Stupid In America: A Culture of Incompetence

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ABC News aired a 20/20 report last weekend on American public education (a written version of which can be found by clicking here). Although the report — titled 'Stupid in America' — focuses on its call for "school choice" and the article (though perhaps not the TV version) is silent on the issue of homeschooling, it does contain several biting statements that should cause parents and students alike to rethink their approach to education:

To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.

Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."

We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.

Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."

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I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn't read.

So "20/20" sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.

Using computers and workbooks, Dorian's reading went up two grade levels — after just 72 hours of instruction.

His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian's progress but disappointed with his public schools.

"With Sylvan, it's a huge improvement. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're on point. But I can't say the same for the public schools," she said.

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At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.

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The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.

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Read the entire article by clicking here.

None of this information is new to The Rebelution. In fact, one of our original series "The World Is Flat," focused on this very issue — drawing material from author Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat) and Bruce N. Shortt (The Harsh Truth About Public Schools) to argue that the structure and expectations of our society breed incompetence.

It is encouraging to see the truth revealed to a wider audience. Doesn't it inspire you to do hard things when foreign students label you and your fellow American teens as 'stupid'?