According to Transparency International, Mongolia ranks 120th in the world (out of 182) in terms of corruption. It scored 2.7 out of 10, which puts this country tied with noted corrupt regimes Iran, Guatemala and Mozambique, and just in front of Syria, Honduras and Cameroon. To be 120th, corruption must haunt nearly every transaction and, indeed, much of the country's issues can be traced back to some form of corruption. Even if you have massive deposits of copper, coal, and gold, it doesn't matter that much if your country's finances leak like a dollar store sieve.
In the streets and pubs of Ulaanbaatar, you hear about corruption a lot. Mongolians are not stupid and most seem to understand that the exchanges of cash (and so forth) at the highest level deprive the lower levels of ever seeing the country's extensive mineral riches in any real, consequential and long lasting way. While every Mongolian child receives 20,000 tugrics every couple weeks (about $13 or $14), the benefits of this short term cash infusion are lost as soon as the cash is put into the economy. No roads are built (or repaired), education is still lacking, and the infrastructure is ever so laughably inadequate. The real bulk of the money that is flowing into the country is diverting straight into the pockets of a small elite in a very real way.
I've been thinking about corruption more than I ever have since I first came to UB in January. Corruption must come from somewhere, and my experiences as a teacher here have seemed to suggest that its tenets are instilled from a young age. There's a few tales that will have to wait for the book, but until then, here are 2 stories:
- For the first term, I've been preparing the school's debate team for the national debating championship, which determines what team makes it to the Asia regional finals. We wanted to host the debate and made overtures to do so. But, our main rival (who came 50th out of 50 last year) decided to hold the "national" championships themselves, as an internal competition and did not invite a single other school to participate. They proclaimed a national team and submitted the results of the "competition" onwards to the international organisation. When we found out, we pointedly asked them to schedule a real competition but they have said that their internal championships count and cannot be redone because no other school registered (because they didn't invite anyone to register). I was more upset than the kids who seemed to brush it off as an entirely normal turn of events.
I wonder about what types of lessons are being taught by little incidents like these. If schools are the places where standards of behaviour are taught and enforced, then the behaviours here are smack full of a form of corruption (or at least nepotism) that is, for the kids, completely normal and not fucked up at all. If you grow up in this logic, the outcome will likely be even more corruption.
- A friend of mine heard about an incident in the locker rooms one day. One kid, let's call him "John," pushed another student into a locker and held the door shut as Ken desperately tried to get out. As soon as he heard about what happened my friend went straight to John's class (I was teaching him geography at the time) and pulled John out of class to give him a stern lecture. Afterwards, it was my friend and not John who got pulled into the Principal's office where he was chewed out for "using threatening body language" against a student, and was warned to, under no circumstance, do anything similar ever again. The other kids in class were, of course, nonplussed by this turn of events and later explained that John never gets in trouble with the administration because his mother is in the administration.
Educational corruption is pervasive and self replicating in this fashion.
