The article lays bare the problems inherent in America ’s education system and is unabashed about the dire consequences,

“As a nation we are crippling the next generation of visionaries by retarding their intellectual growth with bad educational policy as surely as we might if we were adding lead to their drinking water.

Scientists and inventors, philosophers and artists, entrepreneurs and statesmen, individuals who conceive of and accomplish great things do not emerge from schools and colleges that emphasize low-level thinking and a curriculum without intellectual depth or rigor. They emerge in spite of them.”

In essence, this piece argues that our education system is weakening its educational standards in order to meet the guidelines established by things like “No Child Left Behind.”  By doing this, schools are lessening the challenge of the material being taught and leave children often with only rote memorization as the sine qua non of achievement.

Rather than working to educate the best and brightest, schools now are merely teaching the “fundamentals” so that everyone can succeed. 

Unfortunately, this means that some of those that really do fall into the category of “best and brightest” are not being challenged and not being forced to really grapple with the higher level thinking that will be necessary as America continues to embark on a voyage into the strange and unchartered territory of globalization, international finance, terrorism, WMD proliferation, disease pandemics, rising inequality, etc.

This should be a cause for immense concern.  If America is to retain its position, it will need good minds that have been forged through the trials of rigorous education as opposed to merely promoted along in order to avoid conflict.

I think this should be required reading for each and every education policymaker.  The stakes are too high to continue allowing complacency to set in.  Indeed, if “Strategic thinkers need to be able to see “the big picture” and handle uncertainty, or they cannot be said to be strategic thinkers,” we must offer them the opportunity to do just that.  Otherwise, we will fail because our most precious resource has been irreparably diminished through our own malign neglect.