Tag - Thomas Friedman

No Need to Hire Americans – A Wake-up Call to all Parents

Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, recently interviewed Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, which has invested millions of dollars in trying to improve the way science is taught in U.S. schools. In today’s flat world, Mr. Barrett said, Intel can be a totally successful company without ever hiring another American. That is not its desire or intention, he said, but the fact is that it can now hire the best brain talent “wherever it resides.”

If you look at where Intel is making its new engineering investments today, he said, it is in China, India, Russia, Poland and, to a lesser
extent, Malaysia and Israel. While cutting-edge talent is still being grown in America, he added, it’s not enough for Intel’s needs, and not enough is being done in U.S. public schools – not just to leave no child behind, but to make sure that the best students and teachers are nurtured and rewarded.

What’s the solution? Stop squeezing science of out of the elementary curriculum! Our young children today will never become the scientists of tomorrow if we continue to put science on the pack burner until we have time to teach it in
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Learning How to Learn – Creating Unforgettable Learning Experiences

Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, forecasts our economic economic future and the need for a workforce prepared to compete in the high tech job market. In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Friedman grabbed my attention with his thoughts on “learning how to learn.”

There’s a huge undertow of worry out in the country about how our kids are being educated and whether they’ll be able to find jobs in an increasingly flat world, where more Chinese, Indians and Russians than ever can connect, collaborate and compete with us. In three different cities I had parents ask me some version of: “My daughter is studying Chinese in high school. That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

Not being an educator, I can’t give any such advice. But my own research has taught me that the most important thing you can learn in this era of
heightened global competition is how to learn. Being really good at “learning how to learn,” as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it,
will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones

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