How I Reformed Education in South America
The Korean business delegation stayed another full week after finishing their inspection before they finally went home. Business, after all, takes more than a plot of land.
President Choi of Solar Apparel walked the markets, taking the measure of the people's work ethic and culture — these were the men and women who would become his labor force. CEO Park of Chosun Zinc paid a visit to the San Marcos Coal Corporation, which was already running mines, to assess the miners' skill and their command of the work.
And as for Chairman Chung of Hyunhwa...
"Might I trouble you for a cup of coffee?"
"Haha. My secretary tells me he's procured a rather fine wine today. If it wouldn't be an imposition, might you spare me your evening?"
He showed up at all hours to observe me.
The old man's gaze was so heavy I tried to give him the slip. Then he said,
"Last night I called the president of Hyunhwa Chemical and told him to bring a due-diligence team."
Visions of an oil refinery danced before my eyes. I had no choice but to stick close. Without a refinery, we would end up like Venezuela — selling crude only to turn around and buy petroleum products with the proceeds.
And then, on top of that:
"Ah, and if Your Excellency so wishes, we would even accept an equity investment. We'd bring you into the management as well."
The terms were simply too good. Of course, it was no losing bargain for Hyunhwa either. Korea's refining industry had been slogging through hard times under the assault of cheap Chinese product, and if they could enter a new market called San Marcos while taking on investment to cut their own costs, there was nothing in it for Hyunhwa to dislike. A win-win, in a manner of speaking.
Still.
It's what comes after that's worth getting excited about.
Hyunhwa was the undisputed heavyweight of heavy industry — automobiles, shipbuilding, construction, rail. Their investment was something San Marcos desperately needed. It was how you laid down an industrial foundation.
At any rate, that storm of a week passed, and once the Korean business delegation departed, peace returned to the Presidential Palace.
Standing at the window, I watched the plane recede into the distance and let out a long breath of relief.
The results were solid. The factory sites had been confirmed, and the mining development plans were locked in. I had a firm commitment from the president of Hyunhwa Chemical to build the oil refinery as well.
"I've sown all the seeds..."
Everything I needed to do was done. All that remained was to wait. Building Solar Apparel's factory, Chosun Zinc's mine, or Hyunhwa Energy's refinery would take months just to break ground. The Northern Oil Fields were the same — starting the drilling alone would take a year at minimum.
Which meant the job from here on was...
"Now I need to make the people who'll do the work."
Growing talent. Companies could put up factories and bring in machines, but what good was any of that if the people who were supposed to operate them were illiterate and couldn't handle even simple arithmetic?
The current scale of investment was still small enough that the existing talent pool could cover it. But five years from now? Ten? And if things went well — if San Marcos actually industrialized?
We would run out of people to do the work.
San Marcos only has a population of about six million to begin with.
On top of that, the people of San Marcos were not diligent the way Koreans were. In Korea, one ace worker did the job of two people, sometimes three. Here, even the aces clocked out the moment their own work was done and had no interest in doing more. Of course, it was the Koreans who were the strange ones, going out of their way to make themselves miserable — the global average was this. It had been the same when I worked in the United States.
Anyway, this was the point. While we still had the time and the breathing room, we had to lay the nation's hundred-year foundations all over again. That education is worth more than natural resources is just a fact, isn't it? Thailand never figured this out and remains stuck as a middle-income country. Korea, having grasped it completely, joined the ranks of the developed world.
So how?
Transplant the Korean education system into San Marcos.
I thought of the system in my homeland and called the Chief of Staff's office.
"Have Chief of Staff Isabella and the Senior Presidential Secretary for Education come in."
A moment later, Isabella entered with Sergio, the Senior Presidential Secretary for Education, a man with a stern, fastidious look about him.
"Have a seat."
I skipped the preamble and went straight to the point.
"We need to get public education functioning properly."
"That seems like an excellent idea."
"I also believe that if a nation is to stand as it should, education must come first."
Both of them nodded.
"Good. Let's start with a status check. What's the current enrollment rate?"
Sergio answered with a bitter expression.
"It's grim. The elementary school graduation rate is around seventy percent, but the middle school enrollment rate is under thirty. High school doesn't even reach ten percent."
"What's the reason?"
Sergio sighed.
"Poverty. While they should be in school, the children are out on coffee plantations picking beans, or shining shoes in the street. They have to put food in their mouths somehow."
Fair enough. When you don't know what you're eating today, a book is the last thing that's going to catch your eye.
"A fundamental problem, then. What's the solution?"
"What if we simply compelled them to attend? Designate education through middle school as compulsory, and punish noncompliance."
Isabella offered the hardline measure in answer to my question, her tone perfectly calm. Sergio shook his head.
"That isn't the nature of the problem."
"Even if you hold them in a school building, that doesn't mean the education will actually take. And there are far too many families who cannot afford the tuition."
That, in fact, was the real problem. Unlike Korea, San Marcos required you to pay tuition to attend school. Elementary school was cheap enough that families managed to send their children somehow, but from middle school onward the price jumped high enough that anyone below the middle class couldn't even consider it.
Not that San Marcos was strange for this. Korea itself collected school supporting fees through 1997 for elementary school, 2012 for middle school, and 2021 for high school. The amounts were different, but charging for school was not in itself an oddity. The problem was that the people here were abnormally poor.
I decided to break the problem the easiest way possible. By spending money.
"Let's abolish tuition."
"And let's feed them if they come to school."
"...Meals?"
"We provide lunch to every student who shows up. For high schoolers, dinner as well."
"But dismissal is never later than three in the afternoon. Can't they just eat at home?"
"That's a problem too. The school day is far too short. High schoolers arriving at nine in the morning and going home at three? That's unthinkable in my homeland."
"E-excuse me for asking, but what time do students in Your Excellency's homeland go home...?"
"It varies a little by school, but they arrive at nine, regular classes end at five, and they stay to study until ten at night. And if they don't stay at school, they go to private academies and other institutions and study late there instead."
"...Isn't that basically child abuse?"
"I'll grant you it's a little excessive. But that's how Korea climbed into the ranks of the developed world. When the only resource you've got is people, you grow them as hard as you can. That goes for us too."
Korea had generated plenty of problems of its own this way, of course, but San Marcos was in no position to be choosy. The first job was getting the children into school at all.
"If a child goes to school, gets a meal, and comes home, the parents will think it over again. No parent wants their little one to suffer."
"......"
"And one more thing. We've arranged a short-term study-abroad package from the United States for five hundred students a year. I think we should funnel that toward the top academic performers."
I spoke with conviction.
"Lastly, I intend to found a university."
"A university, sir?"
"Yes. We'll establish San Marcos National University and train talent there. And we'll attach an extraordinary benefit to it. Anyone who graduates will be specially appointed as a Grade 7 civil servant. Ah, and let's put out a notice that from now on, Tortilla Company will only hire people with a high school diploma or higher."
The civil service and Tortilla Company were currently the two workplaces in San Marcos that paid the highest salaries and guaranteed advancement. Offer people a fast track into either one, and there would be no one who would turn it down.
"The hope that my child could get ahead too. That hope, I believe, is what will move the parents."
Man does not live by bread alone. Sometimes a vain hope is a more powerful motivator than a meal.
"Your Excellency, I understand your resolve, but... this seems far too hasty."
"Why do you say that?"
"The budget will be astronomical."
He was right. Measured against the national finances, it was an act of madness.
But.
"We have to do it anyway."
This was not a choice. It was a necessity.
"Anything less than this, and they simply won't send their children to school."
The parents of San Marcos were not Korean parents, who would send their kids to class even in the middle of a war, education-mad as they were.
And the timing was good, besides.
"As it happens, the cornmeal and wheat flour we brought in from the United States is piled up in mountains. Let's use that to fill the children's stomachs."
San Marcos's food situation was, at this moment, the best it had been since the founding of the country.
"We can hardly hand out sacks of flour as they are, can we?"
"We use Tortilla Meat."
Tortilla Meat didn't just run slaughterhouses — it had a livestock processing plant as well. They were already producing processed foods of every kind, ham and bacon and sausage. Add tortillas to that, and you had a complete meal.
"Scale it up and expand the facilities, and we'll be able to supply student meals."
"...That would create a considerable number of jobs."
"In Korea, we call that killing two birds with one stone."
Isabella nodded. Beside her, Sergio raised his hand.
"Meals aside, how do we raise the rest of the funds? Founding a university and running the schools will not be cheap."
"I was thinking we allocate a portion of the ten-billion-dollar loan coming in from the United States to school facility repairs and the founding of the university. It's educational infrastructure, so the justification is clean."
"But the loan has been delayed because of the shutdown."
"For now, let's slap a tax on alcohol and hold out."
"Alcohol... sir?"
"That's right. The people of San Marcos do love a drink, don't they? Rum, beer — they put it away like there's no tomorrow. We tax that and spend it on the children's education. The adults who drink will be raising the pillars of the future. How wholesome is that?"
The justification was sound, and the tax revenue was a sure thing. Looking at the two of them, who could not hide their admiration, I said,
"All right. The plan's in place, so let's execute it immediately."
And so began the education reform that would lay San Marcos's foundations for the next hundred years.