Third World America - Arianna Huffington [42]
Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski explains that broadband isn’t just important for faster email and video games—it’s the central nervous system for democracies and economies of the future: “Broadband is indispensable infrastructure for the twenty-first century.84 It is already becoming the foundation for our economy and democracy in the twenty-first century … [and] will be our central platform for innovation in the twenty-first century.”
How indispensable is it? In a study of 120 countries, researchers found that every 10 percent increase in broadband adoption increased a country’s GDP by 1.3 percent.85 Even a farmer these days needs high-speed Internet to stay in touch with world commodity prices and access the latest information on weather and planting and seed technologies.86
Unfortunately, when it comes to broadband, America is also falling behind.
In 2001, the United States ranked fourth among industrialized countries in broadband access.87 By 2009, we had dropped to fifteenth. As for average broadband download speed, we rank nineteenth. Over one hundred million Americans still don’t have broadband in their homes.88 And while 83 percent of college graduates in the United States have access to broadband, only 52 percent of high school graduates do.89
Breaking the numbers down by race and income reveals depressing discrepancies. For instance, around 65 percent of Asian Americans, Caucasians, and Hispanics use broadband at home; that usage rate falls to 46 percent for African Americans. Among households earning more than $100,000 a year, 88 percent have access to broadband versus 54 percent among households making between $30,000 and $40,000. And the split between rural and city folk? Broadband has penetrated just 46 percent of the farming community, compared to 67 percent for the rest of the country.
To help close the widening gap between us and the rest of the digitally connected world, the Obama administration has proposed a national broadband plan, with the goal of increasing broadband access from around 63 percent currently to 90 percent by 2020.90 The plan would also ensure that every high school graduate is digitally literate. This sounds great. But 2020? That hardly has the sense of urgency you’d expect from a country that is quickly falling behind. If it’s truly a priority and important to national security and the relative position of the United States in the world, why put it off for a decade?
AMERICA’S SCHOOLS DON’T PASS THE TEST
As bad as America’s sewers, roads, bridges, dams, and water and power systems are, they pale in comparison to the crisis we are facing in our schools.
I’m not talking about the physical state of our dilapidated public school buildings—although the National Education Association estimates it would take $322 billion to bring America’s school buildings into good repair.91 The real devastation is going on inside our nation’s classrooms. If America’s public education system were a product, it would have been recalled. If it were a politician, it would have been impeached. If it were a horse, it would have been taken behind the barn and shot.
Nothing is quickening our descent into Third World status faster than our resounding failure to properly educate our children. This failure has profound consequences for our future, both at home and as we look to compete with the rest of the world in the global economy.
Historically education has been the great equalizer. The path to success. The springboard to the middle class—and beyond. It was a promise we made to our people. A birthright we bestowed on each succeeding generation: the chance to learn, to improve their minds, and, as a result, their lives. But something has gone terribly wrong—and we’ve slipped further and further behind.
Among thirty developed countries ranked by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States ranked twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science.92 Even the top 10 percent of American students,