Ulaanbaatar: A City Built for 400,000?
This morning I was reading an article which contained the following statement, "The Soviets engineered Ulaanbaatar for a population of 400,000. Now the city holds three times that number."1 I have seen variants of this statement in other articles over the last few months, and there is something about it that seems dubious. It has the feel of something that was first expressed informally as way of conceptualizing the extraordinary population growth and poor city management in Ulaanbaatar over the last few years, and then morphed into a "fact" in its subsequent retelling. Employing an apocryphal story of my own, I imagine there once was a group of professionals at Millie's Cafe discussing the deteriorating infrastructure and over-population of the city and someone chimed in with, "Just think, when the city was originally built it would have been for a population of 400,000 or so." To which everyone at the table nodded their heads knowingly, because that made perfect sense as an explanation for the world they perceived just outside the cafe's doors. Not too long after that one of the professionals at the table relayed this "fact" to a journalist doing a story on Mongolia. Yet, does comparing the city today with some alleged Soviet plan in the past make sense? I don't think so, and here's why.
The Middle Layer
A decade ago when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, I often heard from other ex-pats the startling fact that Mongolia was the highest recipient of development aid per capita in the world. It was usually stated with a hint of derision that implied, "Look around and tell me that money isn't being totally wasted here." I am not sure why that fact stuck with me, but it may have been because not too long after my Peace Corps service I was doing an unrelated research project that involved looking at per capita aid amounts. Naturally, given the many times I had heard the aid per capita fact about Mongolia, I expected to see it at the top of the list.
Teaching Against the Odds: Students Dreaming of the Future
This is my last “Teaching Against the Odds” post. As I move from writing about my experiences as a teacher and onto other topics of professional interest, I want to leave on a high note by writing about the students. School buildings, supplies, curricula, and teachers are irrelevant when there are no students. And as much as my students can make me want to pull my hair out at times, they are what makes teaching worthwhile and meaningful. They are also an essential part of Mongolia’s bright future, and as President Elbegdorj has said, 'Улсын сайн хүнээсээ, хүний сайн хүүхдээсээ' (A nation’s goodness is from its people, people’s goodness is from their children).1
On the Wickedness of Being a Nomad (Redux)
At various points in Mongolia's tumultuous relationship with the international business community, voices in the community have declared that Mongolia needs to reform itself or else. This sentiment surfaced again during the recent dispute between the government and Rio Tinto with some in the investment community saying "Mongolia needs Rio more than Rio needs Mongolia" and advocating Rio Tinto take a hard line in its negotiations with the government. The implication of this brand of argument is that the chaos of the Mongolian political system is rooted in, to borrow Owen Lattimore's phrase, "wickedness" that requires a firm hand to correct rather than vibrant and diverse public opinion that requires a subtle hand to navigate. It is a deeply flawed premise that is made worse by projecting investors' fears (uncertainty and financial hardship) onto the Mongolian public's set of fears. It brings to mind Billy Ray Valentine's analysis of panicking pork belly traders in the movie "Trading Places," as if we're supposed to believe that each time the government comes to the negotiating table its representatives are thinking "Hey, we're losing all our damn money, and [Tsagaan Sar] is around the corner, and I ain't gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip!"1 In the minds of those who advocate a hard line, stern threats of financial ruin and harsh consequences to follow are the most effective leverage in a political dispute with the government. It's a poorly constructed prescription for a country infused with a culture that is synonymous with fierce independence and tolerance of hardship.
Teaching Against the Odds: I ......... English at my school. a) study b) to study c) am studying
The Ministry of Education (MoE) regularly gives students multiple choice tests in order to compare student and school performance, to check teachers are teaching the correct material, and to award medals and honors. Regardless of how one feels about the efficacy of standardized tests as a tool for assessing performance and educational outcomes, it is difficult to defend the practice of giving students tests riddled with mistakes and testing knowledge outside the prescribed curriculum, yet this routinely happens.
