How has Augmented Human Development been distributed across countries? Chapter 3 offers an answer. It presents long-run inequality trends for AHDI and its dimensions and examines gains across the distribution using growth incidence curves, in absolute and relative terms. Augmented human development inequality declined since 1900. In the long run, countries in the middle and lower deciles obtained larger relative gains over the last century. Over time, changes in the international distribution of augmented human development largely depended on the behaviour of schooling and civil and political liberties, even though life expectancy was inequality’s main driver until the 1920s since the uneven diffusion of new medical knowledge and technology and health practices in the early stages of the epidemiological transition provoked unequal life expectancy gains. The global spread of schooling and the diffusion of epidemiological transition made a substantial contribution to reducing AHD inequality between the 1920s and the early 1980s. The rise of authoritarian political regimes partly offset AHD inequality decline, since its dispersion only fell from the 1970s. These findings are at odds with the evolution of per capita income dispersion that increased until the late twentieth century and only fell since 1990. (198 words)

Did augmented human development improve in Latin America since 1870, what drove it, and did the gap with the OECD widen? Chapter 5 addresses these questions. Latin America presents sustained AHD gains since the late nineteenth century, especially during the 1940s and 1950s and from 1970 onwards, the 1980s in particular. AHD advance was not restricted to phases of economic progress, i.e., the 1940–1980 phase of state-led growth, but extended to the globalisation backlash (1914–1950) and the ‘lost decade’ (1980s). Schooling, as a result of the diffusion of new ideas, nation-building, and urbanisation, and life expectancy, due to the spread of the epidemiological transition, drove AHD over the long run and accounted for catching up to the OECD until 1960, while civil and political liberties did so in the 1980s. The rise of life expectancy before drugs spread internationally since 1950 points to the diffusion of new medical knowledge that through hygienic practices and low-cost public health measures helped eradicating communicable diseases and played a major role in reducing infant and maternal mortality.

In Chapter 2, trends in Augmented Human Development and its dimensions are presented and compared to those of GDP per head. Then, a breakdown of AHDI gains into their dimensions’ contribution is carried out, and some explanatory hypotheses proposed. Augmented human development improved significantly in the world since 1870, especially over 1913–1980, but significant room for improvement remains. Although AHDI and real per capita GDP exhibit similar progress over the long run, their pace does not match over the different phases of its evolution. Major gains in augmented human development were achieved across the board during the economic globalisation backlash of the first half of the twentieth century. AHD progress was driven by its non-income dimensions. Life expectancy at birth was the main contributor over time, even though its main contribution took place over 1920–1970, as the epidemiological transition diffused internationally. Schooling, mostly public, stimulated by new social views and nation-building, made a steady contribution over time, while civil and political liberties led AHD gains in the last two decades of the twentieth century as authoritarian regimes gave way to the expansion of liberal democracy.

Chapter 6 assesses long-run augmented human development in Africa. Augmented human development experienced sustained gains since 1880, faster between 1920 and 1960, under colonial rule, and at the turn of the century, but remains at the bottom of the world distribution, although the northern and southern regions forged ahead while the rest stayed behind. AHD grew twice as much as per capita GDP, thriving at times of poor economic performance and, unlike GDP per head that fell behind from a higher relative position, AHD was catching up to the OECD since the late 1920s. Schooling was the main driver of AHD gains and catching up, with life expectancy making a significant contribution in the interwar in the early stage of the epidemiological transition, as the diffusion of health practices prevented infectious disease spread and helped reduce infant and maternal mortality. Civil and political liberties made a contribution both at the time of independence and in the 1990s. AHD long-run performance does not support either the pessimistic view of the colonial era or the depiction of ‘lost decades’ for the post-independence era, but there is still a long way to go from an international perspective

Chapter 4 investigates Augmented Human Development across world regions and focuses on the differences between advanced countries (the OECD) and the rest of the world over time. It takes a closer look at world regions, examining the contribution of each dimension to AHD gains and how they affect world distribution. Finally, it investigates catching up to the OECD in the regions of the Rest and what drives it. Augmented human development achieved substantial but unevenly distributed gains across world regions. Life expectancy and schooling drove AHD in both the OECD and the Rest. Although the absolute gap between the OECD and the Rest deepened over time, the gap shrank in relative terms since the late 1920s, at odds with the increasing relative gap in terms of GDP per head. The gap between the OECD and the Rest dominated AHD international distribution until the mid-twentieth century. Life expectancy and civil and political rights were its main drivers of the Rest’s catching up to the OECD. Up to 1970, stronger catching up took place up to 1970, as the epidemiological transition spread and, again, in the 1990s, when liberties expanded in the Rest.

The chapter focuses on a persistent problem within nationalist ideology, as it emerged in Jacob Grimm’s reflections on the rise of mandatory schooling. School systems can impose a uniform language across a large territory, effectively giving shape to a national people. This became increasingly clear to Grimm as he witnessed the emergence of a veritable army of schoolteachers around the mid-nineteenth century. While he approved of greater national unification by means of mass schooling, the fact of public education also forced him to consider that the nation may not grow from below to delimit the proper reach of a state. Instead, an existing state apparatus could forge a more standardized culture by institutional means, at the expense of the more natural-seeming transmission of language and customs within families. Hence the state may not need a philologist to trace national boundaries. Indeed, the school system itself, a necessary institution in the developed modern state, threatened local cultures with extinction and hence deprived populations of the cultural memory that Grimm had pledged to protect as a scholar.

Chapter 6, “School of Hard Knocks: Illegal Education,” considers the second great intelligentsia occupation success: illegal underground education. From fall 1939, the Nazi General Government administration closed schools, universities, seminaries, and conservatories that served Polish students, arresting and imprisoning teachers and professors. This was a deliberate German attempt to control Poles in the long term and ensure German control over Lebensraum in the Polish space, since Nazi plans intended to utilize Poles as unskilled laborers and wanted to deprive them of education and the opportunity for social advancement. Warsaw University and city high schools re-formed underground, and “illegal” education taught pupils from childhood into their twenties. Studying initiated young people into underground political conspiracy, exposing them to great danger. It also kept teachers and professors employed and trained a new Polish intelligentsia to replace those killed in the genocidal campaigns of 1939-1940. As occupation continued, teaching and studying increasingly became the purview of Polish women as more and more Polish men turned to violent resistance. Despite draconian punishments, underground education was one of the most important successes of the occupation.

This chapter discusses why wisdom is so important to the world. In particular, it states:

1. 1. Most important problems cannot be solved by knowledge + intelligence (IQ) alone. This formula has failed.

2. 2. Analytical thinking untempered by wisdom can be risky and dangerous.

3. 3. Creativity untempered by wisdom can be risky or downright dangerous.

4. 4. Wisdom explicitly recognizes the role of positive human values.

5. 5. The world has become a more global place, so we need to take into account more diverse and often different viewpoints.

6. 6. The stakes for solving world problems are higher than they once were because of worldwide physical and virtual interconnection.

7. 7. Reward systems that condone or value foolish or even toxic behavior need to be replaced.

8. 8. Reward systems should not focus only on the short term.

9. 9. Reward systems should not focus on competition when resources are scarce, but rather on common gain.

10. 10. Increasing narcissism.

11. 11. The problem of political, socioeconomic, racial, cultural, and other forms of polarization.

    The chapter further discusses why wisdom is so little transmitted:

    1. 1. Wisdom is hard to teach.

    2. 2. Teachers were not trained to teach wisdom, and do not have time and resources for acquiring new skills.

    3. 3. Wisdom is not tested for.

    4. 4. Wisdom is not always valued and may be devalued by those in power.

    5. 5. Wisdom is sometimes seen as available only to the old or to authority figures.

    6. 6. Wisdom is often seen as the province of religious or political education.

    7. 7. Wisdom requires a certain amount of intelligence and creativity, so often is scorned by those without all so much of either.

    8. 8. People with high analytical, creative, and practical intelligence often use their intelligence to try to get others to bypass wisdom, including in the schools.

Wisdom is often at odds with our emotions, which are extremely important in our decision making.

Chapter 5 evaluates the role of education in China’s rapid growth. In 1980, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, but the average years of schooling of its adult population was already near that of a middle-income country. This relatively high educational level was an advantage for China’s economic development. However, this advantage all but disappeared by 2005. China’s greatest advantage turns out to be in the quality rather than quantity of education. According to the cognitive skills index produced by Eric Hanushek and his coauthors, who use it as a measure of a country’s educational quality, China ranks the best among all developing nations. This factor alone may explain a very significant 4 percentage point difference in GDP per capita growth between China and developing countries such as Peru and South Africa. It is shown that China’s advantage in the quality of schooling is not due to more investment in education by the government. Instead, it is the traditional Confucian culture that has made people in China and other East Asian economies influenced by the culture value of education more than people in most other developing countries.

This chapter traces the transformation of the school from the site for instilling ideas about racial and class-based separate development during the colonial era into the key mechanism for ensuring African political and economic development today. Formal schooling introduced during the colonial era contributed to racial and economic divisions by promoting the idea of separate development and segregation. Missionary and colonial education institutionalized the assumptions about racial difference embedded in the development episteme. Colonial educators faced a conundrum; they sought to “civilize” Africans in Western academic traditions and at the same time to reinforce ideologies of racial difference that undergirded colonialism and the development episteme. This conflict was complicated further as schools became a place for challenging these ideas and generating African nationalist ideas of development. Some postcolonial reforms recentered African epistemologies in the schools. Today institutions and scholars of the global north still claim to be the experts in technology, science, and medicine, the sciences necessary for solving development “problems.” Nonetheless, African institutions and scholars are at the forefront of development innovations designed for their own communities including in the expansion of innovative university practices.

Can you teach someone to be an actor? Paradoxically, the French cultural context while constraining the remit of the actor allowed acting to emerge as an autonomous science. The conservatoire training model that flourished in France in the nineteenth century was vigorously resisted by the nineteenth-century English actor-manager. Training or talent: the classical debate: Cicero and Quintilian resisted Aristotle’s claim that acting was merely ‘natural’. Early modern apprenticeship in the science of acting: our best evidence comes from Paris in the Shakespearean era, where Hardy’s classical dramaturgy demanded new skills. Multiple skills served the craft of acting. Early modern schooling: the example of Marston’s boy actors: how boys with a rhetorical education challenged the older generation of professionals. Hamlet: fencing as a foundation for acting: Hamlet learns to ‘act’ by learning to fence, and I trace the enduring place of fencing in actor training, distinguishing Italian and English methods. The pedagogy of Charles Macklin: a case study in how eighteenth-century acting was taught. The birth of the conservatoire: first championed by Lekain and his contemporaries.