Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree should be read by all global educators. His concepts-from the title metaphors to "fast world" and "slow world," "golden straitjacket" and "electronic herd," globalution" and "the golden arches theory of conflict prevention"-are powerful and Memorable. His upbeat assessment of the wonderful future of this era of globaliza tion, especially the role of technology, is tempered by an understanding of the possible backlash, and he is in favor of a social safety net.

Still, Friedman clearly not only drives a Lexus but, like all of us, usually sees mostly what is behind his eyes. How would globalization look to someone who does not even own a car? He writes that countries can't avoid either the "golden straitjacket" or the "electronic herd." So how possible is the "globalization" that Friedman writes about, "the assimilating of aspects of globalization into your country and culture in a way that adds to your growth and diversity without overwhelming it?" Is it only the olive tree or home/ethnic culture that opposes the onslaught of globalization? Or is poverty an equally important barrier?

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia from 1962 to 1964, lived in Sierra Leone from 1966 to 1968, took teachers to Nigeria for six weeks in 1980, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Ghana in 1997. My West African experience was a great teacher, although my job was teaching. I was always a rich American, although I tried not to live as one.

Globalization has a long history on the West African coast. The "west" arrived in Ghana, for instance, first looking for gold (the Portuguese built the castle Elmina in 1482) and, very soon fo slaves. One of my university students asked during the first class I taught in Ghana: "Doesn't the US owe reparations to Africa for the slave trade?" The Ghanaian coast was part of the protocapitalist system before 1500 (Blaut, 1993:42), and its Akan state produced and traded more than a third of the world's gold between 1493 and 1600. It was a system that showed no evidence of a culture of dependency (FrimpongAnsah, 1993:9-24). Although Ghana was not finally conquered by Great Britain until 1900, and regained its independence in 1957, the tie with the world economy has not produced many benefits for Ghana. The colonial system impacted Ghana or the Gold Coast, as it was earlier known, for centuries. Interestingly, the British Board of Trade wrote to the English Resident of Cape Coast Castle in 1751 with a concern that the Africans were beginning to grow cotton and might become planters and employ slaves, thus competing with the British plantations in America (Buah, 1980:77-78). More recently, the polices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have affected Ghana.

In 1996, gold provided Ghana with 45 percent of its export income; in fact, Ashanti Goldfields became the first African company on the New York Stock Exchange. But, like cocoa, which provided 32 percent of Ghana's export income in 1996, gold is subject to price swings. Ghana is considered a relative success story, yet the government spends $27 per person just to meet debt service payments, while investments in health are only about $4 a year per person and in education, about $9.50. As a comparison, Ghana's debt was $6.2 billion in 1996, about half what the US spent on soft drinks in 1997. (All figures are from Africa Policy Information Center's "Africa's Debt," 1998). When I was a Fulbright scholar in a new university in Ghana in 1997 perhaps a third of my colleagues (university lecturers being paid about $200 a month), and two or three of our most experienced teachers (who returned to school for improvement-of skills), owned cars. I chose not to have a car, and so gained, to a small extent, the perspective of one without wheels who must depend on taxis, colleague car owners' good will, a school van, and my feet. It is not that my Ghanaian colleagues and students did not want to buy cars-and certainly not a Lexus! They simply could not afford them.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree does not even mention the critical need for debt cancellation so that heavily indebted and poor countries can begin to move toward sustainable development. The driver of a Lexus, and even the driver of a nine-year old Toyota Camry like me, need to consider how the concept of sustainable development includes us and our consumption. But reading Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree will be a provocative way to start the discussion. We need to challenge our US students to consider what their role might be in the future world, and how that world could include my colleagues and students in Ghana in shared, growing, socially responsible, and sustainable consumption. But we should also read and heed other perspectives, beginning, for example, with The United Nations 1998 Human Development Report.