The Fifth Column—A (Suboptimized) Island in the Sun or How Not to Optimize Education in the Third World

An essay about an attempt to optimize allocation of future elementary and high schools in an emerging nation. The person in charge, after his proper theoretical analysis using methods acquired during his doctoral studies in the USA, came up with an accurate but intractable model because of the sheer number of variables. The author suggested a much smaller approximation of the problem and gave a more realistic approach to its treatment.