Thomas Friedman’s article brings to light many of the challenges our nation is facing today in terms of the direction we are heading and the roadmap we are laying out for our children. What will the U.S. look like in another 20 years? Will we be even farther behind nations like China or will we find a way to get excited and motivate our citizens to continue to be the nation that produced such ingenious idea as the Internet?
When the space race began and we saw the launch of Sputnik, we responded by investing in science and math education and produced more students studying math and science than anywhere else. What has happened to this push? Where is our Sputnik? What needs to be done to get our nation excited again about these fields? Do we need to be surpassed by other nations before we really get motivated? Will it be too late by then?
Friedman brought up many valid points about where a lot of wasted money is going. I’m not naïve enough to think we can just pull all of our troops out of the Middle East and the war on terror will end. But when I think about all the money that is going overseas and I look, from the inside, where we are falling short in education, I feel very frustrated and helpless. In my personal opinion, I would love to see our troops come home and focus more money on defending our boarders here and finding ways to become less dependent on foreign oil. If we spent that money on better educating our citizens, especially in STEM education, I feel strongly that we have people right here in this country that can solve these problems if they are given the opportunity to study and thrive in these fields.
Aloha Mareth, I agree with you-that too much money is spent on war and not enough on education and STEM. I think the nation should make saving the planet a national priority instead of war. I think this compassion for our planet would be our sputnik to inspire our youth to embark on STEM education. It might also bring the world together to fight a common, peaceful cause.
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