Defining and Understanding the Drawbacks and Challenges of Global Competition with Regard to Public Education

Edward Callinan
Fundamentals of Curriculum Development
Dr. Jay Dugan
23 March, 2010

A Definition of Education and Global Competition

Fundamentals of Curriculum Development has taught us about the four existing educational philosophies - essentialism, perennialism, progressivism, and reconstructivism. But perennialism, in particular, might best help define the relationship between global competition and public education. In the text Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues (2009), Ornstein and Hunkins note that this philosophy might "be behind some educators' and members of the public's demand that American students must be number one in the world." But the two authors concede that "the West is in decline, a decline that must be addressed." (p. 41)
To place the relationship of the aspects into a historical perspective, Ornstein and Hunkins cite A Nation at Risk (which appeared in the mid-1980s), National Goals for Education (initially published in 1990 and revised in 1994 and 1998), and NCLB (published in 2001). All of the aforementioned called for "improved U.S. education and emphasized international "competition" and "survival." ... The emphasis is on academic and economic productivity. The vitality of the U.S. economy and U.S. political hegemony are linked to strengthening the nation's educational institutions." (p. 45)
Thus a basic definition for the educational issue of the relationship between public education and global competition has been provided. But to fully understand the complexity of this issue, one must analyze potential benefits and potential pitfalls of directing the entire U.S. educational system on one that has a global competition focus.
The initial reaction for a majority of the public would be that there could be no drawbacks to having an educational philosophy that keeps the focus of global competition ever-present. This a challenging notion to propose. Therefore, we will attempt give fair balance to both sides of this issue by at least studying the potential drawbacks first.

Drawbacks of Global Competition As A Determinant of Public Education Policy

First, the idea of treating public education as an arm of economic policy is in direct juxtaposition to the theoretical concept of educational policy. In theory, U.S. educational policy would be written with the exclusive intention of educating the domestic population so that it might be knowledgeable, survive, and even thrive. The money that is spent on public education and the manner in which that education is conducted would have solely those goals in mind. Such goals are not necessarily inextricably linked with an eye towards the way in which other countries are educating, surviving, and thriving. But incorporating global competition as a determinant of public education does exactly that.
Second, basing American educational curriculum on differentials in standardized test results of other countries is questionable, as standardized tests are susceptible to the critique that they do not illustrate creativity, initiative, etc. In his article "The New Untouchables (Published on 20 October 2009) New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman cited Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz's observation that "those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration." But Friedman countered, stating that "those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.” Even if creativity and initiative are removed from the questioning of American public education's impact on its students, there is still the concern that standardized tests cannot even accurately measure practical skill levels and potential, as standardized tests constitute such a limited amount of the American student's school year schedule.
Third, there are people who are skeptical that the lack of skills is responsible for the nation's employment problems. Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute testifies to the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004. In this testimony, Bernstein posed the question: Is there any evidence that the lack of skill is responsible for our current employment problems? "Can the unusually weak jobs recovery be explained by the lack of skill or education of the American workforce?"(testimony given on 11 March 2004). Bernstein's response: "The answer to the first question is an unequivocal “no”—the weak jobs’ performance of the last few years is wholly a demand-side phenomenon. The problem is not the lack of skilled workers; it’s the lack of jobs." Bernstein elaborates on this response, stating that the problem is not one of lack of skills and knowledge thanks to public education, but an unwillingness to pay the high wages demanded by those American workers. Bernstein elucidates in his testimony, clarifying that:
what differentiates foreign workers from their domestic
counterparts is thus less a skills’ gap than a gaping wage
differential. By offshoring skilled and semi-skilled white collar
jobs, U.S. firms are sending a clear market signal that these
offshore workers are worth the investment made by American firms.
Note that throughout this recent period when offshoring concerns
have surfaced, firms in affected industries, such as information
technology and financial services, have been able to maintain
historically high rates of productivity and profitability even
while domestic hiring has stalled or fallen. Thus, while the extent
of the phenomenon is unknown, it is highly likely to increase further,
as will the attendant anxiety it generates among domestic workers in
affected sectors.
4. Finally, the manifested fear that the United States is falling farther behind the world in terms of global competition has impacted public education by proposing that all citizens should be in college preparatory classes in high school and should definitely attend college beyond. But the reality is that not all people are academic. This results in an enormous drain of tax dollars, as students leaving high school are made to believe that they must attend college, as opposed to developing a skill or trade. This has resulted in millions of American students needing to take remedial classes at four year and two year colleges alike. Moreover, the same students that take remedial classes at the beginning of their college tenure statistically do not complete their degree program anyway.

Public Education Challenges Presented By Global Competition

Despite the arguable drawbacks of global competition listed above, it would be difficult to deny that the challenge of global competition is still not one of great concern to the United States and a challenge that needs to be met in some form.
Now that employers have a global workforce to draw from, competition for U.S. jobs comes from around the world. Such a reality was elicited by New Jersey Deputy Commissioner Willa Spicer in 2008, when she asserted that “For the first time in the history of America, you cannot have low skills and get a high paying job.” New York Times columnist resounded the same concern, citing an interview conducted with Todd Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. Martin suggested that:
Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the
decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness,
particularly at the middle and bottom ranges... This loss of
competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of
wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much
closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained
their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis
their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit
and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left
too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out
of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.
Milton Friedman, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, cautioned of the challenges now faced by the United States as long ago as 1995. On 19 February, 1995, Friedman wrote an article for the Washington Post, indicating that the public education system in American needed to undergo and drastic overhaul to face the challenges of global competition. Friedman wrote that "A radical reconstruction of the educational system has the potential of staving off social conflict while at the same time strengthening the growth in living standards made possible by the new technology and the increasingly global market. In my view, such a radical reconstruction can be achieved only by privatizing a major segment of the educational system--i.e., by enabling a private, for-profit industry to develop that will provide a wide variety of learning opportunities and offer effective competition to public schools." And though Friedman suggests that public education itself is part of the problem, he concedes that it is also part of the solution. Again, Friedman:
Our educational system has been adding to the tendency to
stratification. Yet it is the only major force in sight capable
of offsetting that tendency. Innate intelligence undoubtedly
plays a major role in determining the opportunities open to
individuals. Yet it is by no means the only human quality that
is important, as numerous examples demonstrate. Unfortunately,
our current educational system does little to enable either
low-IQ or high-IQ individuals to make the most of other
qualities. Yet that is the way to offset the tendencies to
stratification. A greatly improved educational system can do
more than anything else to limit the harm to our social
stability from a permanent and large underclass.

Conclusion

Regardless of the exact number of drawbacks of using global competition as a determinant of public education policy or the number of challenges that global competition poses for public education policy, it is certain that the world economy has been permanently altered in the last half century. The urgency of this crisis for the United States specifically can be debated, and the potential difficulties posed by facing the challenges of global competition can certainly be daunting. But the United States must recognize, just as every other nation - developed and under-developed - must recognize that whosoever does not address global competition does so at his peril.