Our World

The World is Flat

Earlier this summer my grandpa and I were talking about the topic of globalization and he was giving me some facts that he had read about. He was making reference to a book he had read called, “The World is Flat,” which is a book written by Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times. I had the chance to tell him that we were studying globalization in College Geo. By the way, has anyone read the book, “The World is Flat?” I haven’t been able to yet.
One interesting thing he brought up to me that he read was how globalization became started. Throughout the Cold War countries such as Russia, China and India stayed somewhat isolated from the other countries of the world. Their workforces were separate than a worldwide workforce. By the end of the Cold War there were about 1.5 billion workers in the world not counting Russia, China, and India. However, by the time the Berlin wall came down we started to see these three countries become part of the world workforce. However, when this happened it created what some people may call a problem and others not. Adding these three countries into the workforce contributed another 1 ½ billion people into the workforce just from three countries alone. Another problem with this is that people in these countries are becoming very educated. Now, I shouldn’t say that is a bad thing because the world makes progress through educated people, but in terms of jobs and competitiveness it is a big problem. People in countries like India now have the opportunity to go far in education and they are grasping it like crazy. My grandpa described it as if they are hungry for education. These people have not always had the greatest education opportunities, but now that they have the chance to get an education they’re going for it and they don’t want to stop. I believe the book says that many people want to go further than a Master’s Degree because there is just that “hunger.” The problem is that as this part of the world becomes more educated they now have that competitive edge on us, which we are not used too. Unless we step us standards in America we are going to continue to see ourselves being heavily competed against.
This is a very hot issue and one that President Bush brought up at the State of the Union. He says we need to continue to stay educated and even came to 3M in Minnesota to promote education and attending college. I even attended a conference in St. Cloud a few months ago that discussed this very issue. It’s a big issue but one we don’t hear a lot about. However, we need to put more of our federal and state budgets into education. The first step to solving this problem is going to involve funding and the next step is us. I think this is a very important issue for us to look at especially because these are the more educated workers we will soon be competing against after we graduate.

If you're interested in looking more into this book, check out this link to it's page on Amazon.com

posted by Kevin Hurd @ 2/19/2006 07:23:00 PM