EDUCATION - Dumbing Down of the U.S.

This is my personal opinion on education in America. I also am aware that this is likely to gain me the tag as being "elitist" or anti-ordinary-American.

I am NOT talking about "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" (PDF) by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, nor the current state of our K-12 education system.

I am talking about the U.S. education ranking in the world. The 2007 ranking places the U.S. 20^th/179 countries. While this reference is old, the overall standing of the U.S. is still valid.

Why are we not higher, can we do better? I think so.

I see the problem being our culture. The U.S. is not perfect, no human endeavor is. I see the following items need to be change IF we wish to elevate our education ranking in the world:

• Funding of education in general, especially higher education (technical, college). In most countries that rank higher than us, and many that rank below us, the their culture puts high social value on education AND funds education to achieve the goal.
  
  In the U.S., especially those who do not have children in schools, keep complaining about the education taxes they have to pay. While I can understand their view, this reflects that they do not value education as a national priority in general. They do not see funding of education as a civic nor social duty. While the DO have the right to this opinion, it hurts our nation.

• The general political attitude of "if it's too expensive" we cannot afford it. In other words, funding education should be limited to what "they" see as affordable. Problem, better education has a direct effect on our economy in a positive way.

• Then there's the general attitude of the public.
  
  Example from just the other day, a person I was talking to was wondering why eMail worked on the Smart Phone but WEB did not. Being a techie I tried to explain that the problem was likely not the phone, but the WEB service. The person seemed to think there was a communications problem, so I tried to explain that that was not an issue since everything else on the phone worked and as long as the signal between the phone an a cell tower was OK, that's all that was needed. The response and attitude of this person was 'I don't want to know.'
  
  I sincerely believe that IF we want to elevate our nation's education standing, this is the WRONG attitude. As a nation, and an individual, we should want to learn everything, to be curious about everything, even if this knowledge is never used directly.
  
  I am always surprised when some bit of knowledge I picked up, having nothing to do with my formal education or carrier, has helped me make a sounder decisions.
  
  Think of knowledge as being tools in a toolbox, the more you have the better chance you have to deal with problems and fix them.

In essence we need to change U.S. culture if we want to improve education in America.