US President Barack Obama has asked American children to brace for competition from their counterparts in India and China who are all “interested in trying to find out how they get a foothold in this world economy”.
Even while exuding confidence about the American capability of matching or exceeding anything that children from other countries do, Obama cautioned: “But we don’t do it by just resting on what we’ve done before. We’ve got to out-work and out-innovate and out-hustle everybody else. We’ve got to think about new ways of doing things.”
Speaking to high school students in Bladensburg, Maryland, on Monday, Obama said: “You guys are all coming up in an age where you’re not going to be able to compete with people across town for good jobs — you’re going to be competing with the rest of the world.”
“Young people in India and China, they’re all interested in trying to figure out how they get a foothold in this world economy. That’s who you’re competing against,” he said. Obama lamented that curriculums in a large number of American high schools are still based on the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s and have not been updated.
He spoke of a competition launched by his administration to start redesigning some of the high schools to make them more interesting, exciting and more relevant to young people. “We call it Youth CareerConnect. And we’re offering $100 million in new grants to help schools and local partners develop and test new curricula and models for success,” he said, adding: “We want to invest in your future.”
Setting forth his goals for American children, Obama said: “We want to create new jobs. We want to make sure that people have the skills to fill those jobs. We want to make sure every young person has a world-class education. And we want to make sure that we reward hard work with things like health care you can count on and wages you can live on.”