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The US now ranks #25 in math and science. It was ~#1 ~30 years ago. What changed ~30 years ago?
(A cookie for the correct answer)
THE correct answer? Seriously? It must be truly blissful to live in such a simple-minded, black and white world where everything can be explained by a few easy propaganda points.
The fact is there are a myriad of factors leading to our failing educational performance. Some are no doubt related to the DoE, teacher unions, liberals, and all the usual wing-nut scapegoats. It seems this conveniently shifts blame from the personal accountability of parents, however, who have increasingly abdicated their responsibility to raise and educate their children. Instead they view schools as a baby-sitting service where they can dump their little darlings and get on with the "important" things in their life. This is only aggravated by the increasing deterioration of traditional, two-parent families and the continuing increase in working mothers with latch-key children.
But there are many more cultural and social changes we've experienced over the last 40 years. Compared to the students of the 70's, today's kids have grown up immersed in a world of cable television and video games. The 70's students grew up during the space race, where NASA and Apollo were front-page news firing the imagination of a generation and there was a societal emphasis on math and science. Today's students have a boring space truck, and science is vigorously denounced (by a small but quite loud minority) for teaching evolution and global warming. "Intellectual" has become a pejorative. The American ethic has increasingly moved to unmitigated consumerism and greed. Kids are taught it's all about getting as much money as possible, through any means necessary, dumping traditional American values in favor of an "I want it and I want it now" mentality.
So, while I agree that things like the DoE and feel-good liberal meddling hasn't helped American education, I also see wing-nut greed and generally poor moral principles and the religious right's attack on science as equally culpable. In short, America as a whole has screwed itself on education.
I'll take my cookie now.