Quote Originally Posted by dpl2 View Post
Maybe not much can be done about the latter, but it is shameful that we can't produce better students as a country. Now I can make the trite statement about it being sad that our kids are too busy doing things other things such as playing video games, sports, partying, blah blah vs. some counterpart in India or China whose nose is in his/her books since the age of 6.
Basically, you (as a country, not individual) are starting to reap what has been sown for decades.

First, there is the glorification of stupidity in the media and in society for the last decades. That glorification has been intensifying in the last couple of years, look at what passes for a role model nowadays. But the media aren't the only responsible party... parents have their fair share of responsibility.

Sometimes after the 80s, actually being a parent went out of fashion... it was easier to outsource everything to school or TV and to attempt to become the friend of "precious snow flake" instead of the parent of your kid.

Finally, there was also a change in education... somewhere, somehow, education switched from actually teaching things to preparing for a standardized test.

We are starting to see the same problem on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to successive education reforms.