It goes into education where we have an antiquated education system that has little changed for 100 years, that values rote learning, memorization and standardization, and devalues self expression, self exploration, questioning, creativity and play.

And it was the same learning by rote from primary school through graduate school.

You should use words to make sentences, rather than try to learn them with rote memorisation.

In some countries, the presence of oil and gas discourages the emergence of a diversified economy and, with it, a middle class. Education emphasizes rote learning over critical thinking.

Corporations, foundations, universities, and other non profit organizations can promote much of this work. Companies and foundations can offer technology to help modernize Arab educational systems and take them beyond rote learning.

The quality of Arab education is also an obstacle. Today s job market demands skills based on problem solving, critical thinking, modern languages, and technology, but Arab educational systems generally remain traditional, rote based, and authoritarian.

While tens of millions of Chinese young people display impressive innate abilities, the country s system of higher education does an abysmal job cultivating their talents. For most, the curriculum is largely obsolete, and skewed toward rote learning of theory at the expense of basic analytical and critical thinking skills.

THE HAGUE The war in Afghanistan, now approaching its tenth year, may seem to many to have no end in sight, but Latin America has endured an even longer fight, one that has recently become much more bloody the war against drug trafficking. So rote and so violent has that war become that many people in Latin America now wonder which side is suffering the more pathological addiction.