Will America Own the Knowledge Economy: A Discussion of the Challenge of American Education
Author:
Yachien HoMentor:
Gary Enke, Professor of English, Mt. San Antonio CollegeWill America Own the Knowledge Economy: A Discussion of the Challenge of American Education Although rising powers in Asia and South America have caused the competition for job opportunities to be much stiffer, education is the solution which can prepare students for competing against students in these regions. Yet the government’s, parents’, communities’, and teachers’ neglect of educational investment has played a key role in leading students and employees in America to be much less competitive in the Digital Age. In the Digital Age, the knowledge economy has become dominant in most nations – that is, human intellectual capability is the selling point now. The more Americans react to the type of economy accurately, and the more Americans embrace the idea of economy quickly, the better Americans will thrive in the knowledge economy in the next decades. However, Americans today believe deeply that they will retain their greatness as a world power for, at least, the next century. What traps Americans into such beliefs, and what can this generation of Americans do to prevent themselves from being victims of the trend? Most crucially, the importance is to help younger generations flourish in the future. In their recent book That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum address a wake-up call that the dysfunctional measures of teaching stifles students’ creative potentials, and for the years to come Americans are most likely to be rendered jobless to job outsourcing. Consequently, not only people in the government and schools have the responsibility for updating education approaches in terms of politics, but people in communities and families also need to understand their responsibility for supporting education paradigms comprehensively.