These are some fo the reasons that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, warned the govenors' confrence in a Feb. 26 speech that American high-school education is "obsolete." As Gates pu it: "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are amount the top students in the world. By eighty grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. ... The percentage of population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India gradulated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowldge workers, America is falling behind."

We neeed to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, becasue, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television adn get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living. When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, "Tom, finish your dinner - people in China are starving." But after sailing to the edges of the flat world for a year, I am now telling my own daughters, "Girls, finish your homework - people in China and India are starving for your jobs."
I repeat, this is not a test. THis is the beginning of a crisis that won't remain quiet for long. And as the Stanford economist Paul Romer so rightly says, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."