We are (becoming) the illiterates

Remember my earlier post about Douglas Bruce, the Colorado representative who called Mexicans "illiterate peasants?" And here and here before that I lamented how stupid the American people were. According to an op-ed by Bob Herbert in the NY Times, looks like I'm dead on:

A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900. ... nearly 20 percent of respondents did not know who the U.S. fought in World War II. Eleven percent thought that Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal. Another 11 percent thought it was Harry Truman.

Bill Gates calls the nation's high schools "obsolete," meaning that they cannot prepare their students for what they need to know today in order to be competitive in the marketplace. Nearly two-thirds of the high school students in America either drop out or graduate without the necessary preparation for the next stages of life -- meaningful work and/or post-secondary education.

And how much are you hearing from the presidential candidates about this? Not one iota. It's much more fun to read about Obama's gutter balls, or Clinton's beer drinking, or McCain's shoving a fellow legislator. Those are the real issues.

As a father, my commitment to my sons is that, no matter what, their education and preparation for life will be my primary job.