Los Angeles, March 12 (CNA)
Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist for the New York Times, wrote Sunday that the way to prosperity in the 21st century is through education rather than natural resources, and he cited Taiwan as a model of the concept.
Friedman used Taiwan as an example to highlight a recent report by the Paris-based OECD, which concluded that there was a significant negative relationship between the wealth countries extract from natural resources and the skills of their high school population.
Calling Taiwan his favorite country in the world other than his own, Friedman said he tells Taiwanese that they are the "luckiest people in the world" because of the country's dearth of natural resources.
"Because of that you developed the habits and culture of honing your people's skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today. How did you get so lucky?" wrote the writer of the best-selling book "The World Is Flat."
Rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence, Friedman wrote, leaving it with the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world.
In sum, Friedman said a country should not count on its oil reserves or gold mines for growth in the 21st century and should instead focus on its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students.
"Today's learning outcomes at school are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run," Friedman wrote, quoting Andreas Schleicher, who oversaw the Program for International Student Assessment examination for the OECD on which the report was based.
(By Oscar Wu and Sofia Wu)
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