Barking up the Right Tree. (2006)

THERE IS a childhood saying about a confused dog who thinks he sees a possum in a tree. The problem is that possum is actually in a different tree, so dog barks up wrong tree. American education is constantly playing both dog and possum. Sometimes we are prey, and sometimes we are just confused about what and where prey is. The last few years have revealed growing concern about U.S. global competitiveness, particularly against a backdrop of rising economic power of India and China. This is not unlike concern in 1980s with Japan and Germany. But this time competition looms larger, and stakes are higher. This topic has been regularly addressed in news, and CEOs and governors have weighed in with their views, as has President Bush in his 2006 State of Union address. The hysteria could best be summed up, in a paraphrase of a 40-year-old saying, as the Asians are coming, Asians are coming. Undoubtedly, ascendance of China as an economic power and of India as a place where many American jobs go to die has raised legitimate concerns. Thomas Friedman, author of best-selling book The World is Flat, suggests that with rise of China and India, America will have to run faster just to stay in place. Today, hardly an American CEO can be found who does not look with awe and concern at what is happening on other side of world. Many U.S. businesses have shipped work and jobs to both India and China, and, as with every previous threat to American dominance, our schools have been called to account for failing to produce enough engineers and math and science workers to compete with this rising threat. The education solutions offered are that we should make our students work harder and study more math and science. And we need more and harder tests to motivate them to do so. The problem with this thinking is that it just isn't that simple. First, math doesn't add up for United States. Both India and China are massive countries. If they educate only their elites, they will still have a massive edge in available knowledge workers. America could make all its children high-tech workers, and we would still be outnumbered. Further, an engineer in either Beijing or Bangalore will work for a fraction of wages of her American counterpart. To remain competitive, our workers would have to take monumental pay cuts, with attendant reductions in lifestyle, simply to hold their own. If we were to stop examining situation at this point, despair would seem to be only rational response. The good news is that there is more to story--a right tree to bark up, so to speak. Put most simply, America should compete at what it has always done best: being innovative engine that drives world economy. To do that will require increased efforts at producing greater numbers of highly talented engineers and technical workers. But we must improve way we teach math and science by making these subjects more engaging to more students. Yet there is also a bigger issue emerging. Daniel Pink in his provocative book, A Whole New Mind, has gone so far as to declare that Information Age is nearing an end and that we are entering age. He argues that dominance of left-brain-driven world, where everything is sequential and logical, is giving way to a more right-brained endeavor that focuses on creative, holistic skills. Pink suggests that, if you have a job that can be done by a machine, can be done cheaper, or can be done somewhere else, you have cause to worry. Those who work on conceptual and creative work--design, storytelling, and like--will dominate in this new world. He turns current discussion upside-down. It isn't about how many engineers a nation has; it is about how many artists and poets it produces. These are individuals who can create new meaning necessary in a conceptual world. …