vietnamese kids not going to school now in class room, they would excel as the kids currently inside the class room. Kids outside the class room are not stupid, they just don’t have opportunity to go to school because their families situation.
The real issue is deeper than that. It involves with the education system, the parents and the kids themselves. I offer my feedback from my own experience as a Vietnamese-America growing up in Vietnam as well as the US.
I came to the US when I was a teenager. As a 10th grader I was able to take math classes at 12th grade level, and still got A easily. I just think the cirriculum in the US education system is not challenging enough. You can’t expect the kids do well while the school doesn’t offer the right materials.
I honestly think children in US (or UK) are as smart as the Vietnam students. However, in the Western world, people don’t value education as much as the Asian world.
Many parents and especially the kids don’t know that these fundamental skills (math and science) will greatly impact their futures. There is no sense of urgency when the kids don’t do well in those subjects; in Asia families, that would be a serious matter.
Perhaps in the Western world, everyone is rich, their future don’t depend much on education. But in Vietnam, a poor country, one would be a blue collar forever unless he/she could obtain these skills. For them, it’s an important and urgent matter. Should it be an important matter for Westerners?
Lastly, I blame it on Bill Gates and Sony. Their inventions of the Xbox and PS systems really corrupt our younger generations. After school, kids spent most of their times on games instead of doing home works. This is an issue on both sides, but in Vietnam, it has less impact because not too many families could afford to buy Xbox.
To minimize the damage of gaming, teachers must constantly monitor and be tougher on the kids if they are failing on these subjects. All those are issues that could be corrected, but required lots of efforts. But if we aim nothing to resolve this conundrum, we will hit nothing.
Look at Vietnamese students perfomence in Germany. May be useful for you ! Do you know? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/22/vietnam_kids_google_interview_pass/
I don’t agree with you. You know what? In Asia, especially in Vietnam and China, students have to learn so hard to get good job in the future, although it is not their favourite subjects.
Parents force their children to learn so hard. When I was eighteen, I have to learn 16 hours per day, play soccer and games in 2 hours and I just sleep in 6 hours per day. Why do I have to learn so hard? Because I want to get in top university in Vietnam. In that time, my friends and I often learned together to solve many difficult Maths Excercises, Physical Exercises or Chemistry Exercises.
We used to gather in the local library to study together. I guess the reason why you say PISA was wrong is that Vietnam is still poor. Vietnam is communist country and the economy is not free to business, so many Vietnamese students come to Australia, New Zealand, the US, Germany, Russia to work.
I think the author do not know much about Vietnam education today, I believe that PISA result for Vietnamese students is not surprised and very dependable.
I bet if the test executes with 17 year old students, Vietnamese students is definitely outstanding, maybe, the result can be better than for 15 year old studdents, because 17 year old students are in font of university entering examination, they study much harder.
A notice I want to point out that, nowadays, Vietnamese young people is more than 99% amount finished general education at grade 12 of high school and 40% will enter high education at university.
If you add the conditions for the ranking of PISA: it must be inversely proportional to the weight, the position of the American and Australian students will be raised even higher. If factual points are calculated, the ranking as everyone has seen.Look at the results IPhO 2019 and write a comment!
It’s not really surprising that Vietnamese kids did so well, considering how well the Vietnamese descent kids in developed countries outperform their peers there. On top of that, their scores in international math and science competition are among the elite for years.
Maybe it’s the culture, genetic, or perhaps the combination of the two, but they are generally smarter. Same goes for many kids in that part of Asia. Some are physically stronger, and some are smarter, not by much, but just enough to tell.
I personally don’t have much experience, but I’m a Vietnamese still in the learning process thus I believe I can put in a somewhat reasonable explanation to why we perform so well in tests. Vietnam has its own national education program and the information that’s taught to students is complicatedly-worded.
People tend to develop the knowledge to students plainly without any accompanying practicals, causing them to rote in order to prepare for examinations. It’s not about limitation in people either; what we’re forced to consume is all that matters since the majority of children are granted the opportunity to go to school.
In fact, I heavily disapprove this teaching method; even if we can score highly in PISA, facing brand new questions should be challenging and the majority of us wouldn’t be able to improvise.
Author missed out a more important issue of Social Integrity. PISA organised by the OECD, with the E for Economic NOT Education. The VNmese girls out-performed the boys, especially in science.
The Resilient, of the the poorest, was among the best. So many kids were deprived of education because their families/country couldn’t afford their schooling.
Growing up in VN, I had a poor friend of mine who had to help his mum washing dishes in their street food stall after school & before school. We were 10 then. (don’t campaign against child labour, plz). Would you reckon that this might effect his school performance. Oops, my due apology, this’s an Education platform, not the Social Study.
Digression: In case you’re curious, that friend of mine is a moped mechanic now. He left school at yr. 8 to learn a trade. He’d bought his small & humble house cum workshop with his own saving (no mortgage at all).
He’s quite content with life in a small town in VN. He respects the erudite people like your guys. So do I. low achieving 15 y/o’s dropping out of school and being excluded from the sample is not unique to Vietnam. this is moronic article.
https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2017/07/why-does-vietnam-do-so-well-in-pisa-an-example-of-why-naive-interpretation-of-international-rankings-is-such-a-bad-idea/
In Thailand, a Southeast Asian country boasting scenic coastlines and rich religious history, literacy soars while achievement rates remain comparatively low.
Though the government invests generously in public education, the nation at large fails to measure up to global academic standards. Many citizens attribute this phenomenon to governmental bias and call for structural changes.
Education advocates have garnered the attention of public officials, but some obstructions still riddle the path to successful reform. Below are 10 facts about education in Thailand, including recent efforts to revitalize the system.
Access to education in Thailand has risen consistently over the past two decades. All Thai children are guaranteed an education under the 1999 Education Act, and children of other nationalities living in Thailand gained the same right in 2005.
A 2009 decision increased free education from 12 to 15 years. Between 2000 and 2009, primary and secondary school enrollment increased by nine percent and 17 percent, respectively. Despite Thailand’s universal access to education and 96.7 percent literacy rate, Thai students scored below the global average on PISA tests in 2014, ranking 35th out of 40 countries. Recent reports from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) also indicate that the country has fallen behind.
In 2015, the government spent 19.35 percent of its yearly budget on education, a greater portion than was spent on anything else. However, Thailand has yet to see cumulative improvements in its schools.
The lack of success might be the result of poorly divided funds. Instead of distributing it equally, the government funnels a large proportion of money toward schools where students already have a high likelihood to succeed and gives less to smaller and more rural schools.
As a result, schools in poor areas must stretch their resources thin. Individual teachers often teach multiple grades and subjects. Due to these inequalities, students in city schools demonstrate higher rates of improvement than students at rural schools, according to the PISA test.
While funding inequality puts small, rural schools at a particular disadvantage, the outdated curriculum does a disservice to all Thai schools. The system has used the same curriculum since 2008, which itself is only a slightly edited version of curriculum from 2001.
The Asian Correspondent predicts economic problems in Thailand, as this curriculum focuses on outdated industries and skills. Unless the curriculum is updated to better fit the demands of the modern world, the Thai education system runs the risk of producing an unemployable generation.
In 2014, the National Council for Peace and Order resolved to reconstruct the education system but has taken no discernible actions yet. Tutor schools and “shadow education” systems have emerged at the hands of parents, as there is a widespread distrust of the public education system. However, many continue the fight for better public education, as low-income families have fewer options to teach their children independently.
The future of education in Thailand may appear a bit rocky, but there is potential for improvement. With national attention on schools, and many families so passionate that they’ve come up with ways to combat the issue in their own homes, opportunities for students are bound to continue multiplying.
https://borgenproject.org/facts-about-education-in-thailand/
Any avid reader of the Bible or student of early Jewish history will know that tending sheep was the choice profession of many of our nation’s progenitors. The list includes such biblical greats as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Rachel. King David, too, herded goats and sheep.
In fact, as one midrash has it, what endeared Moses to G‑d as the prototypical Jewish leader was his tender way with animals. Interestingly, in the first human conflict recorded in the Bible—between the brothers Cain and Abel—G‑d prefers the gift of the shepherd to that of the farmer.
In a similar vein, the mystics identify, as the root of the sibling rivalry that tore Jacob’s family asunder, Joseph’s deviation from the family tradition of sheepherding. What endeared Moses to G‑d was his tender way with animals.
Before medicine and law, it appears, the honorable Jewish profession was animal herding. One could just imagine ancient parents proudly introducing their children as “my son, the shepherd” . . .] Joseph was the black sheep in the family, as it were, choosing agriculture and commerce as a profession.
So integral was sheepherding to the identity of Jacob’s children that when they were introduced to Pharaoh—the king of a nation which deified sheep and abhorred those who handled their god—they did not hide the fact that they supervised sheep for a living. To his question (Genesis 47:3), “What is your occupation?” they replied, “Your servants are shepherds, both we and our forefathers.”
Hardly the best way to make a good impression. What is it about sheepherding, one wonders, that made it a favored pastime and the ultimate career choice of our saintly ancestors?
People of the Land - While it’s true that for the better part of our history we have been a people in exile, it’s also true that for the entirety of our history we were a people who sought to change that status, directing our prayers as often as three times daily, and our dreams more often than that, to the homeland promised us by G‑d. Judaism’s very first journey begins with the quest for a land, and the very first divine revelation to the very first Jew (Genesis 12:7) makes central the promise of that land. In fact, much of four out of the five books of Moses tells the unfinished story of a people on a tumultuous journey to their promised land.
And the touching scene we are left with, as we close the last of the five books, features a broken Moses on a mountaintop, hungrily overlooking the land of his dreams. Sadly, only his yearning gaze would make its way across the border into the holy land.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213525508012245&set=a.1745316852901&type=1&theater
Judaism’s very first journey begins with the quest for a land. The message of the Torah, then, is clear: We are not only the people of a book, but also the people of a land!
This point is strongly reinforced by the curious fact that a large number of the 613 mitzvot apply only in one particular region of the world. Think about it: Shouldn’t commands of the Torah such as leaving the corners of one’s field to the poor apply wherever one happens to live?
But perhaps the geographical restrictions of these mitzvot teach us that ultimate Jewish fulfillment, from the Torah’s point of view, can be realized only when our people find themselves settled in their land.
Planting Roots - Perhaps this can explain the early Jewish fixation with herding sheep as opposed to working land. Sheepherding is a vocation that involves transportable beings, not fixed and stationary land.
Thus, the shepherd retains a sense of transience and impermanence that farmers do not, due to their commitment to the land they nurture. The farmer’s fate is linked to a permanent patch of earth; that’s where his energy and destiny is invested.
Sheepherding for our forefathers and mothers, then, was not just a matter of practice but of principle, motivated by the fear of becoming tied to, and emotionally involved, with a land not their own.
Determined not to lose sight of the essential Jewish dream of a homeland, Jews throughout the ages have similarly always maintained a transitory sense of non-arrival—unfortunately, all too often, with the unsolicited help of hostile host nations—ever-conscious of the fact that they were still on a journey.
In our day and age this message is especially relevant, as we live in an unprecedented era of liberty and wealth, conditions which naturally lead to complacency and a sense of arrival.
Today, more than ever, we need to nurture the sense of yearning, imparted to us by our ancestors, for the time when the journey commenced by Abraham and Sarah “to the land that I will show you” will finally be realized.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1762017/jewish/People-of-the-Land.htm
A big part of the fun at the Japanese chain Benihana is watching the chef theatrically chop and cook your food on the teppanyaki table in front of you. But the story behind Benihana’s rise to success is just as dramatic as when the chef flings a piece of shrimp up in the air and catches it in his hat.
1. BENIHANA WAS NAMED AFTER A FLOWER THAT SURVIVED WWII BOMBING IN JAPAN. Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki named his restaurant after a coffee shop of the same name in Tokyo that his parents, Yunosuke and Katsu, owned.
Sometime following the Bombing of Tokyo during World War II, Yunosuke saw one red flower growing in the rubble. Thus, the couple decided to call their coffee shop Benihana, from the Japanese word for a red safflower.
2. AOKI WAS AN OLYMPIC WRESTLER WITH ZERO COOKING EXPERIENCE. Born in Tokyo in 1938, Aoki wrestled at Keio University and earned a spot on Japan’s 1960 Olympic wrestling team.
Although he didn’t end up competing in the Olympics, he moved to the U.S. thanks to a wrestling college scholarship and won several titles in the early 1960s.
Aoki was focused on wrestling, and he later admitted that the only dish he could cook was French toast, and that his favorite food was spaghetti. In 1995, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
3. AOKI DROVE A MR. SOFTEE ICE CREAM TRUCK IN HARLEM TO EARN THE SEED MONEY TO START BENIHANA. While he was wrestling, Aoki was also studying restaurant management at New York City Technical College.
After renting a Mr. Softee ice cream truck, he drove around Harlem, selling ice cream with tiny Japanese umbrellas on top. Because Harlem was a rough neighborhood, Aoki posted a warning to potential muggers—a newspaper article about his wrestling prowess—on his truck. By 1963, he had saved $10,000 from his ice cream business.
4. AOKI WAS ONLY 25 WHEN HE OPENED THE FIRST BENIHANA. In addition to the $10,000 he earned by selling ice cream, Aoki got his father to invest money in his restaurant. In 1964, Aoki opened the first Benihana on West 56th Street in Manhattan.
Aoki started simple: his restaurant was four tables, and he served the American standard entrees of chicken, steak, shrimp, and vegetables. Because he didn’t know how to cook, he hired skilled Japanese chefs who had learned the English language, showmanship, and American manners.
5. BENIHANA WAS INITIALLY NOT SUCCESSFUL, BUT A POSITIVE REVIEW HELPED IT BLOW UP. Benihana’s first six months were rough. The restaurant was losing money, and Aoki’s novel concepts of merging teppanyaki with showmanship and seating strangers at the same dining table seemed to be failing.
In early 1965, though, New York Herald Tribune food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote an extremely positive review of Benihana. New Yorkers, as well as celebrities like Muhammad Ali and the Beatles, then made the restaurant a hit. By 1975, Aoki had 25 successful Benihana locations across the country.
6. AOKI TURNED HIS SENSE OF ADVENTURE INTO BENIHANA BRANDING OPPORTUNITIES…Aoki coupled his drive to promote Benihana with his adventurous, risk-taking spirit. In the 1970s and 1980s, he raced Benihana-branded cars and powerboats, narrowly surviving a powerboat crash near the Golden Gate Bridge.
In 1981, Aoki broke a world record for the longest hot air balloon flight when he traveled 5208 miles across the Pacific Ocean (from Japan to California) in a Benihana-branded balloon.
He held that world record for the next 34 years. Aoki also won a backgammon world title, sponsored a Miss Benihana beauty pageant, and made sure he was photographed in the Jacuzzi of his stretch Rolls-Royce.
7. … BUT HE ALSO PARTICIPATED IN ECLECTIC BUSINESS VENTURES APART FROM BENIHANA. In 1970, Aoki opened Club Genesis, a disco club with a French restaurant, dance floor, and game room. He closed it a year later but then started a porn magazine called Genesis in 1973.
Aoki also sponsored boxing matches and produced Broadway plays, investing $150,000 in The Incomparable Max and $80,000 in Joan Rivers's play Fun City in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Aoki sold diet pills called Rocky Aoki’s Ultra Herbal Power Slim.
8. BENIHANA HAS BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH BIRTHDAY DINNERS. A big part of Benihana’s business today is helping people celebrate their birthdays.
If you sign up online for Benihana’s email list and join The Chef’s Table, you’ll get a $30 certificate to spend at the restaurant during the month of your birthday. Given the average price of entrees on the menu, you essentially get a free birthday dinner, courtesy of Benihana.
9. AOKI SUED FOUR OF HIS KIDS IN A FEUD OVER HIS BENIHANA MONEY…In the late 1990s, after Aoki pled guilty to insider trading and stepped down as chairman of Benihana, he put his Benihana stakes in a trust. In 2005, he sued four of his seven kids, claiming that they were disloyal, incompetent, and trying to get control of his money.
His kids asserted that they were trying to protect their inheritance and stake in the Benihana of Tokyo trust from Aoki’s younger third wife, Keiko Ono, whom they viewed as a gold digger. "But money not everything," Aoki told New York Magazine in 2007. "Just 99 percent."
10. … AND THE LAWSUITS CONTINUED AFTER HIS DEATH IN 2008. After Aoki died in 2008, multiple lawsuits and countersuits between his heirs and his third wife continued.
In 2013, Keiko won greater control as the trustee of the Benihana trust, but the next year a court overturned that ruling, giving two of Aoki’s kids, Steve and Devon, 50% each of the trust when they turn 45 years old.
Steve is a world-famous EDM DJ, owner of the Dim Mak record label, and Grammy-nominated producer, and Devon is a model (who was once the face of Versace) and actress.
11. AOKI "APPEARS" ON SCREEN IN THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. The 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street features a cameo of an actor portraying Rocky Aoki being arrested for his shady business dealings.
The inclusion of Aoki in the film, though, is entirely fictional—Aoki was not connected in any way to stockbroker Jordan Belfort. They just both had a love of lavish things.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/72064/11-facts-about-benihana-might-surprise-you
Launching a new business is hard — more than 20% of new businesses fail within a year of launching, while only about half last at least five years, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So those who dream of being an entrepreneur want any advantage they can get.
Financial website WalletHub published a new study on Monday that ranks all 50 U.S. states based on which ones have the best conditions for starting a business. For its study, WalletHub compared all 50 U.S. states across three elements: the overall business environment, access to resources and business costs.
Within those three categories, WalletHub rates each state based on 26 key metrics, like start-ups per capita, the percentage of the population that is of working age and college-educated, local cost of living, corporate tax rates and labor costs, among others. Each state received a total score on a 100-point scale based on how it performed across those metrics.
Texas landed the top spot on WalletHub’s ranking of the best states to start a new business. The Lone Star State — which is home to such Fortune 500 companies as Exxon Mobil, AT&T and American Airlines — also nabbed the study’s top score for business environment.
Texas, which was also CNBC’s Top State for Business in 2018, has the country’s second-largest economy at $1.8 trillion in 2018, behind only California, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. It also saw the fourth-highest average growth in the number of small businesses among U.S. state in 2018, according to WalletHub.
The runner-up behind Texas on WalletHub’s overall ranking is Utah, which is one of the top states for making financing accessible for business owners, according to WalletHub. That helped Utah also rank second in the study’s “access to resources” category.
Georgia ranked third in WalletHub’s study for the best U.S. states to start a business, with North Dakota and Oklahoma rounding out the top five, respectively. Here are the top 10 U.S. states for starting a new business, according to WalletHub:
1. Texas
2. Utah
3. Georgia
4. North Dakota
5. Oklahoma
6. Florida
7. Arizona
8. California
9. Montana
10. Colorado
Ranking at the bottom of WalletHub’s study is Rhode Island. The state ranks dead last in terms of business environment, according to WalletHub. New Jersey ranks 49th on WalletHub’s list, coming in last in terms of business costs, with one of the highest corporate tax rates (9%) of any U.S. state.
Other details that WalletHub found in compiling its rankings include the fact that Mississippi is the state with the lowest labor costs for businesses, while Maryland has the highest costs.
Massachusetts also has the most educated population (41% of the population has at least a bachelor’s degree) while West Virginia has the least educated population (only about 20%). And, Minnesota has the cheapest office spaces, while three states tied for the most expensive office spaces: New York, California and Alaska.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/wallethub-best-and-worst-us-states-for-starting-a-business.html
The drained Aral Sea is the world’s worst environmental disaster – now it's happening again in Africa. Over the past decade, the Ethiopian government has pushed ahead with a huge hydroelectric dam in a Unesco world heritage site. The project could spell ecological catastrophe and the displacement of thousands of local people.
The completion of Gibe III, Africa’s tallest dam to date, has eliminated the annual flood and radically reduced the Omo’s flow, which produces most of of Lake Turkana’s freshwater input.
The completion of Gibe III, Africa’s tallest dam to date, has eliminated the annual flood and radically reduced the Omo’s flow, which produces most of of Lake Turkana’s freshwater input ( Mimi Abebayehu (CC BY-SA 4.0) )
Encompassing swathes of Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya, the Omo-Turkana Basin is one of the oldest landscapes in the world that is known to have been inhabited by Homo sapiens and is now one of the world’s most extraordinary examples of ethnic diversity.
In the lower Omo Valley alone, a varied history of cross-cultural encounters has played out to produce eight distinct ethnic groups, speaking many languages from Afro-Asiatic to Nilo-Saharan.
In a cattle camp on the bank of the ancient Omo river a Mursi elder implored me to “tell our story so that others might know us before we are all dead in the desert”.
Where the river ends in Lake Turkana, this sentiment was echoed by local fishermen: “You will find our bones in the desert.” The story of the Omo-Turkana Basin is now that of the Ethiopian state exploiting its periphery in the name of “development”, trampling on the human rights of its citizens in the process.
Over the past decade, the Ethiopian government has pushed ahead with a huge hydroelectric dam on the Omo, known as Gibe III. Without any meaningful consultation with the communities affected, the state has also appropriated grazing lands and freshwater, threatening their vital resources and local heritage.
All of this has happened despite the area gaining the status of a Unesco world heritage site in 1980. As Richard Leakey, the Kenyan palaeoanthropologist, conservationist and politician put it, “these happenings are profoundly disturbing”.
The completion of Gibe III, Africa’s tallest dam to date, has eliminated the annual flood and radically reduced the Omo’s flow, which produces 90 per cent of Lake Turkana’s freshwater input. In doing so, it has reduced sediments and nutrients critical for traditional agriculture, riverside pastures and fish habitat.
More than 30 per cent of the lake inflow will be diverted for commercial irrigation projects. The result could be a fall in lake level comparable to that of central Asia’s Aral Sea, which has shrunk by more than two-thirds since the 1960s because of irrigation abstractions and which has been called “the world’s worst environmental disaster”.
To make way for the commercial plantations planned for the Omo Valley, tens of thousands of hectares of land will be expropriated and thousands of local people displaced.
Development at any cost - The need to see “development” as more than a simple matter of an increase in GDP is well established. In his seminal work Development as Freedom, the Nobel prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen, demonstrated that sustainable development must be based on universal access to social and economic necessities as well as political and civil rights.
The many communities in the Omo-Turkana Basin have suffered a systematic curtailment of their most basic and essential rights. International agreements which the Ethiopian government signed up to, such as the 1993 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural rights require it to protect and promote the rights of minority cultures and ensure the “right of everyone to take part in cultural life”.
Since 1948, Ethiopia has also been signed up to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article II provides against the destruction of “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word “genocide”, famously defined the specific need to protect against the “disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups”.
It is difficult not to conclude that what we are seeing in the Omo is the wholesale disregard of these commitments by the Ethiopian government. Its development policies are not only transforming landscape and heritage but destroying complex systems of sustainable living that have endured for millennia.
The huge injustice of all this is that the ecological costs will be borne by local communities while the profits will be enjoyed by central and international corporations.
Meanwhile, centuries of collective wisdom relating to livestock diversification, flood dependant cultivation and customary obligations and mechanisms of livestock exchange will be made redundant.
This is not to deny that development in the sense defined by Sen is a laudable and necessary enterprise. But we must also recognise that large-scale infrastructure projects are likely to have far-reaching consequences for the lifestyles and cultural identities of those they displace.
Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds -Projects that set out to increase economic growth without regard for social justice and individual rights are not worthy of the name “development”.
Development must benefit locals and for this to happen their voices must not only be heard but also given a central and determining role in any discussions about the future of their lands and livelihoods.
Both cradle and crucible of our species, the Omo-Turkana Basin is unique and precious. Its heritage and history, as well as responsibility for its future, are shared by us all.
Timothy Clack is lecturer in archaeology and anthropology at the University of Oxford.
This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ethiopia-hydroelectric-dam-south-sudan-kenya-aral-sea-africa-environment-a8664566.html
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