NEW COLUMN is “Homegrown Retardation A Bigger Problem Than Homegrown Terrorism” or “US Kids Can’t Read Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American, and CNSNews.com.

Excerpt:

America’s crumbling education system is in the news. On October 5th, Joe Biden managed to disgorge some dismal indicators as to the future prospects of America’s youth compared to the rest of the developed world.

Joe didn’t quite say it, but America’s kids, the product of an obscenely well-funded school system, rank last in the developed world in reading, writing and math, making homegrown retardation a far more pressing problem in modern-day America than homegrown terrorism.

Yet conservatives have kept insisting, throughout the Covid lockdowns and quarantines, that kids were missing out on an education because they were out of school.

To paraphrase Joan Rivers, how can you miss out on a rash? (When Madonna accused Lady Gaga of stealing her music, the great, late, lady Joan wanted to know how you could steal a rash.)

A particularly startling fact caught my attention in the Economist. “At 15, children in Massachusetts, where education standards are higher than in most states, are so far behind their counterparts in Shanghai at math, that it would take them more than two years of regular education to catch up.”

This last fact is enormously telling and alarming. It tells you that America’s best schools and students can’t compete with the world’s best.

As the author further quipped cynically, “American children came top at thinking they were good at math, but bottom at math.”

There’s no doubt that American kids are drowning in self-esteem. As someone who had warned, in the early 2000s, about unrealistic, dangerous levels of self-esteem—I would contend that inflated self-esteem and narcissism not only mask failure, but create pumped up nihilists, ready to unleash on their surrounds, unless met with palliative praise.

Yes, self-esteem is the royal jelly upon which America’s children are raised. Our child-centered, non-hierarchical, collaborative, progressive schooling has produced kids who do not believe they can and should be corrected; and when corrected lash out in anger or bewilderment.

Indeed, to listen to our university students speak—is to hear a foreboding amalgam of dumbness and supreme confidence combined. Yet they are often high achievers in the kind of schools “tailored” for just such sub-par output. The achievement Bell Curve has been skewed. …

READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Homegrown Retardation A Bigger Problem Than Homegrown Terrorism” or “U.S. Kids Can’t Read Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American, and CNSNews.com.

WATCH:

‘American Kids Come Top At THINKING They’re Good At Math, But Bottom At Math, Reading, Writing’

UPDATE (10/15/021): It appears that my “American Kids Can’t Read, Write, or Do Math, But Are No. 1 in CRT” beat the news again.

However, whereas my dismal assessment of the state of U.S. kids’ intellect was derived largely from The Economist—an excellent source, despite its liberalism—sources stateside euphemize the dire situation of American kids, writing:

“America’s Kids Earn Disappointing Grades on Nation’s Report Card”:
‘I’ve never reported a slide like that,’ an official with the group that administers the Nation’s Report Card said after analyzing the results.”

These results are not compared to other populations in the developed world. As I said, we’re at the bottom.

The NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know and can do in subjects like math, reading, science, U.S. history, civics and geography. Its long-term trends exam is administered every eight years in math and reading only, and reports results nationally by age – as opposed to the other NAEP exams, which are administered every three years and report results by grade level and are broken out by state and city.

The assessment was administered to roughly 34,000 9- and 13-year-olds during the 2019-20 school year, just prior to coronavirus pandemic disruptions to school. Typically, the results also include data for 17-year-olds, but COVID-19 restrictions prevented the age group from participating.