Will America slip from No. 1?
Tue Mar 29, 5:45 PM ET
By David Gergen
A dozen years ago, after the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged as the sole superpower, historians began a guessing game. How long had it been, they asked, since anyone enjoyed as much sway as the United States? One hundred years, back to the British Empire? Five hundred years, stretching back to Spain? Yale's Paul Kennedy soon provided the right answer: America, he said, had more economic, political, military, and cultural power than any nation since ancient Rome some 2,000 years ago.
But, Kennedy added, there were already signs of American slippage, and that warning set off another debate. For a while, those who disagreed with Kennedy--"antideclinists" like Joseph Nye--had the better case: The United States actually enhanced its leading status during much of the 1990s. In this decade, however, there is reason to ask again whether we are in danger of losing our perch.
We are so mismanaging our national finances that we now borrow nearly $2 billion a day from foreigners, mostly Asians. Last week Standard & Poor's predicted that unless we change course, our debt will be downgraded to junk bonds within 25 years. Our politicians go into emergency sessions to save poor Terri Schiavo (a questionable exercise of power at best), but they cannot bestir themselves to save Medicare and Social Security. Our research universities remain the best in the world, but our share of patents is declining while Asian universities are rapidly on the rise. Despite the noble efforts of our soldiers, sailors, and pilots, and a brightening outlook for democracy overseas, the way we have conducted ourselves has so offended others that America's reputation abroad has plummeted.
School for scandal. All these trends are dangerous enough, but there is another that's even more alarming: the way we are educating our young men and women. Back in 1983, a national education commission famously concluded that our schools faced a "rising tide of mediocrity." Educators, governors, and CEO s quickly swung into action, and we have been trying to improve K-12 classes ever since. The most promising reforms have revolved around standards and accountability, culminating in "No Child Left Behind" under President Bush. Despite a quarter century of effort, however, we're still making uneven progress, and other nations are moving ahead of us.
When the nation's governors gathered recently for a national "education summit," their partnering organization, Achieve, presented data showing that the high school drop-out rate has actually gotten worse since 1983! Of the kids who now reach ninth grade, 32 percent disappear before high school graduation. Another third finish high school but aren't ready for college or work. Thus, about two thirds of our students are being left behind, many of them low-income and minority kids. Only the upper third leave high school ready for college, work, and citizenship.
Our competitors, meanwhile, are growing stronger. On a list of 20 developed nations, America now ranks 16th in high school graduation rates and 14th in college graduation rates. But wait, it gets worse. That list of 20 doesn't even include India and China because they're officially considered "developing" countries. Yet everyone in American technology knows that India and China are rapidly becoming our most serious competitors.
Bill Gates is among a growing number of CEO s whose concern is rising. "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad," Gates told the governors, "I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow." Gates pointed out that in 2001 India graduated a million more students from college than the United States did, while China has six times as many university students majoring in engineering. Many of those students are now staying home to work, saying no to U.S. jobs. As a result, U.S.-based companies are finding it increasingly attractive to build not only their manufacturing plants abroad but their R&D operations as well. The CEO of a major technology company says that as an executive, he is pleased-his firm will pay less in salaries--but as an American, he is deeply worried.
What's needed now is public recognition that, as Gates says, "America's high schools are obsolete." We should be not only alarmed but ashamed. Our leading figures--the presidents, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Yale, along with the CEO s of Microsoft, Intel, and IBM--must rally Washington and the country to a revolutionary overhaul of public education. In our founding years, Americans were among the most literate people on Earth, and that put us on an upward path. The education of our young has always been a key to our greatness. Will we now rescue the next generation or condemn it to second place? |
