The early summer weather continues here in Hog Heaven with record daily highs four days running and another predicted for tomorrow. Yesterday was cross training, and I felt much better than I expected considering that I bonked so thoroughly on my long run on Thursday. Today I did a slow and easy one-hour maintenance run and felt okay. Maybe the key to a quick recovery from a long run is to bonk and cut it short! I'll do another hour-long maintenance run tomorrow before starting a new week on Monday.
Runner bonk on occasion. But, do nations? Whether national decline is inevitable as some historians insist or not, there are lots of signs that the U.S. is headed in that direction. Our decline, like that of previous world powers, likely will be gradual, but the end state will be the same. One of the signs of decline is our lack of seriousness as a people. I started following this thread a couple of years ago after reading a column by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. Noonan was writing about the misadventures of the Transportation Security Administration (aka airport screeners). After relating several examples of idiotic action--e.g., selecting grandmothers and children for strip searches when terrorists are almost exclusively young Arabic males--Noonan suggested that such irrational, but politically correct, behavior showed that we were not a serious people. Since then, I've been collecting further examples almost weekly.
Here's one such: Back in 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik--the first orbiting satellite--the U.S. saw it as evidence that we had lost our lead in science, math, and technology. Our response was to roll up our sleeves and work hard to get better. Congress quickly passed NDEA (National Defense Education Act) legislation pumping money into math and science education. The grant money was available to college students on the basis of merit and need. And, merit came before need. (NDEA money helped pay my college costs. So did Army ROTC money. I paid it back by serving in the Army, including a tour in Vietnam, and spending a lifetime teaching.)
Fast forward to recent years and an avalanche of dismal reports on U.S. educational progress vis-a-vis the rest of the world. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for example reports that U.S. students rank 27th out of 33 nations (mostly developed) in math; 22nd out of 33 in science; and 33rd out of 33 in reading. We are looking up at places like South Korea and Norway. We're also looking up at places like Mexico and Hungary.
Sputnik set off a firestorm of self-examination. Reports such as those issued by the OECD occasion little more a bit of hand-wringing and demands for more education spending. Is that serious? Well, per pupil spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world. While we've greatly increased education funding over the past three decades, student achievement has continued to decline. A rational/serious person would say that money isn't the answer. Or, that lack of money isn't the problem.
So, what is the problem(s)? Here are some possibilities: 1) bad teachers. And, there are a lot of them and they're protected by teachers' unions and fearful administrators and politicians. 2) too much time wasted on non-academic things. Mandatory parenting classes for example. Nobody learns to be a parent in a classroom. You learn from your parents and you learn by doing. OJT. On the job training. If you acquired critical thinking skills in classes like algebra and geometry (that often aren't required), you'd be able to figure out most of the conundrums of parenting. I believe that I was a successful parent and I never had a parenting class. Back then, schools were pushing math, science, languages, and such. Remember, we were trying to get back to #1. In education.
(The truth is that the we never fell behind the Soviets in math, science, and technology. We overreacted to a single incident. But, it didn't hurt us to work harder. They put a satellite in earth orbit. We put a man on the moon. Nowadays, we hardly react at all to much worse news. That is hurting us.)
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