China in 2008= the United States in 1915?

I read the May 2008 issue of National Geographic today, (Brittany has been bed-ridden while recovering from a stomach bug that she brought back from Mexico and so I have had some time on my hands) the entire 200 page issue was devoted to China.

A very interesting and complicated nation. In the past decade it has made incredible economic progress. One one topic- personal ownership of cars, I believe- it was analogized to the United States in 1915. I think that analogy may hold across the board- a nation just beginning to implement industrialism across the board, on the sidelines while the British bled themselves to death in imperial overreach, etc. The real question is whether China will be the global superpower- or at least a rival one to the US, in one generation.

In 10 years China will have the #1 GDP in the world. They have put a massive investment in education, achieving 91% literacy for their 1.3 billion people, which is really an accomplishment worth a thoughtful whistle. They are learning English in school, years and years worth of it. Only 11% of their 18-19 year olds enter college, as opposed to 64% of ours, and their college system isn't modernized yet. Still, pretty soon they will have as many college students as we do, and better ones at that.

I recently read Tough Choices or Tough Times, which was published by the US Skills Commission in 2007, a kind of quarter-century follow up to the 1983 A Nation at Risk. The news for American education is not good, and it is not good for our future. Why? In the 1980s we all heard about Japan and Germany surpassing American education, which had been the pride of the world for many decades. In the 90s the Asian Tigers and a few Western European nations passed us by. Now we are 28th or 30th on almost all measures. Unless it is a 3rd world country, chances are they are doing better at education.

The result of this is that for the first time there is a substantial likelihood that the next generation will have a lower standard of living than we do now. With the exception of events like the Civil War, Great Depression, WW2, etc., that has never really happened in America- a generational trend downward. We are a society where maybe a majority of junior high kids can't begin to do pre-algebra, and yet parents tolerate it, let them play video games all day and consider a victory won if they can get them to do 1 hour a week of math homework. We have way too many dropouts- at least 25%, and 8th or 9th grade level literacy or math is all it takes to get a diploma. The whole system wastes unbelievable amounts of money on remediation the whole way through, instead of spending the proverbial $2 on 3 and 4 year olds, and another $5 in the K-3 realm, we spend $200 in Jr. High and High School trying to catch kids up and get them to not drop out.

A nation like China, a Communist regime, 163rd out of 169 on freedom of the press, 1 child policies, Tiananmen Square in 1989, etc. should really be a wake up call. They are the new member of the imperial club, throwing money into the Sudan and other places to get oil, regardless of Darfur and all that. They are consuming 6 times as much oil today as they were 1 decade ago, when gas at the Maverick in Clearfield was less than $1 a gallon.

They have way more boys than girls, as a result of the 1 child policy and lack of any pension, retirement, or social security type system. There are thousands and thousands of baby girls abandoned in public parks there every year, my Adoption Law teacher in Texas is raising 2 of them.

Is it science fiction to imagine serious trouble in a few decades- or sooner- when China has tens of millions of angry young men who have no women to marry? When that nation has a huge demographic problem of elderly to care for? When their energy demands are sending world markets even crazier than they are now? When their rulers go into Taiwan or Tibet or other places and try to send a clear sphere of influence message? or more importantly, Central Asia, for oil, (where we have already been building massive permanent bases), and on to the Middle East?

It is difficult to see how America can handle this. In the global economy, the US has already been weakened by the loss of the $20 an hour w/ benefits manufacturing jobs. Those all left. But pretty soon, we will lose the $45K engineer jobs, because we won't have the math and science graduates to do it, and even the few that we have won't be as well-educated as the engineer in India or China, who will do the job for $7K.

Other advanced industrial nations are recruiting teachers from the top of the class. In America, due to low pay, the fact that we want teachers to be social workers who fix the ghettos, huge class sizes, etc.- we are recruiting teachers from the bottom 1/3 of college students. As a result, we are awful at math and science. We are becoming a nation that is only good at producing salesmen, lawyers, and spolied and demanding teenagers who can't do anything. NASA and other entities of a scientific/ research/ technology/ military nature can often only hire Americans by law, and they can't find Americans with the math and science skills. India and China have plenty of them.

Somehow I don't think consumer spending (of cheap Chinese goods on borrowed Chinese money) will be able to drag our economy along much further. Our nation's lack of investment and effort in education is starting to really bite us in the global economy, and I fear it is less and lesslikely that we will be the ones making the next technological and military breakthroughs.