"Dumb or Just Badly Educated...or Maybe Just Lazy?" (suspect, Obama)

[delusianne]

"....I also suspect we're suffering the long-term aftereffects of a prolonged period of affluenza--the period of peace (for the most part) and prosperity that lasted from the end of WWII to the beginning of the 21st century. During that time, we got lazy, lost the habits of citizenship...and began to fall behind educationally, in part because our primary and secondary schools remained mired in the industrial age...and also because our public schools never really were very good at educating those who weren't hungry for knowledge (in the past, the mass of average students could find good-paying industrial jobs, which are no longer plentiful).

"Clearly, education reform is absolutely essential--and the Obama Administration has, quietly, ramped up efforts to make the system more creative and responsive (despite resistance from teachers' unions and other educational reactionaries). But the bottom line still stands: it is impossible to run a democracy without active, interested citizens."


Read more: Dumb or Just Badly Educated…or Maybe Just Lazy? - Swampland - TIME.com

[AutumnFOG]

I disagree frequently with Mr. Klein, because his work seems to represent something which I am offended by, and this is that he seems like a rather lazy writer who once upon a time got lucky. And now he sucks as this job, but is secure in it, so he just keeps going and going. And of course, it's easy as a lazy writer, particularly a lazy political writer, just to say that the problem is that everyone else is too lazy to help themselves.

Most history that I have seen seems to suggest that we were so successful directly after World War II because our global competitors were all busy rebuilding their infrastructure that was, you know, blown up in the 1940s.