The Global Achievement Gap
Just last year, Tony Wagner published a book with this title. In the book, he pointed out that the high school graduation rate in the US is about 70%. In most other developed countries, that's closer to 90%. 40% of those who do enter college need remedial courses, and 50% of those who enter college never graduate at all.
Wagner thinks that the US school system is not merely failing, but obsolete. If you've followed the figures, it means that only 35% of those who complete high school education make it out with a basic degree. The United States makes up for it by importing talent in huge quantities to fill up the great universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, Stanford and so on.
But the point of all this is that talent is blossoming all over the world. And that talent can travel as fast as an aircraft, or alternatively, as fast as data can be moved for the people with the right talent to process it. In such a milieu, the country with the nimblest minds will make it big; the country with the artificial and unthinking conservatism will decay from the inside out.
The knowledge economy is of course not the only economy in the game. Raw materials and the performing arts, sports, games, and sociocultural structures are hard to shift around as quickly. But these too have economic rules bent out of shape by the warping of time and space called globalisation.
Take Skype and all the other forms of electronic communication for example. They have allowed for distributed family networks across the world. The debility of age is now less of a barrier for the wisdom of the ancients. Modernity has something to contribute to tradition and the idea of family. My parents can now afford to disappear to another country for three months while I handle their stuff by remote control.
Yet the plants still need watering. Even though my brother the plant genius has hooked up an automatic sprinkler system (and would probably add CCTV if he had the time and talent), plants need personal attention. In that respect, plants are like pople.
In this age of mass differentiation, the personal touch is required, and bespoke goods are the greatest of luxuries. Never mind that our ancestors all needed tailors and shoemakers in the narrow streets of the old city; now if you have a personal tailor, people think you must be of a higher social class. Cars are designed with the ability to remember your ideal posture (or lack of it), and perhaps do this for every driver in your family.
All this seems to be part of a world where opposing trends come into conflict, and the centre cannot hold. But that's nothing. What is the problem is that everyone wants to keep the past static and stagnant. What people are not doing is thinking about the past and what should be kept — and what should be discarded.
The global achievement gap is not a thing by itself. It is the manifestation of difference between people forced to discard some of the old stuff so that they can travel fast and light, and those who want to hold on to everything until they collapse under the weight of history. And the sad thing is that neither bunch knows what is going on.
Wagner thinks that the US school system is not merely failing, but obsolete. If you've followed the figures, it means that only 35% of those who complete high school education make it out with a basic degree. The United States makes up for it by importing talent in huge quantities to fill up the great universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, Stanford and so on.
But the point of all this is that talent is blossoming all over the world. And that talent can travel as fast as an aircraft, or alternatively, as fast as data can be moved for the people with the right talent to process it. In such a milieu, the country with the nimblest minds will make it big; the country with the artificial and unthinking conservatism will decay from the inside out.
The knowledge economy is of course not the only economy in the game. Raw materials and the performing arts, sports, games, and sociocultural structures are hard to shift around as quickly. But these too have economic rules bent out of shape by the warping of time and space called globalisation.
Take Skype and all the other forms of electronic communication for example. They have allowed for distributed family networks across the world. The debility of age is now less of a barrier for the wisdom of the ancients. Modernity has something to contribute to tradition and the idea of family. My parents can now afford to disappear to another country for three months while I handle their stuff by remote control.
Yet the plants still need watering. Even though my brother the plant genius has hooked up an automatic sprinkler system (and would probably add CCTV if he had the time and talent), plants need personal attention. In that respect, plants are like pople.
In this age of mass differentiation, the personal touch is required, and bespoke goods are the greatest of luxuries. Never mind that our ancestors all needed tailors and shoemakers in the narrow streets of the old city; now if you have a personal tailor, people think you must be of a higher social class. Cars are designed with the ability to remember your ideal posture (or lack of it), and perhaps do this for every driver in your family.
All this seems to be part of a world where opposing trends come into conflict, and the centre cannot hold. But that's nothing. What is the problem is that everyone wants to keep the past static and stagnant. What people are not doing is thinking about the past and what should be kept — and what should be discarded.
The global achievement gap is not a thing by itself. It is the manifestation of difference between people forced to discard some of the old stuff so that they can travel fast and light, and those who want to hold on to everything until they collapse under the weight of history. And the sad thing is that neither bunch knows what is going on.
Labels: Change, Education, Globalism, Social Sciences
etched with acid at 9:59:00 pm
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