The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law

This weekend I managed to squeeze in (between the celebrations of my sister being named homecoming queen! Yeah!) another of Dr. McLeod's recommendations.

Today: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us, Robyn Meredith, 2008, $10.85 on Amazon (but buy through CASTLE as our non-profit gets a little of the proceeds). Here's the book's website.

The Bad:

Capitalist Ideology. At times, it's a little over-the-top and feels like it was written by a wall-street tycoon. This is not too annoying, but it is certainly noticeable at times (yes, i know I am picky as in the last one I complained about the socialism).
A little heavy on history. I think most of it is relevant, but if you are not concerning about mid-twentieth century Indian and Chinese history you might want to skip the first few chapters. The part about eating kids was sort of especially gruesome.
Slightly repetitious. This is something that many books in this genre suffer from, but I did notice it a few times in this one as well.
Could have a few more citations, but that is probably just the scholar in me complaining.

The Good:

Well researched. You can clearly tell that the author, despite her young age, has gone to great lengths to gather facts and details. I appreciated that. I am sure it is still surface-level for geopolitical scholars, but for your average reader it contains a lot of great information.
Not built to scare. A lot of books in this genre are built to scare people. For instance, even in The World is Flat I came away with a sense that Friedman thought scaring people might be effective. This book doesn't have any of that fear-mongering element.
Not a lot of opinion. The author did a good job sticking to the facts and using facts to make points, as opposed to having opinions and then finding facts to support them. I thought this was a better approach than I have seen in a lot of books in the genre.
Respectful. Because of the lack of opinion, there was little demonizing of either Indians, Chinese or Americans (or for that matter anyone else).

Points Worth Mentioning:

Education is America's immediate answer. Obviously I am going to love this point, but it was as clear as a church bell on a still Sunday morning. Like Fareed Zakaria, Meredith makes the point that education is one of America's last great advantages (heck, China closed all of its universities in the past century - some of since been reopened). And that education can spur innovation and economic activity into the next century.
Outsourcing is real, but limited. Things that are easily outsourced ... have already been outsourced. So while we did lose the entire toy industry, most of the garment industry, most of the tech. manufacturing industry and many, many others (including my wife's old accounting job to India), many of the remaining jobs today will continue to remain in the United States because they are not as easily outsourced.
America is a net beneficiary from both outsourcing and China and India's increased relevance. Leaving geopolitics aside, just economically we benefit in two ways: (1) we save lots of money at Walmart as prices are deflated because of the cheap manufacturing costs; and (2) our 401k's and portfolios make money because American companies have profited substantially from the influx of cheap labor and new markets. So, while we complain about losing jobs, the vast majority of us are seeing real benefits from globalization.
India and China are not Peers (yet). While there are billions of people and cities sprawling into the skyline and the countryside, neither China nor India are yet America's or Europe's peers. They are behind in almost every measure, have enormous societal welfare issues, spend less on almost everything, have an absurdly low standard of living, are still heavily illiterate, etc. Their sheer purchasing and production power because of the numbers makes them especially worth keeping an eye on, but they are no where near the American way of life (for better or worse).
Economies Intertwined. But, while they are still playing catch-up and will be for many more decades, their economic impact on the global economy makes them impossible to ignore. It is not just that China holds a ton of dollars, but American companies will suffer enormously if China or India's economies stumble - and that will affect all of us by driving down the market, home prices, raising inflation, etc. They are part of our economy now (for better or worse).
Education is our competitive advantage. There are lots more points, but you get the gist. However, I wanted to again return to education. Public schooling was our great competitive advantage during the post-War industrial build and it can be our great competitive advantage during the post information revolution reorganization. But, our current system was built for the industrial era, not the information era - and for education to again be our great competitive advantage, we have to adapt our schools.

Recommendation: I loved this book. It was fabulous and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was well written, readable, fact-filled, and intelligent. It is probably a necessary read for most professors and a highly recommended read for most school administrators. Get it and enjoy it.