A few months ago Bill Gates gave a speech to our nations governors, warning them that our high schools are obsolete. Frightening, to say the least:
When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow. In math and science, our 4th graders are among the top students in the world. By 8th grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations.
Bill goes on to say that our school systems are puposefully designed to limit the upward mobility of most of our students:
Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year. Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. The other two-thirds, most of them low-income and minority students, are tracked into courses that won’t ever get them ready for college or prepare them for a family-wage job – no matter how well the students learn or the teachers teach. This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system.
It's a recipe for disaster. Countries like India are pulling ahead of us:
In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor’s degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.
We clearly have to design our schools to prepare every student for college. We have low expectations for many of our less fortunate children. Apparently that's not an excuse in China and India. At this rate we are in for a serious re-allignment of intellectual and economic power in the coming century. But we'll have the best damn high school sports teams in the world!