Latin America is not making progress against corruption. The fight should begin in schools | Opinion

A new ranking of the perception of corruption in 180 countries by the Transparency International anti-corruption watchdog confirms what many of us suspected: Most Latin American countries are considered more corrupt than the world average.

Worse, they are not making any headway in the fight against corruption. The only good news is that experts and activists are increasingly focusing on a key tool to fight corruption: education.

Only three Latin American countries — Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica — are perceived as less corrupt than the world average, according to the Berlin-based non-government think tank. The annual ranking is based on 13 separate sources, including studies from international financial institutions and business groups.

Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland are the least corrupt countries in the ranking. The United States comes in as the 24th most honest in the index.

Venezuela not only is perceived as the most corrupt country in the Americas, but one of the four most corrupt in the world, behind only South Sudan, Syria and Somalia, the ranking shows. Haiti and Nicaragua are not far behind them.

Little progress

Virtually all of the biggest Latin American countries are listed as more corrupt than the world average, with Mexico faring significantly worse than Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama and Peru.

Delia Ferreira Rubio, the chair of Transparency International, told me in an interview that most Latin American countries have been stuck in the same places in the ranking in recent years.

When I asked her what are the most important things countries should do to reduce corruption, she summed up the first priority in one word: education.

Unless kids are taught in school from early childhood about the destructive power of corruption, people in corruption-ridden countries will continue to tolerate it, and nothing will change, she said.

Of course, countries need strong independent institutions, good systems of checks and balances and an end of impunity for corrupt government officials and business people. “But in the long term, this is a problem of education, of civility, of good citizenship,” she said.

Ferreira Rubio told me that it’s relatively easy to teach children to fight corruption. A teacher can use simple hypothetical case studies that children can easily understand.

For instance, a teacher can tell the story of a fictional soccer match between first-graders, in which the umpire is the father of one of the players. Then, the teacher can ask the kids whether the umpire can be fair or whether he will most likely make calls that favor his son’s team.

That way, children can learn the concept of conflict of interest, discuss it in class, evaluate its consequences and come up with proposals to avoid it. Such case studies can be brought up in class systematically, on a weekly basis, as part of the children’s school curriculum, Ferreira Rubio told me.

“Every child can understand that,” Ferreira Rubio told me. “I use these type of examples often when talking in schools, and it never fails.”

Lesson in integrity

Another case study for elementary school children could tell the story of a hypothetical government official who, as a favor to a good friend, awards him a contract to build a bridge despite the fact that his friend is not qualified to do that job. The bridge collapses a few years later, and many people die.

The class discussion can be geared at showing how officials can sometimes do something seemingly innocuous, like helping a friend, at the expense of society.

Teaching anti-corruption classes in schools would be a great idea, because there will be no progress against corruption if too many people take it as a fact of life in their countries.

Granted, Latin Americans have often reacted strongly against government corruption, as we saw in Brazil’s 2014 Car Wash money-laundering case or in Argentina’s 2018 Notebooks scandal. But after a while, people get bored, especially when there are no consequences for acts of corruption.

The fight against corruption should start in schools. If it were a required subject, it obviously wouldn’t end government corruption overnight, but it would probably have a huge impact down the road.

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