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This blog is for Watauga High School students taking the Scientific and Technical Visualization class. We are reading and discussing Thomas Friendman's book "The World is Flat". Watauga High School is not responsible for the content of any student entry or any links that might be added by students.
Welcome
In this blog we will be discussing the book ,The World is Flat, By Thomas L. Friedman.
The World is Flat
Blog Archive
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2008
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April
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- Comment on rule 5 and 6 for Thursday
- Read 449-457 - for Wednesday, April 30
- For Tuesday - April 29 read 441-449
- Short reading, 433-437, for Friday April 25
- for Thursday - April 24
- For Wed. - April 23
- For Tuesday, April 22
- Read 391-400
- Begin reading This Is Not A Test - 374-390
- Read 365-373 for tuesday April 15
- For Friday Dirty little secret #4, 5, and 6
- Read Dirty Little Secret #3
- Read - Dirty Little Secret #2 for Tuesday, April 8
- Read 343-349 "Dirty little secret #1"
- Read pages 337-343
- Read 329-336
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April
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7 comments:
The first dirty little secret is America is losing scientists. The first generation scientists are starting to retire and this generation is not picking up the slack. An example is NASA, About 40 percent of the staff is fifty or older. 3 decades ago America was number 3 in the world in science but now we are 12th and slowly declining. China and India are dominating in students getting engineering and science degrees. Though our 4 year programs are better than China and India's, Friedman says in twenty years their programs will match ours.
This isn't anything new, scientists came to the US years ago, and now they are getting old. They retire, and then they are done. We don't have new scientists coming into the states, so we are essentially in a decline.
The first dirty little secret is about the U.S. losing large amounts of scientists to retirement. As it is this generation is not putting out enough scientists to make the cut and keep the U.S. in the race. America use to be in the top 5 in science but now we are not even in the top 10, all of the scientific minds are being educated in India and China. Even if we have a better 4 year plan these other countries will have better in at least 20 years.
America's first secret that could definetely come back to bite us, is our current decline in scientists. People of this generation are no longer aspiring to be scientists, we are leaving that to the rest of the brilliant people in the world, outside of America. How much longer can we fall down the list of top scientific countries and still stay ahead of everyone in scientific development, i would say not long.
The first secret is the declining amount of american scientists due to the scientists we have now are retiring. When the got into the field the aspiration to be a scientist was huge partly to the space race. Now in our generation not nearly as many people aspire to be scientists, because of this the old scientists are retiring and we are not filling there shoes. Maybe it will take another big burst in science breakthrough or technology for "america" to get interested in science again and maybe have hopes of regaining the name stake as a top scientific country in the world.
The first dirty secret talks about how America does not have any Science and Engineering (S&E) prospects that can work for NASA and other government agencies. Freidman said that over 40% of NASA’s workers are over 50 and 20% are over sixty, and that a large number of those are eligible for early retirement. The most shocking fact is that of NASA's 18,146 workers only 4% are under the age of thirty, that is about 745 people...The government does not want to go out of the county to get S&E workers because they are worry about security.
Everyone else summed it up very well in saying that America's S&E enthusiam has gone down the gutter since the days of the space race, and we've fallen really far behind. He talks about the fall from 3rd worldwide to 12th worldwide and all of our leading scientists nearing or past retirement age already. Part of the problem I think is from not enough emphasis on it in school, everyone goes off to get business degrees and whatnot for the quick dollar these days, instead of engineering degrees that are harder and take more work. It's back to the thing about being lazy.
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