Lessons you can't learn in a book: Boeing makes my favorite educational technology.

Lessons you can't learn in a book: Boeing makes my favorite educational technology. I CONTINUE TO MEET COLLEAGUES who apologize for not having foundtime to read Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat. They long toread what they've been led to believe is the instruction manual for21st-century living. I await the book's children's edition andthe Saturday morning cartoon Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming which was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the 1990s. in which a ragtag rag��tag?adj.1. Shaggy or unkempt; ragged.2. Diverse and disorderly in appearance or composition: "They're a small ragtag army of racketeers, bandits, and murderers" bunch of American APstudents are outsourced to India and are forced to use Microsoft Vista See Windows Vista. . Perhaps the greatest lesson from what historians may soon call"the Torn Friedman Decade" is that you can earn a much betterliving scaring Americans into believing that their programming jobs willdisappear overseas than learning to program in the first place. Over thepast six years, fear has been our major growth industry. I have not moderated my 2005 appraisal that The World Is Flat ischock-full of sloppy facts, simplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple reasoning and dopey rhymes. Mygreatest concern is that school leaders are much more apt to quote frombooks written by men who have never run a business than from thosewritten by educational innovators. An administrator's quest for Verb 1. quest for - go in search of or hunt for; "pursue a hobby"quest after, go after, pursuelook for, search, seek - try to locate or discover, or try to establish the existence of; "The police are searching for clues"; "They are searching for the aquick fix and misplaced mis��place?tr.v. mis��placed, mis��plac��ing, mis��plac��es1. a. To put into a wrong place: misplace punctuation in a sentence.b. faith in the advice of charlatans is much morealarming than Mr. Friedman's ignorance of technology, education orpolicy. He just wrote a book and we bought it. Facts The August 20, 2006, global edition of Newsweek includes a veryinteresting article, "The Mythical Million." The subtitlestates, "Pundits warn that huge numbers of Chinese and Indianengineers could threaten the U.S. Don't believe it." Newsweek counters the demagogic dem��a��gog��ic? also dem��a��gog��i��caladj.Of, relating to, or characteristic of a demagogue.dem argument that simply counting thepopulations of China and India, or the tall buildings in Shanghai, leadsto the conclusion that America is imperiled. The article writes ofcolleges with no teachers, underresourced schools and "slippingstandards" in China and India. It quotes Kiran Karnik, head of theNational Association of Software and Services Company: "Out of thehuge number of engineering and science graduates that India produces,only 25 to 30 percent can be regarded as suitable." The article continues: "To sustain their breakneck break��neck?adj.1. Dangerously fast: a breakneck pace.2. Likely to cause an accident: a breakneck curve. growth, thecountries will need lots of high-quality engineers and scientists. Yetneither have enough reliable universities to produce them.... The lackof highly trained people at the Ph.D. level in both sciences andengineering will be a serious setback to India becoming a knowledgeeconomy. "Despite the large number of graduates India rolls out eachyear, it only produces about 50 Ph.D.s in computer science, about thesame number as an average public university in the United States." How did I know the fear of globalization globalizationProcess by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standardized around the world. Factors that have contributed to globalization include increasingly sophisticated communications and transportation was simplistic propaganda?The answer is simple--because I have a passport. Most Americans do not. I've worked in Mumbai, where it can take half a day to crosstown for a meeting and where I contracted dysentery dysentery(dĭs`əntĕr'ē), inflammation of the intestine characterized by the frequent passage of feces, usually with blood and mucus. despite staying in afive-star hotel. I've been to China, where the air is grey and asimple retail purchase requires a half-dozen employees and gobs of formsfilled out in triplicate. I have observed Japanese women whose job it isto stand quietly in front of elevators and gesture towards the open doorwhile I think to myself, "I bet she didn't do so well in APcalculus." Common Ground While we vacillate between conflicting feelings of superiority andinferiority, Newsweek reminds us that we have much in common with thedeveloping world. Infrastructure is crumbling in Mumbai and Minneapolis.School facilities are poorly maintained and overcrowded o��ver��crowd?v. o��ver��crowd��ed, o��ver��crowd��ing, o��ver��crowdsv.tr.To cause to be excessively crowded: a system of consolidation that only overcrowded the classrooms. here and abroad.Too few students are taught computer science and, as an Indian professorrecounts, "It seemed as if the dress code was more important thanrigors of study." Many of our urban schools like to put kids inpolyester and proclaim success. "Chinese schools emphasize rote memorization, which oftendetracts from the quality of education," says a Chinese academic."Chinas system fails to instill in��stillv.To pour in drop by drop.instil��lation n. creativity." That was once the hallmark of our education system, but it is now afleeting memory for too many children who are being drilled for statetests to compete with nations sorely in need of creativity. Our schools can and should do better because it is the right thingto do, not because we fear foreigners. If we offer students rich,creative and fulfilling experiences, our nation will benefit. Gary S. Stager, gary@stager.org, is senior editor of DISTRICTADMINISTRATION and editor of The Pulse: Education's Place forDebate (www.districtadministration.com/pulse).