Columbus, Zunera S., Student of Metro High School

An excerpt from Zunera's Social Studies essay entitled, “How Can the World be Both Flat and Unflat?”

I always had a problem with non-fiction books; I could never relate to them, or even care about the topic, simply because the topics seemed to never relate to my life.   That was until I read The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.  The book offered a new perspective on a lot of the things I was seeing, or in some ways, wasn’t seeing at all.  I’ve been to China, India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  I’ve looked at these countries each as their own little world and culture, but when Friedman discussed how we are all part of a global “flat world platform” (Friedman, 635), I realized that all these countries connect to each other and progress forward somehow.  Now that I think back, I do begin to realize that all these countries I’ve been to have progressed and modernized dramatically in the past decade. And when I read that, “Japan’s share of world industrial patents rose from 12 percent to 21 percent…By contrast, the U.S. share of patents has fallen from 60 percent to 52 percent” (Freidman, 363) I became very disappointed at America’s failure to take advantage of globalization.  One thing specifically sprung out in the chapter “The Quiet Crisis”,  “The number of American eighteen-to twenty-four-year-olds who receive science degrees has fallen to seventeenth in the world, whereas we ranked third three decades ago”(Friedman, 344). 

I know that personally I will be affected by having more opportunities and more power than my parents had, or any of my ancestors for that matter.  I will have the individual control over my self and what I accomplish.  However, I know that I will be challenged and slowed down by the color of my skin, my gender, my ethnicity, and even my social status.  Even with those hindrances, I know that it would not be unreasonable to have the hope, even the slightest bit, that maybe someday we as humans can overcome prejudices over other’s differences and unite together to turn the dream of a flat and equal world into reality.

Zunera S.
Second year Metro High School student
August 25, 2008