Ellen Greaves, Ed.D., J.D., Executive Director, Professional Educators of North Carolina

In the fifth and final article about our delegation’s trip to India, I will share our recommendations for North Carolina’s public school education as we work to ensure that we have the very best education system for our children. There is much to be done if our children will receive the skill development they need to be able to compete in a global economy.

In his book The World Is Flat*, Thomas Friedman sounded an alarm that served as the organizing focus of our visit to Bangalore and Delhi. Friedman underscored the importance not only of a global education for youth in the United States, but also the urgent need we have to significantly increase the numbers of students going into math, science, and technology (engineering being included with these areas) so that we would have a sufficient supply of people with the skills necessary to solve our increasingly complex challenges. We needed much larger numbers of people with the skills in order to take advantage of the United States’ historic advantage in creative problem solving.

Students in computer lab, Navodaya Vidyalaya School, Delhi

In Rising Above the Gathering Storm**, a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies responded to questions posed by Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Jeff Bingaman of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. These questions essentially sought answers to how the U.S. can successfully enhance our science and technology endeavors so that we can be successful in competing in the global economy of the 21st century. The committee’s recommendations had one of its foci on K-12 education, including recruiting 10,000 science and math teachers annually by offering 4-year scholarships; strengthening the skills of 250,000 teachers through training and graduate study in these areas; and, enlarging the numbers of students who are prepared to enter college in science, engineering, or mathematics by increasing the numbers of students who take and pass AP or International Baccalaureate science and mathematics courses.

Sitar music at dinner for delegation, Gurgaon (suburb of Delhi)

We in North Carolina are painfully aware of the loss of manufacturing jobs in our historically dominant areas of textiles and furniture. Because of this job erosion in manufacturing and in technology, much focus has been placed in the U.S. media on the emergence of China and India as global economic superpowers. What Friedman, the Gathering Storm report, and our experiences would emphasize, however, is that our more serious challenge is the potential loss of the United States’ position of world leadership in scientific and technological innovation†. I was in grade school when the USSR launched Sputnik and the U.S. responded with increased emphasis on math and science and our academically gifted, and we eventually successfully landed a man on the moon. The difference with the challenge we now face is that there is no one event that can serve as a wake up call, and our response time will need to be much quicker than that which we used to respond to the challenge posed by the launching of Sputnik.

Students performing traditional dance, Salwan School, Gurgaon

Here in North Carolina we can be proud of our School of Science and Mathematics; however, only 600 of our 1.4 million students benefit from this program. Our universities, distinguished for their accomplishments in engineering and medicine, produce few teachers of math or science; thus, we have an inadequate supply of highly qualified teachers who are capable of inspiring students to pursue these fields. Our public schools, in many instances, do not have the instructional resources to provide the lab equipment for the current standard course of study in the sciences. As our report notes, “the State’s educational pipeline for students motivated to major in those fields is threatening to wither.”‡ In the last two years, the entire state of North Carolina has produced only 2 graduates who were prepared to teach physics in K-12.

Plaque at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi emphasizing work ethic (“Work is God”)

North Carolina can also learn from India’s decision to invest in its most academically gifted children. We have an excellent, well-established universal system of public education. We have focused on ensuring that our most academically challenged students are moved to a higher level of performance so they will not fail. Without sacrificing our commitment to universal education, we need to make a greater commitment to investing more in our gifted and talented children. As one member of the delegation put it

“it is easy to achieve educational excellence if one ignores equity”

(as observed in India), and “it is easy to achieve equity if one ignores excellence. The challenge is to achieve both.”± We also need to balance our investments so that our institutions of higher education provide world-class advanced educational opportunities while insuring that our K-12 education provides that all children receive the opportunities to fully realize their abilities—not only the challenged but the gifted as well.

The children of North Carolina (as well as its adults) need to be prepared to work and compete in a global economy. Our public schools need to ensure that our children, especially in the elementary and middle school grade levels, receive instruction in foreign languages, and particularly languages of emerging regions (Central and South America, Middle Eastern, and most importantly, Asia). Our children need to become well-versed in world events and develop an understanding of the world’s cultures as part of the curriculum for which they are held accountable.

As Friedman noted, the challenge for North Carolina and the United States is whether we will do what it takes to maintain our role as world leaders of innovation, dreams and economic power, or whether we will join other nations that largely exist on memories of past greatness. Our delegation urgently believes we must address our challenges so that we can remain the innovators and economic power that the world has envied. Our children deserve nothing less.

Other photos taken while in India:

Traffic in Bangalore (10:30 a.m. on a Monday)	Lotus Temple, Delhi

	Carvings in marble, Taj Mahal, Agra
Woman performing traditional dance, Delhi

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*Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
**Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine. Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2006.
†Dornan, John. Learning From India. Raleigh, NC: Public School Forum of North Carolina, 2006.
‡Ibid.
±Ibid.