Thomas Friedman's 'The World Is Flat'

Higher education is becoming more important than ever as we shift into what Thomas Friedman calls a flattening world. Friedman, the author of The World is Flat is obviously not speaking geographically so what does he mean by a flattening world? He is rather speaking of a new era of globalization which allows us as individuals to compete globally thanks to new technology. The author warns America, “Because it is flattening and shrinking the world, Globalization 3.0 is going to be more and more driven not only by individuals but also by a much more diverse-non-Western, nonwhite- group of individuals” (11). Basically America is now being pressured by a quiet crisis which is allowing other countries to compete a lot closer with us. Yet, if

We all know there is high encouragement to attend college already; not to mention receiving a Bachelor’s Degree is the norm today, however we know that isn’t working for those that don’t feel college is for them. Our educational system should focus on steering students equally towards Community and Technical Colleges. I’m not the only one that thinks this way though, some progressive education reformers are moving towards this idea which they call a more intellectual version of “career and technical education,” or CTE. Samuel Lucas, a University of California sociologist and an author explains matters further when he writes, “You can teach any given subject at multiple levels. You can teach people how to fix a car where you talk about turning the screw. At that level of knowledge they could get a job. But you could also teach them, well, what are the principles by which this combustion engine is working?” (qtd. By Dana Goldstein). In other words Samuel is trying to say that teaching a student technical skills is sufficient for a job, but if you teach them to understand what they do they are that much stronger as an individual in the future workforce of a globalized world. In that way let’s decrease the stigma of Community and Technical Colleges so we can embrace the student’s curiosity and passion along with their IQ. Friedman knows how much it matters, he calculates, “For all these reasons I have concluded that in a flat world, IQ- intelligence quotient –still matters, but CQ and PQ-curiosity quotient and passion quotient –matter even more” (314). In other words America has stressed traditional ways of educating for a long time, but in this new flat world we are going to find out that CQ and PQ are going to outweigh IQ with creative minds to innovate. This is a problem mostly with the stigma attached to Technical Colleges because that is where the curiosity and passion of