I’ve been trying to move on from my string of political rants but that has proven difficult as the country I once admired now swirles around the metaphorical toilet bowl. But I do have good intentions.

Let’s see what today brings. Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the tech bros who circles in Trump’s orbit, is not someone with whom I would normally agree. Recently, though, he went on a rant about the decline in America’s educational/cultural standards. According to him, we coddle our kids rather than demand the best of them. We want them to be happy rather than prepared for a competitive world. We indulge our young as opposed to challenging them to achieve their potential. As a result, most are entering adulthood ill prepared for what awaits them. Presumably, our educational systems have come to reflect this tendency that enables, or even facilitates, mediocracy. According to Vivek, that is why the U.S. tech industry needs to reach out to other countries for top talent, and why Trump’s hopes to cease the import of foreign talent is counterproductive.

I fear he is on to something. I read all the stories from American teachers lamenting the poor attitudes and performances of their students. Even before Covid, kids couldn’t use cursive, could not write coherent papers, could not (would not) read entire books. In general, American kids fared poorly on international assessments of educational achievement. I was stunned when elite academics from our top universities also suggested a lack of interest in reading among the best of American undergraduates.

Perhaps it is a generation enslaved to their cell phones, tablets, and insidious forms of social media. Apparently, though, many of our youth have trouble negotiating rather simple analytical challenges. I began noting such a decline late in my academic career. The preponderance of doctoral students gradually shifted from American candidates to foreign kids who were better prepared for the demanding quantitative requirements, certainly in economics but even in the discipline of Social Welfare. During my many years on the admissions committee for the Social Work masters program, I reviewed thousands of applications. I became discouraged with the endless number of candidates with near perfect undergrad GPAs but who could not string together coherent sentences on why they wanted to pursue this career. Some of my research colleagues, particularly the economists, lamented that the newer cohorts of foreign doctoral students were advanced in their computer and statistical skills but often lacked imagination, initiative, and an understanding of American culture and institutions. They were great at complex tasks that did not demand original thinking. The problem was that American applicants could not compete with their foreign counterparts in critical technical areas. They simply were not good enough. Alas, these trends preceded the rise of Facebook, WhatsApp, Tic-Toc and all such apps.

I recall my own youth. As I’ve written elsewhere, I grew up in a struggling working class neighborhood. For the most part, my long-ago peers were not the kids headed for future leadership or for financial success. In general, they did not spend their time in libraries, but rather in the streets as we employed our imaginations to create our own forms of rough and tumble amusements. I often joke that our folks routinely kicked us out of our apartments with the admonition not to return until the street lights were on. Parenting was way more casual back then. We were not supervised 24-7 and certainly not coddled by any means. But we did develop interpersonal skills, learned to negotiate social situations, and to develop personal initiative.

My grammar and junior high schools were hardly state of the art educational facilities. My elementary school, in particular, was located in an ancient, quite decrepit, building though, in truth, neither had the advanced bells and whistles that adorn contemporary schools. Yet, my cousin and I both recall getting a marvelous educational foundation that served us well through life. We could diagram sentences, developed a love for reading, and even I (a numbers retard) learned to handle fractions, long division, and square roots with some facility. Basically, we all learned to read, write, and to do basic computations (remember multiplication tables). It simply was expected of us.

To my recollection, I did not stand out among my peers back then, though that may be my imposter syndrome speaking. At home, my father did subscribe to the Reader’s Digest condensed books series and was a committed fan of the Perry Mason mystery series by Earle Stanley Gardner. I devoured all that came into our humble abode before getting my own library card. With no smart phones and apps to distract me, a lifetime love affair with reading came into my life quite early. I even dreamed of becoming a writer one day myself … not a common aspiration on the hard scrabble streets of my youth.

As Jonathan Haidt points out in his NYT best seller, The Anxious Generation, most of today’s kids mature in an enabling bubble. Their parents hover over them constantly, chauffering them from one structured activity to another while ensuring that their precious offspring never experience anything negative or disconcerting. They blame education professionals if their darling issue seems stressed or fails to get a top mark as a student. They blame others if their child is not popular enough or happy enough. They step in to smooth the way when kids encounter the speed bumps we all do in life. Nothing reflects our excessive protectiveness of the young as the trend of parents accompanying their recent university graduates to their initial job interviews. Really? It seems to me that our parents wanted us to deal with challenges as a form of reality-testing. Adulthood was hard, they said, so get used to that early on. Got into a scrap with a neighbor kid, you dealt with it on your own. Don’t look to mom and dad to be rescued.

In my generation, as I recall, we made our own decisions and found our own way in life. In my high school, you didn’t run to your parents if one of the teaching religious brothers whacked you for acting out in class. You knew your folks would only give you another whack at home. You didn’t run to them if you got a low grade in a subject. You knew they only would push you harder to study more. Needed some spending money, get a job. I started delivering newspapers and got my first real paying job at 14 years of age. And you were taught fundamental behavioral standards like being kind to elders. I recall, as a young tyke, refusing to give up my seat on the bus to an elderly female passenger when my father asked. I was shown the error of my ways when he got me home, obviously a lesson I never forgot. There were no excuses, just expectations to do better, to achieve more, to rise above what you thought you were, and to behave decently.

Perhaps there was something to this high expectations approach to raising the next generation. Ever notice the winners of national spelling Bs. It strikes me that they are invariably immigrants from India or some part of that foreign world. A few had only been here a few years with English being a second language. I recently noticed a meme (though it may have been around a bit) that showed the U.S. math team that finally had beaten the Asian teams in annual international competitions for the first time in well over a decade. Progress, I thought, until I looked closer at the picture. Every member of the U.S. math team clearly was of an Asian ethnic background. Nothing is wrong with that, but it does reinforce one of my priors. Nurture is critical. Culture is critical. I can recall a woman who worked for my late wife at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She and her husband were Chinese immigrants (he worked in a local lab). My spouse found their approach to parenting their one son to be radically different from American norms. The kid was immersed in a range of activities (academic, musical, athletic) and expected to do very well in each. He was required to follow a 24-7 schedule. We thought it rather hard on the kid but, in the end, he was accepted at Harvard University. It simply was expected of him. That high-expectation approach seemed typical among Asian parents.

Another fact strikes me as potentially important to the dumbing down of America. Politicians used to elevate the general discourse in their public statements and speeches. They would reference great literature and sprinkle uplifting quotes in their talks. Who can forget the inspiring words of JFK or even LBJ (during passage of the civil rights bills). They relied on writers like Bill Moyers, Ted Sorenson, and Richard Goodwin. They knew that words and ideas moved people, could raise them above petty concerns and provincial perspectives. I can still hear Kennedy’s words from his Ich Bein Ein Berliner speech issued over six decades ago. Now we have a President-Elect whose public statements dwell in the gutter … that focus on divisive fear and hate.

Speaking of the Donald, is it true that he publicly stated that he might use force to take Greenland and Panama? Or that he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America? Or that windmills drive wales crazy? And his minions rage that the Dems hid Joe Biden’s decline? How hypocritical! It ought to be a very humorous, if perilous, four years.

More seriously, it cannot serve our future well when the man holding the highest office in the land cannot read or comprehend material at the level of a college freshman (at best) or who speaks with a 5th grade vocabulary. What lesson does that impart to the young of this nation? Oh look … you can be dumb as a sack of rocks, a virtual illiterate, and yet achieve fame and fortune and mass devotion? Just have no moral compass and cheat and lie your way to the top. A rather impoverished role model in my view.

Again, I am so glad I’m older than dirt. I am in a position to just bitch about things, not do anything. Even as I criticize some parents, let me be totally clear. I think it is the hardest job imaginable … way above my pay range. That’s why I avoided it like the plague.