To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms
Business, EducationDec 29, 2010“50 years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back,” President Obama declared at a recent speech at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; this time, however, we aren’t just losing to the formidable U.S.S.R., but now are being beaten senseless by wimpy little nations like Finland, for cripes sake.
Thankfully, in Shanghai we have a far more scary-looking foe than Finland, one actually worthy of replacing the Red Scare. Fifty years after Sputnik, we still have a healthy fear of a communist takeover of our country, which has been fed not only by Glen Beck’s chalkboard conspiracy theories, but also by the reality that China owns most of our debt, a fact feverishly exploited by both liberals and conservatives to grab votes in the midterm election. Now, in outperforming us in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), these communist children have given us a “wake-up call,” as Obama concludes, demonstrating that we are “in danger of falling behind,” and waking up to a Red Dawn.
Our imploded economy, and the subsequent Red Scare, has led to a