Some people blame a lack of money for schools. Others blame poor parenting. Personally, I think the USA has a ruling class of people who want to keep the majority of people semi ignorant so that the people won’t have enough education to challenge the way things are being run.

Parents have been encouraged to blame the schools and teachers for society’s problems. That way the focus isn’t on the real issues facing the USA.

The typical American doesn’t value education. The kids are spoiled and expect life to be easy– unlike people from other countries. Are they in for a shock when they start job hunting!! If you work hard and do extra-curricular work, you will do so much better than American students. Don’t slack off and become like the American kids.

90% of K – 12 students in the US attend public school. But these schools are not all the same. They vary greatly in focus and quality, as well as appropriateness to the learning style of the student. With such a large, diverse set of entities it’s difficult to generalize, but there are a few trends that stand out. The wealthier you are the more likely you are to have quality education and control over the type of school you attend. It’s not uncommon for public schools in wealthy areas to have 95% of high school graduates go on to attend a four year university and the average student enroll with more than a semester of college credit. Most studies show that the top tier of American students are competitive with those from any other country, even in the math and sciences, though there are reasons that this seems dubious to me.

As for the rest of the spectrum, they fail to achieve more for a variety of reasons. Culture is certainly the largest. This may be a factor of the way the school system is designed but the structure of the industry certainly cannot explain all of its dysfunction. Still, a voucher system where schools could actually respond to the demands of the population would go a long way toward convincing some of the more apathetic families that education is, in fact, valuable.

Concerning math education, almost every PhD program in the US seems to have difficulty finding Americans who have the same degree of math acumen as their European or Asian counterparts. In the early ‘90s a book came out called “Bell Curve” which portrayed a possible explanation of this based on the relative cultural acumens of different ethnic groups. He used statistical data to show that Koreans were smarter than everyone else. This book was somewhat controversial.

While there’s no reason to think that all cultures are equally endowed toward all pursuits, I believe there are other reasons why Americans typically don’t apply themselves to the math and sciences as much as Europeans or Asians do. One is that we have so many other ways to make money. Our economy creates an abundance of opportunities for lawyers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, middle managers, doctors, analysts, etc. So why should an American kid struggle with higher level math, especially when there are so many Asians and Europeans who are more willing and more able to do so?

In countries such as Ukraine, India, and China pursuits outside the math and sciences have, historically, been limited. A popular path to success is to study in the US, where there is a relative shortage of mathematical acumen.

Horrible parenting.

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