The startling truth about America's biggest national security problem.

[UCmeNdc]

The United States is a nation of militantly ignorant people, arrogant in their beliefs, unable to change their minds and unwilling to try. We lack education.

And the lack of education in this country is such a problem that national security adviser Jake Sullivan described it this week as a critical issue for our national security. "I do consider it a national security problem," he told me during a White House briefing on Tuesday. "In fact, it's Dr. [Jill] Biden who has repeatedly said — and the president frequently quotes her — that any country that out-educates the United States will outcompete the United States, and that is a fundamental national security issue."

We have to do better. The reasons are clear. Biden is correct: Without a competitive education, we sentence our progeny to industrial servitude while those who are educated amass power and wealth. Look around. We're in a new space race with China. We're behind in hypersonic technology. Our scientists say we must have a nuclear rocket to beat the Chinese to Mars, but millions of people believe that Clorox might treat the coronavirus. Some even tried it.

https://www.rawstory.com/here-s-the-startling-truth-about-america-s-biggest-problem/

[MustLoveBeagles]

1. K&R

[Irish_Dem]

2. China knows this, and is ramping up its educational system as we speak.

China will achieve its goal of being a superpower.

[hunter]

11. That ship has sailed. China is a superpower.

Welcome to the 21st century.

[Irish_Dem]

17. I agree with you. But I am trying to be careful how I break the news.

People cannot wrap their heads around this fact.

[onecaliberal]

3. As long as the rich own the government it doesn't matter how much education you have.

[Auggie]

4. +1

[Harker]

8. +33 more. n/t

[Xoan]

5. And climate ...

will have the last word.

[ShazamIam]

6. Of course it is and it is why conservatives & Republicans have been attacking education for

decades including the nightmare of charter schools, that took so much funding from public schools and all the states that have kept teacher salaries high and student classroom counts high, and all the other attacks on curriculum and policies.

Then throw in all the television shows of the last two decades that celebrated ignorance. I haven't watched any of them, only read about them was disturbing enough.

[KT2000]

7. Social media is what they consider

education. They really do think they are educated and knowledgeable when they read and listen to the RW media. As a RW someone said to me - I do research, have you ever heard of the Cato Institute? The algorithms supply the research.

[rickyhall]

9. But repugs know that well educated people DON'T VOTE FOR THEM.

Education destroys authoritarianism and religion (which are often one in the same).

[harumph]

15. I have raised my children with the best

education I could manage, often providing supplements to their
public schools which were good - but not great. I mandated reasonably
early bedtimes - kept track of their progress and made sure
they were politically literate. I made sure they had read
a selection of great works ... Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens, Hardy, Woolf, Simon de Beauvoir
Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and many many others.
We did home science experiments. They played instruments.
They can write persuasively. My three oldest think that the
children of this country are sadly uneducated and our country is
accordingly at peril - but of course (as you imply in your pithy post)
the goals of the powerful are to raise us like mushrooms - to keep us
in the dark and feed us shit.

[rickyhall]

16. They still teach us to be factory workers when there's hardly any factories left.

[luvtheGWN]

10. When a football coach earns 10x more than

the President of the University, you have a problem.

In fact, I tend to believe that college courses are watered down so that athletes on scholarships are able to pass their exams. What really matters is what is being taught.

[NullTuples]

12. Texas: We'll make up for it with conservative religion!

Also, Putin: "The Cold War is not over until I say it is over"

[Alexander Of Assyria]

13. True and sad. Other than America, any other country with folks chugging Clorox?

[whathehell]

21. Um, no,, you're confusing '"folks" in America with a SUGGESTION

by ONE mentally ill fool, and if you think the rest of the world is filled with comparative. geniuses, it's clear you need to get out more.

[Lonestarblue]

14. Repressive regimes likenthe Taliban control education because educated people demand change.

Schools in Afghanistan under the Taliban are mostly about teaching repressive religion. That is what Republicans here want. No teaching of history about any past events that make the US look bad, like slavery and the genocide of the indigenous population. Science should come from the Bible, and literature is reserved for white writers, preferably male. As the last year with Covid has shown, we have already created generations who cannot think their way out of a paper bag and those same people are now demanding to control school curricula and forbid the teaching of facts or anything that might make their children develop thinking skills beyond the white supremacist indoctrination they receive at home.

[whathehell]

18. Speak for yourself. Maybe you and yours are "militantly ignorant"

but neither I, my familiars or, anyone on this board, I'd argue, fits that description. Stop characterizing an entire country by the actions of its minority.

[UCmeNdc]

20. Sorry, but you should get out more and speak with some of the younger people in the poor areas

of the country.

[whathehell]

23. Lol..Sorry, but you have NO idea how much I "get out",

how old I am, or who I asdociate with,, so good luck with those absurd assumptions and generalizations.

[UCmeNdc]

19. I do believe there was an intentional effort to"dumb down" the average American

It started in the 1980's under Reagan. Getting rid of civics in public schools. Cutting funding for public schools all across the nation. It seems they wanted Americans that could not critically think and reason anymore.

[BadgerMom]

22. Sputnik launched in 1957 and America needed more engineers to compete in the space race.

Back then, we knew education was the key. The GI Bill helped train scientists and was vastly important in fueling the science needed to get us to the moon and, frankly, to pave the way for all of the technological advances to follow. Now the billionaires who made money from all of that are too greedy to see beyond their own bank balances.