re: US high school students lose ground in math and reading, continuing yearslong decline

quote:

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Meanwhile, China and India put out more STEM professionals than U.S. by factor of trillions.

The fall of a great nation started when parenting fell. Then math scores. Next comes health. Oops, that decline is underway too.

At least we still have guns.

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Trillions? No, not really. In those countries, the vast majority of "engineers" would barely qualify as technicians here, and techs that mostly lack the hands-on acumen that ours build tinkering at home at that. You can get a "PhD" in most Asian countries just by publishing a paper or two with someone who already has a "PhD". None of that time-consuming classwork, research, or dissertation defense. That's why American post-grad degrees are so highly valued outside the US. I will say though that the sheer numbers game is likely to create some outliers that are an advantage to them over the long term.

Your middle sentence is on point.

WRT to your last sentence, you left off "freedom of speech" for things we still have that others don't - just ask some UK or German citizens. Without the guns, we wouldn't have that for very long either.