"Girls, finish your homework..."

"...people in China and India are starving for your jobs." (Friedman 277)
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Question: Do current curricula and pedagogical practices in ELA classrooms support these "new middlers" being successful in a flat world economy. How so? If not, which among the "help wanted" ad characteristics Friedman describes are our ELA classrooms failing to address?

The "middlers" are no longer those people who simply have a trade (electrician, carpenter, plumber, etc.). No longer do consumers want someone who can perform menial tasks with a price tag of a jillion dollars.

The "new middlers" are innovative. They've created a skill set that only they have, and these "new middlers" have adapted this skill to the needs of their consumers. Furthermore, they've learned how to market this unique skill and create a need for it.

Being a "new middler" is all about diversifying one's abilities: "I sent you to college to be a doctor or lawyer! What the hell is a 'search engine optimizer'?" (Friedman 269) I'll tell you what a "search engine optimizer" is: it's a person who has recognized a need, developed a skill to address that need, and was extremely successful in marketing and getting paid for his service.

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Throughout the Fall '06 Semester and into Spring '07 Semester, I'm learning that the curriculum that many classrooms use is currently changing. Teachers, specifically of ELA, are recognizing lack of student motivation and interest as a crisis. These teachers have pledged to make a difference and change their students lives. Methods used by these teachers now relate content information to the students' individual lives, educate students about how to make solid decisions as members of a community and society, and prepare students for college, adulthood, and a life in the working world.

However, not every teacher or curriculum director has recognized the crisis that other teachers have. Deficits in learning quality affect students abilities to make decisions, reach for higher goals, and aspire to be the best people that they can be.

With regard to Friedman' s "Help Wanted" characteristics, (The World is Flat, 2006) these "failing teachers" miss nearly every characteristic.

The most severely missed "Help Wanted" Characteristics:

• The Great Synthesizers: Throughout our methods classes here at SUNY Cortland, we've learned that "synthesis" is one of the higher levels of thinking. Synthesis involves drawing information from several sources, rearragning this information, and making one new and coherent "sense" out of this information. Students must be able to make sense of these various information banks. Dare I ask how pre-fabricated worksheets, multiple choice questions, and fake essays help students to make sense out of important information?
• The Passionate Personalizers: This characteristic involves marketing oneself to meet the needs of diverse consumers rather than one homogenous group. In today's failing classrooms, more often than not, studetns write stories, poems, essays, or articles knowing that only the assigning teacher will see the work. How is this helping students "personalize" their work to meet the likes and dislikes of a broader audience? If a studnet knows that he or she is writing for the eyes of more than one person, his or her work will probably adopt an entirely different tone.
  

In summation, our educational generation is on the cusp of something HUGE... Just take a glance at all of the new and wonderful programs available to teachers (Programs like Nancie Atwell's Reading/Writing Workshop, Richardson's Blogvangelism, and Google LitTrips). These programs, methods, and theories are all proven to work! How many times could a traditional (boring, cut-and-dried, and outdated) teacher say that he or she had 100% student involvement, comprehension, and completion of worksheets and fake essays??