The Material Girl made a trip to Malawi over the past week. Suffice it to say it did not go well.

Among the slights the one-name-only star endured:

• Though she was given VIP status in the airport upon arrival, on her way out of the country her special status was revoked, and Madonna was forced to wait in lines and go through security before boarding her private jet.

• A handwritten note she sent to President Joyce Banda was widely mocked, both for its informality ("Dear Joyce," it started off, before congratulating Banda on her "new position" -- "as if the barrier-breaking politician has earned a promotion at an insurance company," the New York Daily News scoffed) and its misspellings ("What an honor and what a huge responsability!")

• Her request to meet with Banda was ignored, and she was slammed by the president while still in country for reneging on a pledge to build an academy for girls and renovating existing classroom blocks instead -- without government consent. (A widely circulating quote in which Banda accuses Madonna of making "poor people dance for her" is also a pretty brutal knock on the star, though the original source of the quote, the British tabloid the Sun, no longer seems to be using the quote in its entirety.)

Madonna has had a complicated relationship with Malawi since controversy erupted over her adoption of two Malawi children, David Banda and Mercy James, both eight. The charitable organization she founded afterward, Raising Malawi, collapsed amid accusations of mismanagement; one of the heads sent rolling belonged to Banda's younger sister Anjimile Mtila-Oponyo, and a spokesman suggested to the Telegraph yesterday that Madonna was being subjected to the indignities of airport security as the result of a "grudge."

Madonna herself has yet to issue a statement on the controversy -- after making it through security, you could say she left Malawi faster than a ray of light. But she did speak briefly to cameras at an orphanage in Lilongwe, where she said her focus remained on Malawi's children -- a line that moved at least one prominent observer of the spat to join Team Madonna.

The United States and Pakistan have not had the greatest year -- or decade -- from a diplomatic perspective. Just today, for instance, Pakistan and Iran launched a natural gas pipeline that Washington has vigorously opposed. Reflecting on the state of U.S.-Pakistani relations at the end of 2012, one senior State Department official told reporters:

Obviously, if you sort of step back a little bit, for us, 2011 was as hard a year in U.S.-Pakistan relations as you can imagine.... And so we tried in 2012 to sort of get back into some sensible business with them. Our philosophy has been that it ought to be possible between Pakistan and the United States to systematically identify our shared interests and act on them jointly.

Apparently, 12-year-olds have no trouble doing just that. Through the Marshall Direct Fund's Global Kid Connect program, Aspen Country Day School in Colorado has been taking part in a pen pal exchange with Lahore Grammar School in Pakistan. In their letters, which the organization has posted online, the elementary and middle schoolers go beyond identifying "shared interests" (Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift), broaching some touchier subjects as well.

Audra, a seventh-grader, writes: 

Not many of the Pakistani students' letters have been posted online. But judging from the responses by Aspen students, terrorism is a recurring theme in the exchanges, Here's Tristan, 13:

To answer your question. We don't think your country is all terroriscs [sic] but we think that your country has terrorists in it. Are there terrorists in your country?

Meanwhile, Sarah, a seventh-grader, unequivocally states her lack of an agenda when it comes to Pakistan:

Here's my personal favorite, from Andrew, 13, and Mat, 9:

You have to give these kids credit. It might be time for the State Department to recruit some junior ambassadors.

In a press release issued this morning, Human Rights Watch slammed Yale University, criticizing the administration for "betraying the spirit of the university as a center of open debate and protest by giving away the rights of its students." The statement indicts Yale's agreement to enforce Singapore's restrictive laws regarding freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly on its new joint-venture with the National University of Singapore -- the first new college to bear the New Haven university's name in three centuries.

The Yale-NUS college's new president, Pericles Lewis, has repeatedly defended the decision, arguing that students "are going to be totally free to express their views"  before admitting the campus "won't have partisan politics or be forming political parties on campus." Unsurprisingly, Yale students and faculty (whose 22 registered student political organizations will be barred from founding sister organizations on the NUS-Yale campus), were less than reassured. Already riled by accusations last spring that special confidentiality arrangements for General Stanley MacCrystal's class were a violation of intellectual freedom, student newspapers have openly mocked the administration's decision while professors have organized protests warning the restrictions limit academic freedom and negatively influence faculty hiring and research programs.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, agreed, calling Singapore's laws restricting political groups and demonstrations "draconian" before warning "Yale may find that many of the freedoms taken for granted over its 300 year history are against the law in Singapore. If it truly values those freedoms, and expects its students to, it will need to fight for them."  

Something for U.S. universities to keep in mind as more and more expand into international campuses.

If you think a day in the life of a British school kid is all about matching knee socks, "smart" ties, and a good dose of old-fashioned law and order (just think Professor McGonogall and those no-nonsense glasses) -- think again. Last year alone, 2,230 students were "permanently excluded" from school (a punishment that sounds worthy of Azkaban) for physically assaulting their teachers or classmates. In light of these statistics -- and increasing grumbling from the bruised and battered professors themselves -- schools minister Nick Gibb has proposed a four point plan to make British classrooms the decorous and disciplined places they once were (at least in our imaginations).

The proposal includes measures that would permit more knuckle-rapping and ruler-wielding in schools: the new standards would "encourag[e] teachers to make greater use of physical force to ‘maintain good order.'" As British law currently stands, there's nothing stopping fed-up teachers from (forcefully) putting know-it-alls back in line, "provided pupils are not injured." But, according to Gibb, teachers have grown wary of exercising their well-enshrined right to move beyond time-outs, fearful of lawsuits or even, as the harrowing saga of Peter Harvey persistently reminds them, the possibility of a life behind bars. (Harvey, on trial for lobbing a dumbbell at a student's head while shouting "die, die, die," was ultimately acquitted -- but not before prompting tirades from fellow teachers about the injustices of not being able to smack those ungrateful little brats.)

Gibb contends that the newly proposed standards -- which would also provide greater leeway to search students and grant accused teachers anonymity when under investigation --  will help to erode this atmosphere of fear by "removing red tape so that teachers can ensure discipline in the classroom and promote good behaviour." By his account, it's all just one big misunderstanding: students simply became too "aware of their rights." Once that confusion gets cleared up, it's only a matter of time before Snape-for-Principal posters start popping up....

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah will apparently only put up with so much from his clerics. Sheikh Saad al-Shethry has been removed from the kingdom's highest council of religious scholars by royal decree, after he criticized a newly-opened multibillion-dollar university for being un-Islamic. Shethry had a particular problem with co-ed classes:

"Mixing is a great sin and a great evil," al-Shethri was quoted as saying. "When men mix with women, their hearts burn and they will be diverted from their main goal (which is) ... education."

Abdullah has acquired a reputation as an unlikely reformer after this year's Valentine's Day reforms, in which he sacked the head of the infamous religious police and appointed a woman to his cabinet for the first time. But as Saudi Arabia expert Toby Jones argued at the time, Abdullah is probably less interested in liberalizing Saudi society than he is eliminating threats to his family's power.

The firing of Shethry certainly seems to be an example. The university -- which is named after the king, of course --  is something of a legacy project for Abdullah. He has touted it as a "beacon of tolerance" and as part of his plan to make Saudi Arabia a center of technological innovation. His patience for unsolicited sharia advice from the peanut gallery is likely to be pretty low.

Scott Nelson/KAUST via Getty Images

Matt Yglesias points to an interesting study by the American Institute for Research. It breaks down mathematics learning scores by state, and benchmarks them to international standards meaning. This means that we know, for instance, 8th graders perform approximately as well in Hungary and Iowa (a 517 score); Slovenia and Kentucky (501); and Norway and Mississippi (469). 

Kevin Carey, on the awesomely named The Quick and the Ed blog, writes, "But the tricky thing about looking at average performance in the United States is that our education system is unusually large, diverse, and decentralized. Parts of it are really good. Other parts are shamefully bad. And in a number of important respects, we can only improve the system part by part. So it's worth knowing just how well those parts are doing."

But, to ask a question of international education wonks, do other large, diverse countries (Brazil, China, Russia, Nigeria) exhibit the same large scoring range? And do other large countries fund and administer schools locally, as the U.S. does? 

A guest post from Karl F. Inderfurth, John O. Rankin Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University and former Assistant Secretary of State

I have greatly enjoyed the running exchange on the best films for a foreign policy film festival, started by Stephen Walt and then joined by Daniel Drezner and Fred Kaplan.

But this is not surprising.  Three years ago I began teaching a 13 week undergraduate course at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs entitled "Film and U.S. Foreign Policy."

I am certainly not the first professor to begin a course with Santayana's famous quote: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."   But I may be the first to add - so go see these movies.

The takeoff point for the course is Errol Morris' documentary The Fog of War on the 11 lessons drawn from the controversial life (understatement) of Robert McNamara (i.e. "empathize with your enemy," "rationality will not save us," "proportionality should be a guideline in war," "be prepared to reexamine your reasoning"). Students are asked to draw comparable lessons from the films we see.  Each film is also supplemented with readings to take the students deeper into the subject.

Enough said. Consider the above the trailer and what follows the main attraction.  Comments welcomed.

FILM AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY - FILM & BOOK SELECTIONS
INTRODUCTION -- LESSONS LEARNED

1. Fog of War, An Errol Morris Film

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - WAR / VIETNAM

2.   The Quiet American (Michael Caine version, not the original)  //  Graham Greene, The Quiet American and William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American

3.   Path to War //  Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - COVERT / AFGHANISTAN

4. The Kite Runner //  Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

5. Charlie Wilson's War //  Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - HUMANITARIAN / SOMALIA

6.  Black Hawk Down //  Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (esp. Epilogue and Afterward)

FOREIGN NON-INTERVENTION - GENOCIDE / RWANDA

7.  Hotel Rwanda (also Sometimes in April) /  Samantha Power, ‘A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide.

NUCLEAR THREAT - PAST AND PRESENT

8.   Dr. Stangelove //  John Hersey, Hiroshima.

9.   Thirteen Days // Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev and Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War

10.  Last Best Chance and Dirty War //  Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe

TERRORIST THREAT - SUICIDE BOMBERS

11.  Paradise Now (also a Sri Lankan film The Terrorist) // Christoph Reuter, My Life is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing (also Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism)

FOREIGN INTERVENTION - COUNTERINSURGENCY / IRAQ

12.   Battle of Algiers // Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962

13.   No End in Sight ( besides Fog of War, the only other documentary film shown)/  Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (to be replaced by Ricks' latest, The Gamble: Gen. David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008)

It looks like Rwandan school children will soon be trading their copies of Le Petit Prince for Paddington Bear. Rwandan education officials announced this week that French will no longer be the first language of education -- all lessons will be in English by 2011.

It would seem that this latest shedding of French culture by Rwandan officials comes too close on the heels of last summer's controversial accusations to be taken as anything but an insult by France. It was just last August that an independent commission set up by the Rwandan government implicated 33 French military and political leaders in the 1994 genocide and called for them to stand trial. Rwanda's current government, moreover, is led by former rebels who fought and ousted what they saw as French proxies.

Rwandan officials, however, were quick to add that this latest move is not a spiteful jab at France. Vincent Karega, Rwanda's trade and industry minister, said the motive was purely economic: "English has emerged as a backbone for growth and development not only in the region but around the globe." In addition to the English-speaking investors now coming to Rwanda, the country also relies on trade with places where deals are made in English, like East Africa.

Rwanda may be onto something here: The country's state minister for education has already noted that English textbooks are much, much cheaper than the French alternative.

Photo: JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images

Genius:

To the Editor:

Dear Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson:

My student loans are too big and it is hurting the economy. Can I have a bailout, please? I need $92,000.

Thanks.

Nathan Kottke
St. Paul, Sept. 17, 2008

(Hat tip: Matt Yglesias)

... I should note that, while the above is obviously a bitter joke, here's the thing. Financial industry lobbyists are hitting the halls of the Capitol Building hard this week "to ensure as many institutions as possible benefit" from the administration's $700 billion bailout plan. Bloomberg reports that already, a language tweak in guidance from the Treasury Department to Congress suggests that "instruments such as car and student loans, credit-card debt and any other troubled asset" could be included, raising the total cost of the plan significantly. Maybe Kottke's little joke isn't so far-fetched after all.

More outsourcing to India. This time, it's homework:

Students studying computing in the UK and US are outsourcing their university coursework to graduates in India and Romania. Work is being contracted out for as little as £5 on contract coding websites usually used by businesses. Students are outsourcing everything from simple coursework to full blown final year dissertations. It's causing a major headache for lecturers who say it is almost impossible to detect."

Slashdot's CmdrTaco cracks,"The irony, of course, is that if they actually get jobs in the sector, this will be how they actually work anyway."

If a disaster the magnitude of the quake that hit China's Sichuan province last month had taken place in the United States, (think 50 Hurricane Katrinas) you can bet that the nation would still be reeling, many public services would not yet have resumed, and certainly some schools would still be closed. But nearly a month after the devastating earthquake hit, millions of Chinese students, many of whom have lost homes or loved ones, are returning to normalcy as they sit for the most important exam of their lives.

Today and tomorrow, an estimated 11 million secondary school students will vie for 6 million Chinese university spots: tough odds that put students and their families on edge. Slate.com's Manuela Zonensein puts the exams in perspective this way:

It is China's SAT—if the SAT lasted two days, covered everything learned since kindergarten, and had the power to determine one's entire professional trajectory."

The pressure is so great that many children study up to 12 hours a day, parents and children report adverse effects on their health due to anxiety, and large numbers of family members flock to temples, praying to Buddha and Confucius for their child's success. When prayer doesn't seem to cut it, some students even have resorted to high-tech cheating schemes.

Life, of course, isn't completely back to normal yet. Students in the hardest-hit areas will have an extra month before they, too, must take the test of their lives. And as a safety precaution, bays of tents have been constructed outside testing centers in case a large aftershock should disrupt the students' uneasy calm.

Over at China Rises, Tim Johnson reports that most Chinese "seem content" with their government's rescue efforts after the Sichuan quake on Monday. But Johnson also notes that, politically speaking, it's a "fluid situation" for China's ruling Communists.

Among the developments to watch in coming days is growing public anger over the shoddy construction of schools in rural China. Among the dead are a massive number of children. Many parents are already asking: Why did the schools collapse when other government buildings remained standing?

Answering that question could pose a potentially destabilizing challenge for the Beijing regime. The NYT's Jim Yardley has more in a must-read today:

[E]nraged parents interviewed at the morgue on Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday morning say local officials lied to the prime minister to hide the true toll at Xinjian, which they estimate at more than 400 dead children. Several parents blamed local officials for a slow initial rescue response and questioned the structural safety of the school building. They were also furious that officials forbade them to search for their children for two days and then allowed access to the bodies only after the parents formed an ad hoc committee to complain.... Several parents wanted an investigation into the construction quality of school buildings in Dujiangyan. They say six schoolhouses collapsed in the city, even as other government buildings remain standing. One man said officials built two additional stories on the Xinjian school even though it had failed a safety inspection two years ago — allegations that could not be verified.

Much of the questionable engineering and construction can probably be tied to local level corruption, and it will be interesting to see if anti-official sentiments continue to grow in this regard. At the Far Eastern Economic Review, Michael Zhao reports that they already are: "we are hearing increasing reports of discontent, even outrage, with officialdom’s response.... There is a powerful linkage in Chinese political culture, including at the populist level, between natural disasters and state failure...." Seems "Grandpa Wen" and his cohorts are hardly out of the woods just yet.

Greetings from Salzburg, Austria, where I will be blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar's session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective. I'm here thanks to the generosity of the Knight Foundation, which paid my way. I'm by no means an expert on Russia, but with Vladimir Putin's succesor now chosen and the NATO summit freshly ended, the timing couldn't be better for me to get up to speed.

One of the assigned readings for the session was "Putin's Plan," a fascinating  Washington Quarterly article by Brookings scholar Clifford Gaddy and CSIS Russia expert Andrew Kuchins. Gaddy and Kuchins got their hands on a dissertation Putin wrote for his 1997 graduate degree for the School of Mines in St. Petersburg. They argue that the thesis, "Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region," does much to explain Putin's behavior as CEO of Russia, Inc. Other scholars, notably the Carnegie Endowment's Martha Brill Olcott, have examined excerpts from the dissertation before, looking for clues to Putin's thinking about the relationship of energy companies to the state. But Gaddy and Kuchins extend the analysis to the Medvedev succession, arguing that Putin was looking above all for someone who could replace him as Russia's top "strategic planner."

In the course of his research, Gaddy discovered that Putin -- or whoever really wrote the disseration -- had actually lifted 16 of the document's 218 pages nearly verbatim from a Russian translation of Strategic Planning and Policy, a 1978 mangement tome written by University of Pittsburgh professors William R. King and David Cleland (though the author did include a reference to the book).

It's actually quite common for Russian politicians to beef up their resumes with questionable degrees and/or have ghostwriters pen their theses. It's also standard practice, I'm told, for intelligence officers to borrow analyses with attribution. Perhaps Putin was merely upholding the academic standards of the KGB, his former employer. Whatever the case, the outgoing Russian president obviously never suffered the fate of U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, whose presidential aspirations were doomed in 1987 by accusations of plagiarism. Instead, the Russian media leapt to Putin's defense and said that King and Cleland had gotten their ideas from Soviet economists. Still, Russia's CEO seems touchy about the topic. When Gaddy asked Putin about his dissertation a few years back, he tensed up and dodged the question.

As for Dmitry Medvedev, many analysts here seem to be searching for clues that the Russian president-elect won't simply "plagiarize" Putin's policies. Will he be his own man? How long will it be before he can stake out a different path? More on this important issue in the next installment.

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.

Former British prime minister wait-listed, encouraged to reapply next year:

Yale University is pleased to announce the appointment of Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Howland Distinguished Fellow for the next academic year. Mr. Blair will lead a seminar at Yale and participate in a number of events around the campus. The course in which he will participate with Yale faculty will examine issues of faith and globalization."

UPDATE: On a serious note, check out Passport contributor James Forsyth's comments on why giving Blair a sinecure at a U.S. university would be bad for America.