Durban Zanrik: John Stossel- 'Stupid in America'

Source:Durban Zanrik- Jimmy Kimmel Live With Jay Leno: hopefully not talking to the best that America has to offer.

"Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it." 

From Durban Zanrik

Are we stupid in America as a country? Well, if you consider the fact that a lot of Americans know exactly which rehab their favorite celebrities are currently staying at or which jail they're currently residing at (after being pulled over their latest drunk driving arrest) but couldn't name their own mayor or governor, even if you spotted them their first and last names, perhaps even their city and state, that would suggest to a lot of intelligent people that we're pretty stupid as a country. 

But what do intelligent people know anyway? We're they one of the first five people to buy the latest I-Phone (because they camped outside the store the night before) no, because they have lives and better things to do. 

To sound serious just for a minute: of course not we're not stupid as a country (even with all of our escaped mental patients and morons hogging up our airwaves and media) otherwise we  wouldn't be as developed as a nation as we are, with the largest economy in the world, with a military not only capable of defending ourselves very well, but also other developed nations but do we have stupid people. 

Looking at the intelligence levels of Americans is sort of like looking at Islamic or Christian terrorists: sure, there are terrorists in those groups, but the percentage is so small that you can't define those groups as terrorists, but you have enough spoiled food in them to make their groups look and taste bad. Show me a country that doesn't have stupid people and I sell you my Miami beach house that's located in Minnesota. 

Do we have stupid policy's? Of course in government and the private sector, education being a perfect example of that. 

To give you a couple of examples: we reward educators for their time of service, not quality of service. And once they've served a certain amount time, it's almost impossible to fire them, which is called teacher tenure. And them we wonder (or some of us may wonder) why we are 39th in the world in education, even though we have the largest economy. Because our educators know that they don't have to do the best job they can in order to keep it. Or get a raise, all they have to do is serve a certain amount of time. Where all other professions the employees are judged by the job that they do, not by how long they've been doing their job. 

A major cause for our lack of education in America, gets to  teacher unions, who's number one job is to give their members who pay for their service the best compensation and benefits possible, which they do a great job of. They are not in the business to make our public education System the best it can be. Thats supposed to be the job of our public officials. But if they get a lot of contributions from teacher unions, that makes their job very hard, because they know who pays for their campaigns. 

If we don't educate our students, we are not going to be able to produce enough workers in the future that we need working high skilled jobs and making good livings, making our economy as strong as it can be. And being ranked 39th in the world in education is not educating your students well enough. 

Because of our lack of quality of education (not quantity) we are going to have to continue importing high-skilled workers from other countries and in some cases developing countries like China and India as well as exporting those jobs over there to countries that have the high-skilled workers to work these jobs. Which means we have to treat our education profession which is one of our top five most important professions. Because without it, people wouldn't be able to get the education they need in order to get a good job. 

So we need to treat this critical profession as important as it is. Good workers are rewarded for the work, bad workers are retrained or removed and our customers (meaning the students and parents) get a choice in where they consume this service. We don't as a country treat our education system as important as it is, we allow low-performing educators stay in the system. 

As well as low-performing schools stay in the system, some students are forced to go to bad schools, because of where they live. And then or some of us wonder why we are 39th in the world in education.