"But the greatest challenge will be changing a culture that neither values education nor sacrifices the present for the future as much as it used to—or as much as our competitors do."
That sounds about right. We have become spoiled and lazy, and as a whole, are unwilling to make sacrifices in order to achieve a larger, longer-term goal.
That sounds about right. We have become spoiled and lazy, and as a whole, are unwilling to make sacrifices in order to achieve a larger, longer-term goal.
I'm afraid I have to agree. For example, what "sacrifices" are those of us not in the military being asked to make for the Iraqi war? We are being asked to accept tax cuts and higher spending.
Regarding education, I was struck by the following statement on page 2 of the article:
China will produce about 3.3 million college graduates this year, India 3.1 million (all of them English-speaking), the U.S. just 1.3 million. In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000, America’s only about 70,000.
Hence, China and India are turning out about 2.5 and 2.4 times as many college graduates as the U.S., respectively. However, they are turning out about 8.6 and 5.0 times as many engineering graduates, respectively.