Educating for integrity

The importance of engaging youth in anti-corruption cannot be overestimated. It can help change attitudes and mores and build zero-tolerance for corruption where the problem is seen as an acceptable fact of life.

No one is too young to be affected by corruption. A 2009 survey by Transparency International, found that from over 70,000 people surveyed in 69 countries, 16 per cent of respondents under 30 were asked for a bribe in the previous 12 months, compared to 13 per cent for the whole sample.

Anti-corruption education promotes values, attitudes and expectations that condemn corruption, and build the knowledge and skills to resist it. It develops people’s understanding of their rights and responsibilities for preserving the public good.

Teach the young that corruption is wrong and you have a chance to break the cycle. Even better, give them the ways and means to stand up to corruption. A generation of people who know what to do when faced with an ethical dilemma or an upfront bribe are more effective in preventing corrupt and unethical behaviour by public servants or in business than the most sophisticated codes of conduct, laws and regulations. The best anti-corruption laws and institutions need people who do not tolerate corruption and who actively fight against it.

There are many ways to teach the anti-corruption curriculum. It can be incorporated into civics or citizenship classes but it is also a key component of history, politics, religion, life skills, peace education, economics or ethics. Although most of the curricula may not explicitly refer to corruption, they are all implicitly linked to it. They include concepts such as the public good and social justice, which apply to countries rich and poor and are key to understanding the need for fighting corruption.

Experience shows, practice is better than theory. Teachers can take surveys and polls, develop role playing scenarios and give real life examples of what their students might encounter in daily life. How, for example, should they or their parents react when asked for money to enrol in a class that should, by law, be free? TI found this to be a common scenario in several African countires, wherer more than 44 per cent of families in the seven African countries surveyed reported being asked to pay illegal fees.

Universities also include anti-corruption in their governance and ethics classes. From public administration, business, law and economics schools to technical and engineering professions, anti-corruption is now becoming a standard part of the curriculum.