It's a Flat World, After All

This is not a test.


It’s an emergency! The rise of Flatism in our world today has not only leveled the playing field for competing countries against the U.S. in the Global market, it has put us at a disadvantage and we have no one to blame but ourselves . With the dot-com boom in the 1990’s Americans Companies footed the bill for other countries to gain access to the information through the construction of the internet. We threw billions at designing fiber optic cables that run across the world right to our competitor’s front door. They now use that access to connect all the knowledge pools in the world without any of massive costs to get there. These countries were able to leapfrog over the industry age and straight into the technology age. We are no longer the leaders of the Globalization age. We are the ones falling behind.

With the combination of technology, a booming population and rich educational heritage countries like India and China, not only now have the ability to compete in the Global market but now are taking it over. The mindset of these countries to “never rest” and our false sense of entitlement America is falling behind in innovations.

The big question is left for Americans to answer. In the International Competition of Globalization how are Americans going to catch up?

“It’s a Flat World After All,” by Thomas Friedman, is a call to arms article that has fascinating points to it. One point that I find most intriguing is the part of the article where Bill Gates warned the governor’s conference in telling them that American High schools are “obsolete”. When he compares our fourth graders to the rest of the world’s we are on top, but we are in the middle of the pack when it comes to our eighth graders and by 12th grade we are scoring near the bottom. How can that be? The United States is at the top of the list when it comes to spending money for its students. (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/09/does-spending-more-on-education-improve-academic-achievement) So what is causing the gap between our students and the rest of the world? Obliviously, throwing money at the situation is not the problem or the solution. We need to find a way to change this continuing downward spiral.

This article raises some concerns and questions. One question is how do we motive American students to become engineers in the Innovative Era? With India graduating a million more students than the US and China graduating six times as many engineers, one wonders if we will ever be able to catch up. When I asked students in my district if any wanted to become engineers most didn’t even know what an engineer does. Scary! Another question is, what are we doing to help teachers between 4th and 12th grade close the gap between the US and competing nations in math and sciences? What are other countries doing in the classroom that we are not? The final question and concern is how did the US Government allow so many companies to outsource to other countries when it has resulted in them taking jobs and technology away from its citizens? With jobs at a premium in our country today what are we doing to fix it?

Don’t hit the Panic button yet!

Recommendations: As Friedman states technology, population, and a “never rest” mentality are widening the gap between the US and these countries. However, he doesn’t address the positives of technology reaching these countries. Yes, we may be falling behind but it has also given us the ability to communicate and exchange information across distances and has enabled more individuals to participate in the human growth of knowledge regardless of their location. People can now share information instantaneously when it took much longer before. It has made the world smaller and more accessible for so many individuals. Students can now take virtual tours of places in other countries that we only were able to see as a 2D picture in a book. As communication barriers have now broken through the World Wide Web, we now have the ability not only to share medical breakthroughs, but to have friendships as well. As the Internet age is in its infancy stage there will be competition to see what countries will be at the top but the winner in the end will be the human race for all the advancements we will achieve because of the internet.