APRIL 2011
BRUNSWICK SCHOOL
MONTHLY MAILING A MESSAGE FROM THE HEADMASTER We’re Down 6 – 1 I read recently that some economists are predicting that within the next decade or so, America will become the second largest world economy after China and that shortly thereafter our economy will be surpassed by India as well. That prediction dovetailed nicely with another article I read in the The Asia Times a while back. In the article entitled, “Greater China…China’s Six-to-One Advantage Over the United States,” the author outlines both subtle as well as obvious ways the United States is losing ground to China. “America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six to one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today compared to only 6 million in the United States. The numbers underestimate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding. It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos – making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter.” Then the author of the article goes on to say: “The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in history…The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world – surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills – can compete.” …and his conclusion: “Few of China’s piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers.” My point in sharing this article with you is not to push piano lessons for all Brunswick School students, but rather to point out how time is being spent by the youth of one country versus the youth of another. Maybe we will learn in twenty years or so of the wide and powerful intellectual benefits of excessive screen time (video games. TV, Facebook, AIM, etc.) on America’s youth … but somehow I doubt it.
“Greater China….China’s Six-to-One Advantage Over The US” by Spengler, The Asia Times, December 2, 2008.