Nothing less than America’s place on the world stage is at stake unless our approach to our children’s lives and education dramatically alters. Without systemic changes, the global political and economic power base will shift from the U.S. to other countries. And if that happens, it will be too late to do anything about it.

That’s the opinion of Ron Thorpe, Vice President and Director of Education at New York’s Thirteen/WNET, America's most-watched public television station.

Thorpe also is Executive Producer for "Where We Stand: America's Schools in the 21st Century," which examines the state of our schools and our ability to prepare our students to compete in a global economy.

The documentary focuses on U.S. schools but also looks at China and Finland for comparisons and contrasts. It airs Sept. 15 on PBS.

Name: Ron Thorpe

Title: Vice President and Director of Education, Thirteen/WNET

Education: Ed.D. and Ed.M., Administration, Planning and Social Policy, Harvard Graduate School of Education
 

Q: Where does the U.S. stand in comparison and contrast to China?

What’s important about international comparisons is what they are going to mean for our students in what Tom Friedman calls “the flat world.” Whenever international comparisons are brought up, many Americans, especially educators, immediately begin to talk about the differences between countries, and they use that as an unfortunate excuse for not facing the main issue.

Q: What is that issue?

A: Whether a country like China or Finland educates all of its children or just the most talented tenth, or whether those countries have more of a monoculture than ours, the issues really aren’t relevant because our students are going to be competing against them.

Q: How is the U.S. doing in terms of investment in education?

A: In China, with its growing economy and an International Monetary Reserve fund that is increasing every month at an enormous rate, they can afford to and are choosing to invest in human capital. During the time we have been involved with the Iraq war, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on that front, and during the same time, China has spent a similar amount on universities.

Q: What are the consequences for the U.S. of this allocation of resources?

A: What is scary about this difference in investment is that we will not feel the impact of it probably for another 10 years -- but when we do feel it, it will be too late to do anything about it. Our children will be faced with a global economy. They need to be ready to compete in it, no matter what is happening in other countries.

Q: What about Finland? Why is it significant in the larger picture of K-12 education?

A: When we sent our camera crew to Finland to look in on those schools, the chief education person told us that in Finland, they have no natural resources except their forests, so they have no choice but to invest in their people.

In education, for example, that means that all people preparing to teach spend six years in higher education and enter the teaching force with a master’s degree. And they do not pay for that education.

Q: What was the most powerful finding of your research for the program?

A: The pivotal moment of the show is when we are interviewing a fifteen-year-old girl in Ohio. She is the host sister in a family that has Annie, an exchange student from Finland, living with them for a year. When we asked her what she has learned from having Annie in the house, she said, “I knew there were continents, but I didn’t know there were countries in continents.”

We chose to use this quote because it reflects the startling statistics we know about how poorly Americans understand the world around them.

Along with that, although Annie has straight As in Ohio, she gets no credit for her U.S. educational experience in Finland. She has to repeat the 11th grade there.

Sheila Riley is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist. She is also an experienced online editor and ESL curriculum developer, and teaches ESL at City College of San Francisco.

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