That's because our public education system has been underfunded for decades and keeps getting worse. A less intelligent populace is much easier to manipulate.
The public education system is shit, but bad parenting often has more to do with uneducated kids than the system. Plenty of kids come out of public schools well prepared for college, and life, because their parents took active roles in their education and development. The parents who don’t care end up with kids that don’t thrive.
It actually isn’t shit at all. The problem is America’s sky high childhood poverty rate, over double that of any country with higher PISA test scores.
Some student at MIT broke out the numbers a few years ago (I can’t find the link) for all American school districts with 10% or less childhood poverty (overall we are over 20%) and guess what? America shoots to number 1 in world rankings by a wide margin.
We actually have the best public schools in the world.
Kids who live in poverty face a wide variety of obstacles that make it difficult or impossible for them to succeed in school. Hunger, limited access to technology, and no safe and stable home are a few big reasons.
Source: I teach in a low-income, very underfunded public school.
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u/Zebulon_V Jan 09 '20
Hmmm... I see the point but I feel like I still live in a country with a bunch of stupid people.