Our Education Challenge

Education is our global challenge, not economics. Read Robert Freer’s article to see why economics is just the symptom.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

Listen—that noise you don’t hear is our society slipping into subservience to economic decisions made elsewhere on the globe by those who at best may not be our friends and at worst wish to do us real harm. Even today, our currency and the continuing stability of our national government is hostage to decisions made in Tokyo and Beijing. As of July this year, we have passed two trillion dollars in foreign debt of which more than 40% is held by Japan and China. The potential impact on our national foreign policy options in this climate is serious and could be calamitous. Like Katrina it is a silent menace of which we are aware and which we ignore. It is not; however, too late to read the signs and equip our next generation with the knowledge and attitudes required to preserve the best of our civilization. I am not being alarmist when I say we cannot rest on our laurels. Our opponents, unimpressed with our codes of conduct, jealous of our affluence and not a product of our heritage are focused on their goal and are coming on fast. We also need to keep in mind that the challenges to our way of life are not merely economic. The president has called us to arms in a war against terror, but the challenges we face are much broader than bombs and bullets. They are political, social, and philosophical as well.

Western societies, by which I mean those in Europe and The Western Hemisphere with the exception of Cuba, are relatively affluent. Many of us have become addicted to the wide variety of social services we receive without understanding and accepting that those services come at a personal cost. Western Europe has particularly become so self absorbed that notions of self reliance and responsibility are almost unknown. We sound the tocsin and hear back that it is just so much scare tactics. It is not. Unless the value to be preserved is understood and accepted, we will not be able to equip the next generation to handle the challenges we know are just beyond the horizon.

The number of highly educated professionals coming to maturity in India and China will soon dwarf our current output of pragmatic and scientific intellectuals. Possessing practical and applicable skills, these foreign workforces challenge us to integrate into a world view that does not diminish them and yet leaves our heirs equipped to stand tall in a future only dimly outlined by the flickering light of global change. If these challenges were solely economic, the task would be daunting enough. The revolution in communication technology makes workers’ locations irrelevant in economic terms. Billions of people spanning from the Near to Far East thirst for the better life they can now see on media in their own country. Not unexpectedly, having tasted some improvement from the production of textiles and footwear, they want more. Fulfillment comes not only making sneakers and cheap textiles but also in the micro-processing industry and by handling the global needs of the information age. India’s rapidly excelling economy is currently causing the upheaval of its caste system, gender biases, and labor laws. Meanwhile China has centralized, modernized, and specialized its national education system. Now their students encounter physics, biology, and chemistry in junior-high—two or three years before the average American student—and decide whether to pursue the humanities or sciences while young teenagers. As feudal structures dissolve, these foreign citizens acquire their own affluence, and by subsequently pressuring their own rulers, they pressure us as well. While we expect our past affluence to continue, they strive to capture that which we take for granted.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, our nation responded with the bi-partisan National Defense Education Act of 1958, which called for a dramatic increase in funds for scientific research and education. Soon after, President Kennedy’s call to place a man on the moon energized the country’s patriotism and scientific curiosity. We recognized the umbilical connection between our international dominance and its sustenance: Education! While the Cold War Era stimulated suspicion and isolationism, the twenty-first century demands that we once again galvanize our education system, this time to provide the tools to shine in the multilateral marketplace of the future.

Extremist religious beliefs, often an aberration of Muslim theology, glorify social structures that in the rest of the world went out with the advent of electricity. Proponents of such rigidity and intolerance are doomed, but their struggle against the democratic enterprise we champion exposes the stress points in our own society and calls for all of us to reaffirm our national theology. This is not a promotion of any specified religiosity but rather an incitation to dedicate ourselves to the future souls of this nation. We may have been endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, but we sure won’t keep them unless we treasure and protect those rights with the same energy and dedication that gained their recognition in the first place. Uneducated and unmotivated our children are ill equipped to respond to the diverse requirements of globalization. With hard work and our own faith as a shield, we are unbeatable. We need unapologetically to arm our children with our own faith and reaffirm the importance and nobility of individual hard work and community responsibility. The generosity of our population’s response to Katrina demonstrates we have the stuff to fix the problems concerning poverty and education that it exposed. We require leadership in examining the global challenge in all its parts, its symptoms, causes, and proper responses. At the Free Enterprise Foundation, we plan on doing our part through academic study, forums, conferences and publications. We ask an enlightened public to join us to do what is required to reclaim the rising sun for the next generation.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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