Dan DaranciangGrowing up, many of us heard that bitter nugget of truth from our parents that we should eat everything on our plate, as children around the world were starving. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, now tells his children, “Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.” He is the author of an influential book on globalization, “The World Is Flat.” One of his basic assertions is that since human resources can be easily drawn from anywhere on the globe, the world is now flat. In the new global economy, there is no longer a pyramid of human society of which Americans constitute the peak. I draw Friedman’s comments from an interview in Wired magazine, in which he also said that America is in a “quiet crisis” and “if we don’t change course now and buckle down in a flat world, the kind of competition our kids will face will be intense and the social implications of not repairing things will be enormous.” To see his point, perhaps a brief examination of American life is in order.
I believe the key difference between the average American and the average third-worlder is purpose. How can you blame a child in American high-school for not trying when he or she already has the ingredients that emotionally and evolutionarily signal a successful life: a roof over his or her head, a belly full of food, plentiful entertainment options, and maybe even another high schooler to make out with? How can we honestly lecture American students about some dry topic like “global responsibility” or their effect upon America’s bottom line? Those not in America just want what they don’t have, like human beings are wont to do, and they have a lot less than we do. But here there is no doing better than your parents, and you already have everything you could want, anyway. There is no incentive to do better.
An informal poll of undergraduates at Wash. U. provides only a smattering of reasons for attending college, most having to do with being forced by parents, a hope for a well-paying job, or just because there was little else to do after high school. This lack of drive shows up in how the United States may one day soon be producing advanced degree-holders at a lower rate than any number of other countries. But business doesn’t care where the intelligence, man-power, and money comes from – do you honestly think being an American carries weight with anyone with a lick of fiduciary sense? As I write, the trickle-down effects of these problems are coming to a head.
A literacy study recently released by the Pew Charitable Trusts (www.pewtrusts.com) indicates that college upperclassmen at both two- and four-year universities in the United States lack any number of common skills, as in, the kinds of things you drolly slur “duhhhhhh” at your friends for taking too much time to puzzle out. It may not surprise the pessimists among us, but 30 percent of those in two-year colleges and about 20 percent of those in four-year colleges can barely even figure out how much lunch would cost them by looking at a menu (understood as that scary concept known as “adding”). These are not the kind of people you want building your bridges or teaching at your schools. You may reply that we only allow the elite to lead, but this is only kind of true – the entire country supports the intelligentsia. But while those that test in the top quartile in America compare favorably with those in other countries, our back end looks quite laughable in comparison. The rest of the world is going to commit us to a slow death by slowly raising their back end, essentially. What does this leave us?
Something needs to change in America. Whether it’s an overhaul of the education system, a better system for funneling the right kind of people into the right kind of jobs, or some sort of incentive (that I cannot possibly even fathom) that would reinstill fire into the belly of the complacent American youth, all I know is that change is necessary. Friedman simply says that “the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.” America is not infinitely old, nor is it writ large somewhere sacred that America will always be on top. Take note, friends, as America is slowly, steadily, and certainly falling behind.
Joshua is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.