Although I agree that there is an over-generalization of the population based on how the sampling was done, this is far from new news.
I remember a PBS documentary on the state of US education. While students from the USSR were drawing near complete maps of the globe (including most countries in Africa, North and South America, and Asia), the US example showed two circles with one labeled USA and the other Europe. Almost no in the US could answer what two countries bordered the continental US, and when asked where Nicaragua was located one person answered "I don't know - isn't it off the coast of Vietnam?"
I recommend the documentary "2 Million Minutes", that compares 2 students in the USA's sports obsessed and mandatory education system with 2 students from India and 2 students from China (at the high school level). I also recommend reading Philip K. Howard's "The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom" to see how a sue-happy culture and unwillingness to do anything not defined in a contract have adversely affected US society.
Just like as we now recognize in agriculture that large mono-crops are detrimental to the long term viability of food, our mono-cropping style of educating all students for college is equally detrimental to the viability of US intellectualism.
I am constantly hearing about program cuts. They get rid of arts, music, and non-athletic after-school activities and focus on No Child Left Behind skills. Schools are now massive preparation courses so the schools to meet federal guidelines.
Are all people created identical? Do all students hold equal ambitions to go grossly into debt and get a college degree, learn by reading textbooks, and have equal aptitude for math and science? No. Personally, I say throw out all those advance math and science courses and teach basic finances (how to balance a checkbook, evaluate loan terms, and make a personal budget) and art/music. Our first duty is to instill in them skills to use in their daily adult life, and the second is to instill a desire to learn - that is why I support maintaining fun courses like art.
Also, lets get rid of mandated high school education. Instead make it a right - if a student and their parents don't want them to attend high school, then there should be no reason to force them to go through all that college prep. Let them go into an apprenticeship program for a trade skill or enter the unskilled labor market. Those that truly wish to be educated will still have the right to an education, and the state will be required to provide that education - but having those who truly do not wish to be there and would be better off gaining real-world skills would no longer be disrupting education.
As for me, I know I am not perfectly educated - especially in comparison to foreign students. I stopped going to high school in mid-sophomore year. Role playing games sparked in me a desire to learn, and with no sleep the night before I got my GED with no less than 95% in any category (and several at 99%). I've worked dead-end jobs, and went back to school in 2004. I graduated with a liberal arts degree from a technical college and transferred to a university where I am in the honors program. Despite all this, I know that many high school students in foreign countries know vastly more than I do, and that my education is poor. My own sense of entitlement was one of the bigger barriers - I felt I was entitled to luxury time, minimum homework loads, and good grades. I ate up that line about 'you can be anything you want'. Its a lie, and one we need to stop teaching.
The point is this: we need to kick everyone - the system that paralyzes teacher, the teachers who are afraid to risk teaching, the parents who say good grades should be given for trying, and the students who think just showing up should give them a diploma. We are all to blame for our rotted brains.
Sorry for the long and ranting post. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
) this happens to ppl with imaginary friends in the skyes 
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram