Unqualified!

Post on the March 11^th Homeroom blog at the Department of Education: “What do national security, military readiness, and education have in common? It turns out that national security and quality education are closely tied together. A recent study [a December 2010 report by the Education Trust entitled Shut Out of the Military: Today’s High School Education Doesn’t Mean You Are Ready for Today’s Army]found that 75% of America’s youth are NOT qualified to join the Armed Forces. This could have serious effects on America’s ability to defend itself.” Some of this is because of an epidemic of obesity, but most of it is over educational standards. Bad news, but the message for the nation as a whole suggests that there is even a greater peril facing the United States from a failing public educational system that is being further eroded by never-ending deficit-reducing budget cuts: our very security as a nation is at risk because of our inability to prepare the next generations for the future.

A follow-up study to the “A Nation at Risk” report issued thirty years ago – by an independent task force cochaired by former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein – suggests that America’s future might be dark and murky without key changes in our attitudes and educational institutions: “Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk,” says the report.

“Some of the key factors that the report cites in linking education shortcomings and a weakened national security: insufficient preparation of children for the highly technical jobs that both the private sector and the military increasingly need to fill, scant and declining foreign-language education, and a weakened ‘national cohesiveness’ as a result of an under-educated and unemployable poor population.” The Christian Science Monitor, March 20^th.

Former Secretary of State Rice noted that “[e]ducation is ‘the glue that keeps us together,’ she said at an event in Washington Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, which sponsored the task force. A factor weakening that glue, she said, is the ‘perception of a smaller and smaller group that is advancing in America.’ She added, ‘If we are not one nation, we cannot defend one nation.’

“The report cites a series of indicators of America’s educational weaknesses – [including] US students’ disappointing placement on international rankings of math and science competencies… The US is not producing enough foreign-language speakers to fill key positions in the Foreign Service, in intelligence agencies, and in America’s increasingly global companies… And yet, Rice said, ‘We are the most monolingual major society on Earth.’

“To reverse the nation’s education slide, the task force offers a number of recommendations, one of which is a longer school day and a longer school year. ‘We have the shortest learning day and the shortest learning year practically of all [countries] in the industrialized world,’ Rice said.

“The task force’s three main recommendations:

• Putting more emphasis on children learning science, technology, and foreign languages, in addition to reading and math.

• Preparation by the states, in conjunction with the federal government, of what the report calls a “national security readiness audit.” This would measure how schools are doing at teaching “the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard America’s future security and prosperity.”

• Increasing school choice and competition, namely by charter schools and vouchers – within an environment of “equitable resource allocation.” Christian Science Monitor.

How much more mediocrity can we tolerate before we look at the United States as the great supplier of unskilled labor to the rapidly growing Asian markets? How well will we adapt to being a third-rate nation? And why do we seem not to care?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am appalled that the obvious doesn’t seem to be with most voters.