# Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe by Leon M. Lederman > “The penalties of continuing to graduate cultural illiterates (in science and the humanities) may not be evident in year 2000 Wall Street, but it is troubling the leaders of our economic success, the CEO’s of major corporations who see a grim future in our workforce. Can we continue to import educated workers? As the low-level service jobs continue to give way to robots and computers, the needs are increasingly for workers who have high level reasoning skills, which a proper education can supply to the vast majority of students.” > **— Leon M. Lederman**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11018) — Edge published this exact passage in its 2000 Annual Question collection, *WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?*. The response page preserves the surrounding argument and qualifications. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2000 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2000 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first record for the complete response cohort and this passage's promotion status. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/MARS|MARS]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|Never Going to Make It!]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration]] - **Article:** [[articles/Christopher Nolan's Odyssey at the Threshold of Machine Succession|Nolan's Odyssey]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Species-Level Maturation|Species-Level Maturation]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Species-Level Maturation|Species-Level Maturation]] - [[wiki/human-machine interaction|human-machine interaction]] - [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]] - [[wiki/Human-Machine Symbiosis|Human-Machine Symbiosis]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The penalties of continuing to graduate cultural illiterates (in science and the humanities) may not be evident in year 2000 Wall Street, but it is troubling the leaders of our economic success, the CEO’s of major corporations who see a grim future in our workforce. Can we continue to import educated workers? As the low-level service jobs continue to give way to robots and computers, the needs are increasingly for workers who have high level reasoning skills, which a proper education can supply to the vast majority of students.” — Leon M. Lederman, 2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-leon-lederman-survival-depends-race-between-education ```