I googled “the world is flat” the other day and got an astonishing 78 million hits. A fair chunk are attributable to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.”

It is now conventional wisdom that the world is “flat” – Friedman’s clever shorthand for the fact, as he puts it, that “the global competitive playing field [is] being leveled” by technology, trade and large populations of well-educated people. You can barely get through a speech or an article these days without hearing some variation on that theme.

And most often it’s cited as a reason for some sort of Marshall Plan for education. In his State of the Union address, President Bush called for a renewed push for science and engineering education. Out in the states similar calls are being heard. Michigan’s Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, in her recent State of the State speech, said the path to rebuilding Michigan’s shattered industrial economy lies through “a quality education, and today that means an affordable college education.”

Friedman himself calls for “an all-hands-on-deck, no-holds-barred, no-budget-too-large crash program for science and engineering education immediately.”

Now nobody would disagree that our schools – and parents – could be doing a much better job. But this isn’t the first time that there have been calls for “no-budget-too-large” approaches too education. Can anybody spell Sputnik?

After the Soviets launched the first satellite in 1957, Washington flooded campuses with money for science and engineering. But by the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were complaints among science and engineering grads that there were too many people competing for their jobs – including foreigners. Even today, half of scientists and engineers wind up going into management rather than the laboratory.

Besides, it wouldn’t appear that America is in serious danger of being eclipsed in the area of technological innovation. Fifty two percent of all new patents are filed in the United States. That’s down from 60 percent in recent decades, but it hardly suggests a crisis. And the surprising strength of the economy in recent years has been attributed to sharply rising productivity as a result of massive tech investment.

In my home state of Michigan there has been a lot of gnashing of teeth over the fact that the proportion of adults who hold a college degree is only 22 percent. But nationally it’s only 26 percent. The real source of Michigan’s problem, if indeed it is a problem, is found in a different statistic: Only 73 percent of Michigan 9th graders finish high school in four years.

And while the world may be flattening, in the sense of drawing closer together as a result of digital technology, there are still plenty of commanding heights – and even Friedman concedes that America occupies many of them. American capital markets are far and away the mightiest in the world. American labor markets are still the most flexible, allowing human capital to flow to its highest uses. English is the international language of choice, reflecting America’s economic, military and cultural power.

And it’s not as if America is falling behind other countries in educational spending. Indeed, America spends far more than most other countries on education; K-12 spending in my home state of Michigan, for example, has been rising faster than inflation for decades. And despite the flat-line performance of its students, its teachers are in the top five in terms of compensation.

Additionally, the governor is proposing $4,000 bribes – excuse me, Merit Awards – to anybody who finishes two years of college with a modest grade average.

But wait a minute: economists have been telling us that the “returns to education” have been rising sharply. Anybody who completes college can expect sharply higher lifetime earnings than mere high school graduates, much less dropouts. So why should we be handing out money to people for doing what’s in their interest to do on their own?

Friedman and other big spenders would be more persuasive if they were proposing a “no-holds-barred” reform of K-12 education. Alas, Friedman, like most liberals (and lots of suburban Republicans, to be fair), has virtually nothing to say about the subject. Too bad, because it’s a fair question whether America can sustain its dominance in the flat-world economy of the 21st century with a flat-earth education system dating to the 19th century.

Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist.