As long as our country is unwilling to deal with the root causes of the problem, we will be stuck in the same place twenty years from now.

Liberalism is about more than economics. It's a worldview. It deals with social and political ideas.

You readily and accurately identify the problems, but apparently would rather chew glass than connect it with a particular point of view in our country. Does it mean nothing that a particular political philosophy dominates the national education system, including the colleges of education and sociology, the certification process, and the unions?

People blow a damn gasket around here when one local school board tries to shove creationism into a school, but I'm supposedly off the track when I point out the groups that are shoving their particular worldviews on education on an entire nation.

If our schools now have fears of litigation, have to abide by arbitrary and unrealistic quotas, and have had any serious discipline totally extracted from the school's arsenal, never mind unrealistic ideas on self-esteem and fear of actually inflicting a feeling of failure on a failing student, where do you think that all COMES from?

Go ahead and support a return to older styles of educating our young people. Stricter schools, more rote learning, more discipline...you know, the sort of thing you get in a ruler-rapping parochial school. When fifty people stand up to indignantly block you, take a survey and see what their politics are.

BTW, about that huge pile of engineering graduates from places like China and India: There's a bit more to that than meets the eye.