The US is an anti-intellectual country.  You can’t discuss the pleasure of learning although good teachers can not help but convey enthusiasm.  We are focused on two main goals.  One is to get everyone up to speed at a practical and necessary level in mathematics (or arithmetic) and reading.  This goal is commendable, although not at the sacrifice of enriched classrooms full of books and charts and maps.

The second part of education is tied to the job market.  There are plenty of jobs in the US, despite high unemployment figures.  But the jobs that go begging are for engineers, and at the very least symbol manipulators.  In Germany, companies train their employees.   It is politically incorrect to say in the US that any student should not go to college.  Yet any one who has taught knows that it’s easy to assess who is not going to benefit.  To charge our already overburdened educational system with leveling the playing field at the core and preparing the mass of students for the jobs of the present and future is really too much to ask.  The ensuing chaos reported in the Economist was predictable.    Education and the Core in the US