The World Is Flat Summary

The quite crisis is described in The World is Flat, as the idea that the United States is not ready for a flat world. The US has a mix of institutions, laws and cultural norms that produce a level of trust , innovation and collaboration that enable the country to constantly renew the economy and raise the standard of living (Friedman, 2006). The author goes on to explain a set of six dirty little secrets that contribute to the quite crisis. Dirty secret number 1; The decline of the number of students completing degrees in math and science. This is based on a lack of interest and possible a decline in work ethic from Americans (Friedman, 2006). The students receiving advanced degrees in the US are not American students. The issue this causes

The chances of either happening are low, however, students would rather not put in the hard work to obtain the advanced degrees. Secret number 3; Ambition gap, when low-prestige , low-paying jobs are outsourced, companies are able to save money while increasing efficiency (Friedman, 2006). Dirty secret number 4; Education gap at the bottom, there is inequality among American schools (Friedman, 2006). US schools are funded at the local level allowing wealthy districts to increase taxes to facilitate better facilities than a poorer district (Friedman, 2006). This is a huge dis-service to talented children in poor areas, they may have to mind to excel but lack the tools to succeed. Secret number 5; Funding gap, US congress has decreased the funding for research for physical and mathematical sciences (Friedman, 2006). This has led to a decrease in the number of patents and research papers published from American authors (Friedman, 2006). The last dirty little secret is the Infrastructure gap. America is well behind other developed countries with its access to broadband (Friedman, 2006). All these factors combine to describe the crisis of education we have in