Op-Ed Columnist - The Underlying Tragedy - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Underlying Tragedy - NYTimes.com: "These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old."

Interesting to see a widely distributed article suggestion wide-scale culture-change. I personally believe cultural philosophies are a huge factor on the success and progress of companies, countries, and civilizations. In this regard, I believe Christianity and the later Protestant forms led to an awakening in the same way the colonization of the Americas by those seeking a new culture and who formed that culture through the crucible of war and self-enlightened studies of the history of government led to the progress we in the United States enjoy.