[josh33]

I lived in Mongolia for two years as a missionary and taught ESL at schools every day. The schools systems there are what you would expect from a 3rd world country but it never ceased to amaze me how many bright, gifted Mongolians that had innate desire to learn and improve their situation, even with very troubling situations at home.

[haldujai]

'even with' might actually be 'because of' the troubling situations. There is nothing like hardship to motivate someone to improve their station in life.

[gexla]

This might be true of someone who has fallen from high places and then experienced hardship, but it's not true for people in poverty. The power of poverty to keep someone in that situation is great. In most cases, more powerful than the ability for someone to rise above it. Depending on how bad your situation is, there's just so many ways that poverty affects you and also the logistical challenges of doing anything but barely surviving are great.

[corporalagumbo]

Don't dismiss the power of a generally constructive, optimistic culture.

[lignuist]

While I agree with your argument in general, you obviously haven't been to Mongolia lately. The average Mongolian is dumping his plastic waste into the nature, trying to get a car and TV set as large as possible and is extremely envious if his neighbour is accomplishing this goals earlier than himself.

Really, I wasn't able to find a place in Mongolia, where I couldn't spot a plastic bottle on the ground and that's not what I would describe as constructive culture. However, Mongolians can be really warm people, but the society is totally broken at the moment. This country is currently transitioning from socialism to turbo-capitalism.

http://english.news.mn/content/96843.shtml

[brador]

And supportive parents.