Without education, democracy can't survive

Friday's My Turn by Coeur d'Alene School Board member and former teacher Dave Eubanks suggested a link between the quality of children's education and the health of a democracy. National and global economists seem to confirm it.

The Democracy Index is a global report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, an independent research enterprise connected to the national magazine, The Economist. In this index the EIU ranks democracy in 165 independent nation-states by the status of political and personal freedoms. The index measures five interrelated categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture.

Are elections competitive, free of corruption, fairly conducted? How directly can the populace participate; how broad are their choices? How effectively does elected government function? Multiple factors are analyzed as a coherent whole, then countries ranked according to how "full" are their democracies.

The 2012 Index showed democracy's progress slowing to a "standstill," according to EIU. While about half of the world's countries could be called democracies (and more label themselves so), the number of "full democracies" is low at only 30. Almost twice as many (50) are rated as "flawed democracies." The rest are either authoritarian or "hybrid regimes."

Generally speaking, the more industrially developed and the higher the average citizen's education level (as determined with correlative studies), the more democratic the nation. Poland and Czech Republic, for example, rank higher than other so-called Eastern bloc nations, in both levels of education and stability of their historically recent democracies.

The U.S. doesn't rank as high as we'd like to assume. Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark are the top five. The U.S. is No. 21. Some of the reasons speculated for our lower ranking, behind higher-ranked Uruguay and South Korea, include declining participation and the sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of national security.

Using studies cited in a 2009 New York Times article, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser reported a 77 percent correlation between education levels (average years of schooling by country) and the 40-year average of the Democracy Index. No countries with low levels of education have managed to maintain a stable democracy over time. Conversely, the lower the degree of democracy, the less likely is growth in average education levels, from elementary to college levels.

Glaeser thinks the chain of causality runs first from education to liberty. He reports some statistical support; growth in education levels did not result as reliably from growth in democracies, as things did the other way around. He explained:

"Education teaches skills (that) enable people to work collaboratively. At younger grades, teachers spend a lot of time teaching children how to get along. In the United States, education is strongly linked to civic engagement and membership in social groups. The ability to work together enables the defense of democracy."

Getting along - the civility in civic engagement - has certainly declined in the U.S. among voting populace as well as politicians. We no longer seem to be able to disagree nor search for common areas of agreement, instead needing parroting and affirmation more than compassion or mature compromise. Perhaps we've forgotten what we learned in kindergarten. Perhaps we've forgotten the advice of one of our greatest leaders of a fledgling democracy:

"Upon the subject of education ... I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in." - Abraham Lincoln

Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].