The United States once had the finest public schools on earth, placing first in reading, science and math based on international testing standards. But that was back in the late 1950s and 60s. Since then, we have fallen out of the top 20 in all those categories, winding up only in the 30 or below for some. Starting with the deficits generated by the Vietnam War, first the federal government, rapidly followed by states (particularly fiscally conservative states), allocations for public education plunged at every level, from primary and secondary schools up through state colleges and universities. The mega-wealthy also lobbied heavily for tax cuts. That’s when our global comparative test scores dropped like a stone and college tuition soared at multiple of the annual rise in the cost of living. See also my July 9th A Fading American Value: Public Education blog for more specifics.
Public education in the United States is bit like bull-riding. Bucking and fighting an angry bull can be analogized to fighting a relatively small but highly vociferous group of parents whose concerns are not about the quality of the instruction but on promulgating fundamentalist Christian religious values and preserving the mythology of guiltless White supremacy. With approximately 13,000 autonomous school districts, it’s easy to see how teaching has become one of the biggest battle grounds in our massive internal struggle from extreme political polarization.
To make matters worse, textbook manufacturers are not well-positioned for multiple versions of their textbooks; it's just too expensive to cater to individual school districts. As a result, the lowest common denominator within the largest school districts (California, New York, Texas and Florida are the drivers) pretty much determines the content of textbooks, particularly in civics, history, social studies and English.
Today, the culture wars, the anti-CRT movement, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, represent the driving force towards that lowest common denominator. In Florida, all it takes for a lesson plan to be pulled or a textbook or library book to be removed is a parent or student telling the relevant school board that the lesson or book makes them “uncomfortable” with the subject matter. It may be “guilt” over our slavery or our racially discriminatory past (present?) or mention of LGBTQ+ issues of any kind. This approach to education has become the model for rightwing school districts the nation over.
Some countries delete nasty periods from their history lessons too. Japan’s high school books conveniently delete mention of their cultural decimation of Korea in the earliest 20th century, or their genocidal pre-WWII invasion of China. Some nations don’t. German textbooks are very specific about Nazi atrocities; no one can graduate from high school without an in-depth tour of a WWII concentration camp. But rightwing school districts here are not just deleting these sensitive aspects of American history, removing books and lesson plans; accordingly, they are requiring textbook publishers to present rewritten, sanitized and highly inaccurate versions of our historical past.
The most recent example: ““The [DeSantis-appointed] Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how ‘slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,’ according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education… Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.” NBC News, July 20th. As educational budgets are sliced and diced, as state college tuition of results in decades of student debt repayment (US student debt exceeds the aggregate of all consumer debt), red state school districts are punishing teachers and letting America’s competitive advantage plunge even farther.
One horrific example of how inadequate our “revised” educational standards have fallen, in addition to the millions of unfilled STEM job openings, concerns are our desire to keep ahead of China’s military and economic ambitions to supplant the United States as the leading global power. One of China’s greatest Achilles Heels is their inability to manufacture the highly sophisticated top-level microchips that require these silicon wafers to grow in a highly stabilized, pristine and totally controlled environment.
The only significant mass-producer of these wafers is chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC – pictured above), one of the many reasons China wants to invade and annex Taiwan as a province “that has always been part of China.” The United States use to manufacture 40% of global chip demand, but the cost efficiencies of overseas production dropped US chipmaking to a mere 10%. Intel and Apple weren’t there for us either. A Biden sponsored bill passed last year committed $280 billion to high tech manufacturing and scientific research in the US.
So, with massive support from the Biden administration and with Intel on board, TSMC agreed to build two new facilities in the United States that will replicate the Taiwanese capacity. $40 billion worth! The required silicon wafers take months to grow in a very complex and controlled environment. They are way, way beyond the ordinary chips that electronics and carmakers had been relying on for years. They are capable of concentrating massive computing power within increasingly tiny chips that have become an absolute necessity in the modern era, for both civilian and military manufactures.
But there’s a catch, as TSMC discovered when trying to find educated and trained American workers to build and then operate their new plant, which had been slated to open in 2024, with a second plant in 2026. Work has slowed and, in some areas, stopped as a result. Annabelle Liang, writing for the July 21st BBC.com, explains: “On Thursday [7/20], TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said production of advanced microprocessors at its Arizona factory in the south west of the US would now begin in 2025… During an earnings presentation, Mr Liu said the plant, which has been under construction since April 2021, faced a shortage of workers with the ‘specialised expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.’… He added that the firm was ‘working to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers [in the US] for a short period of time’.”
Both GOP frontrunners, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, have pledged, among other administrative agency closures, to eliminate the US Department of Education and to cut support for education in general, including colleges and universities (as well as student tuition support) on top of that. DeSantis argues that he wants to make the United States look like Florida. Trump promised an administration literally driven by “retribution” against those who have opposed him and his policies. Seriously? How is any of this good for the United States?
I’m Peter Dekom, and as the GOP seems tired of supporting the United States to continue as the greatest nation on earth, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are chuckling to themselves.
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