Tremors from the OECD report • and the soft bigotry of low expectations

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die; so goes the saying. Similarly, every country wishes to be rated with the best; but how many will choose the disciplined commitment and painstaking effort that will make them live up to their great expectations? Hence, the difference between the countries that prosper and those that fester. 

My phone started ringing from early morning on the dawn of the BBC announcement (May 13, 2015): The news was that the biggest ever global school rankings of 76 nations had been published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to reflect the performance of 15 year olds in Mathematics and Science. 

The Asian countries – Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan - topped the five places, respectively. African countries settled at the bottom, with Ghana the last of all. 

That day some radio and TV producers filled my WhatsApp with links to the sources of the information, as prelude