U.S. culture is an easy target - it's failings are so apparent. Paradoxically, it can also be a hard target because, aside from materialism, there is so little of it. However, because it is so attractive to so many in the USA and beyond, it's easy to get numbed to it.
The US education system, by most accounts, is poor and getting worse. There is an understandable reluctance in such a a corporate-dominated country to spend more on education. How bad is it? Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on the experience and perspective of "a longtime Oakland high school teacher".
My friend often summarizes for
me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year
out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in
overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely
of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell
phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without
reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of
this, he says, there is zero doubt.
Read the rest of this tale, alarming for those living with the system and seriously cautionary for those of us heading in that direction.
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