<p>"The same I would have for Smith! Seriously, you overlooked the next sentence where the answer to your question could be found: “The result is a massive and generalized dumbing down of the entire system, except for a very small percentage of schools that maintain a worldwide recognition. Our system works well for the elite, but not that well for most everyone.”</p>
<p>I think the school systems in the U.S. work exactly as intended, and are tremendously successful. They provide a docile, malleable workforce that will not rebel, and will find their life satisfactions in the production and consumption of material goods. We had a problem for awhile that enough students weren’t flunking out or leaving school so as to later inhabit the lowest rungs of the employment system (i, but that is now being well taken care of through NCLB. (As they say: if you fail 10th grade math, you don’t deserve health insurance.) School boards get re-elected, school administrators get raises, and everyone is happy.</p>
<p>But it is critical to keep the kids out of the workforce, or the whole thing begins to crumble.</p>
<p>I’m actually working on an article now called “Schools make the Kids Dumb(er)”, based on new data about to be published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, and based on 30 years work of empirical data, indicating that the cognitive development of 11-year-olds has dropped between 2-3 years in the past 15 years, and has accelerated in the past 5. Maybe I’ll post when done. The schools are doing very well.</p>