“America is back” became President Biden’s refrain on his European trip this month, and in a narrow sense it is.
We no longer have a White House aide desperately searching for a fire alarm to interrupt a president as he humiliates our country at an international news conference, as happened in 2018. And a Pew Research Center survey found that 75 percent of those polled in a dozen countries expressed “confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing,” compared with 17 percent a year ago.
Yet in a larger sense, America is not back. In terms of our well-being at home and competitiveness abroad, the blunt truth is that America is lagging. In some respects, we are sliding toward mediocrity.
Greeks have higher high school graduation rates. Chileans live longer. Fifteen-year-olds in Russia, Poland, Latvia and many other countries are better at math than their American counterparts — perhaps a metric for where nations will stand in a generation or two.
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Education has always been the best solution, the way out of mediocrity. I think it still is. We’re starting to figure out that investing in pre-K pays off later, that STEAM is a good idea, that inclusiveness works. Things could get brighter. I do remember reading articles of this same tone in the 80s and early 90s bemoaning our lack of ability to compete with the Japanese. Little kids were learning Japanese because that was going to be the big powerful economy. Hmm….