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| China poised to overtake Michigan in jobs, school |
By:
Tom Watkins |
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Change has come to China, which has once again opened its doors to the world. Now, we must open our eyes to the fact that China is poised to overtake the United States economically and educationally. In an increasingly global and competitive world economy, work will flow to venues with educated workers and low labor costs.
Many manufacturing jobs that provided a middle-class standard of living have disappeared. Technological advances and lower-cost overseas locations have stripped our communities of jobs and our people of hope. Tax incentives for creating jobs, job retraining and education programs are needed. Most important, for our future, investment in high-quality education from the womb to tomb is vital.
China's people are hungry for knowledge and improved economic success. China's economic and education systems are on steroids. China's struggle continues to be how to sustain economic growth and prosperity while maintaining social and ideological control over the masses. This is no easy task for China's President Hu Jintao and his Communist Party.
Our hope for competing with China in the future is sitting in our classrooms today. The viability of our society, strength of our economy and quality of our lives are inextricably linked to the quality of our education system. Having seen the rapid economic and education expansion of China, I know the competition our children and nation face -- it is fierce and will not relent.
Our biggest fear should not be the outsourcing of jobs to China but the fact that China's education system is producing 10 times the number of engineers and other knowledge workers as the United States.
We exist in a world where "thinking" for a living has replaced "lifting" for a living and where the uneducated will be punished unrelentingly. We cannot have great cities, states or a nation unless we educate far more of our youth to compete in the global economy that honors and rewards brainpower.
More needs to be done if we want to be able to compete with China and other emerging nations. Michigan needs to embrace globalization rather than run from it.
President Bush speaks of the "axis of evil" as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Similarly, we have an educational cycle of evil that erodes our ability to compete in the global 21st-century knowledge economy. The cycle includes:
• Adult illiteracy. In Michigan's largest city, Detroit, 47 percent of adults are functionally illiterate, according to the National Institute for Family Literacy. Detroit has the greatest level of poverty in the nation. We must invest more in narrowing the knowledge gap that exists between Michigan's workers and the job skills employers seek.
• Lack of investment in pre-kindergarten school readiness. The research is clear. Investment in high-quality preschool programs reduces dropouts, poverty and social problems.
• Laws permitting children to drop out at age 16. This is "state sponsored stupidity" at best and institutionalized racism at worst. Dropouts can no longer leave school for employment at a local factory. If the white middle class experienced dropout statistics like the African-American, Hispanic and Native-American populations, this would be considered an epidemic. Obviously, changing the law without changing schools to meet the 21st-century needs of students renders the effort superfluous.
• Disinvestment in higher education at a time when more knowledge workers are needed to compete on the global stage. Michigan needs the ideas, creativity and innovation that come from an educated populace to spur economic growth and survival.
If we do not break this cycle of evil, we will experience a tragic loss of human potential.
Where is the plan that will help Michigan compete in a fast-changing, disruptive information and technologically driven world that defies predictability?
The families affected by the global economy do not care where the answers come from -- just that they come and come soon.
The future belongs to those who invest in its people and in high-quality education. If Michigan is to prosper in the future, we must open our eyes.
Tom Watkins, the former state superintendent of public instruction, is a special assistant to Wayne State University President Irvin Reid. Mail letters to The News, Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226, or fax them to (313) 222-6417 or e-mail them to letters@detnews.com |
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