How can America reinforce its educational efforts to solve the problem stated by Friedman's The World is flat?

Question

Thomas Friedman depicts America's decadent capability to compete in a global economy. How do you think we can solve this problem in terms of society, education, government, and technology?

Answer 1

Do you mean "can" in the sense of feasible if people agreed that something should be done? or do you mean "can" in the sense of feasible in the current social and political context?

There are many ways to improve America's education system if people were interested in doing so. Consider Finland as one possible example of what is possible:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_i...

But, comparatively few people are interested in improving the American education system, and given that people are not, there is not much that is going to convince them to change their mind, and not much they are going to be willing to do as things stand.

Consider such items as:

- There is a major political constituency in the U.S. devoted to thwarting any effort to teach real science.

- Ballot measures for maintaining schools, libraries, etc. have been defeated over and over again, all over the country.

- One factor everyone agrees on is that having fewer than 20 students per teacher makes a big difference. How many school systems have anything close?

And, there is the general contempt most Americans have for education and the well educated. (It is clear that schools are more seen as a place to park the kids than a place where kids are supposed to be learning.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intell...

Answer 2

One simple way (just for starters) would be to make students pass an exam that allows them to go on to the next grade level in school. For example, a 5th grader must pass an exam to be allowed to start 6th grade. If not, then he/she should be held back until they start taking school more seriously.