Glaring Failure Where it Matters

America may be the APP capital of the world, the crown jewel in mastering e-Marketing and social media and the great purveyor of gaming technology (although Europe and Japan might dispute that). Indeed, our military hardware is without equal, our space program has launched technology development for decades to come and our pharmaceutical/biotech advances define the world.

But we have systematically downgraded (slashed and burned?) our educational system, from the earliest years to the most advanced state education, in the name of fiscal responsibility, cut federal support for all levels of research – from medical to technological, shifting that effort to an agenda-laden private sector with short time-to-profit handcuff – and limited infrastructure repair and expansion to the barest of the most needed projects. And that “space program”? Yeah, program cut to the bone.

Except when they produce snowballs from outside the Capitol to prove conclusively that the world is colder because they are, our leaders in Congress still will not accept that while global climate change is not a hoax, despite the near unanimity of the scientific community to the contrary, that there is any direct link between human activities and that rather pronounced warming trend. The anti-academic bent of vast segments of the American population, preferring instead to rely on biblical interpretations of a safe and secure future without much in the way of human responsibility, also adhere to a since belief that the world and everything in it were created around 10,000 years ago in roughly a week. We don’t seem to cherish science, education or facts much anymore. We’ve made education at the higher levels almost unaffordable for most. And without education, the willingness to reject scientific facts rises.

The rising developing world, countries like China and India, have prioritized education as a way to elevate their own populations and blast away at complacent powers, mainly the United States, that cling to the belief that their economic, scientific and moral superiority are unassailable. These nations must be giddy as the United States serially is dismantling each and every underlying support system that made us the greatest economy in the world. We are taking ourselves out of the global competitive game… not even willing to run the race anymore.

In an increasingly globalized and competitive world, the metric of future success is obviously the competence of the rising generations, those who must take this great nation, run it and grow it. And since economies are generally resource-providers (food, minerals, oil, etc.) or value added creators (particularly those who manufacture sophisticated technologies or complex, efficiency-producing service support systems – perhaps a combination of both – understanding the ability of a nation to service those needs and generate income and wealth for itself becomes the determining factor. Resource providers are deeply impacted by relative scarcity and weather, and inclement weather seems to be hallmark of global climate change. If the immediate droughts in the West and the Midwest grain belt haven’t scared you yet, the long-term prediction of arid and fallow farmland should.

Which brings me back to that value-added variable. And nothing spells out our dire future than looking at the technical skills of the next generation of American workers and leaders, the millennials (16-34 years of age). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) devised a test, called the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), to measure the skillsets needed to maximize competitive advantages in a globalized economy. We’ll get to the results of that test, applied to our next generation of workers in a moment, but first we need to look at how the test was administered and what is attempted to assess.

The OECD Website tells us that the test was designed to:

·         to be valid cross-culturally and cross-nationally

·         for countries to be able to administer the survey in their national languages and still obtain comparable results

·         to provide comparative analysis of skill-formation systems and their outcomes, and international benchmarking regarding adult skills

·         as a survey that will be repeated over time to allow policy makers to monitor the development of key aspects of human capital in their countries.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the largest non-profit educational testing and assessment organization, decided to look at the test numbers, not just country-by-country, but more specifically at the generational performance across such lines. So instead of just focusing on the broader test results – ages 16 to 65 – ETS drilled down on millennials, the up-and-comers who are about to take over the world.

The March 2^nd Washington Post presents the dire findings: “There was this test. And it was daunting. It was like the SAT or ACT -- which many American millennials are no doubt familiar with, as they are on track to be the best educated generation in history -- except this test was not about getting into college. This exam [the PIAAC], given in 23 [33 actually] countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society.

“And U.S. millennials performed horribly… That might even be an understatement, given the extent of the American shortcomings. No matter how you sliced the data – by class, by race, by education – young Americans were laggards compared to their international peers. In every subject, U.S. millennials ranked at the bottom or very close to it, according to a new study by testing company ETS… ‘We were taken aback,’ said ETS researcher Anita Sands. ‘We tend to think millennials are really savvy in this area. But that’s not what we are seeing.’”

What we are seeing is in America today is a jingoistic chant by the religious and fiscal extremists who now dominate the majority of state legislatures and Congress itself. Climate-change deniers. Folks who make fun of academia and science. Cutting budgets and slashing taxes, without questioning or even understanding the long-term ramifications of such blind decisions, has led the United States to have a clearly uncompetitive educational system, sinking values from scientific research and eroding efficiencies as inadequate and damaged infrastructure under-serves our economic needs… and explodes into massive “unexpected costs” when some natural disaster… or simply the passage of time… pushes us over the top where our deferred maintenance cannot support the disaster. If we do not reinvent ourselves soon, we will be an “also-ran” dropped on to the trash heap of history.

I’m Peter Dekom, and coasting on past glories without current investment in ourselves is the saddest definition of stupidity I know.