A study by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that only 36% of Americans can pass a basic citizenship test (74% of those 65 and older could, while only 19% of those 45 and younger could). Educators were embarrassed, and noted that this is the worst score on the citizenship test since 1619, when this country was founded.
We continue to encourage our kids to go to awful colleges that indoctrinate rather than educate. Graduates get loaded up with crippling student loan debt, resulting in unfulfilled dreams and misplaced anger.
This starts with the leftist educrats. About the only math questions kids get in college is: If there are 20 genders and only two bathrooms, how much racist climate change will that cause?
Talk to some of these "college kids." Half think Shariah law is a daytime TV show hosted by a no-nonsense African-American lady judge.
More kids should go to community colleges and learn a trade. Some look down on junior colleges and vocational schools, but where else can you pay tuition with Skoal coupons and Marlboro Miles? At least these kids can drive a stick shift, siphon gas and fix a flat. Ask a Rhodes Scholar to do any of those things.
Coddling college students results in false confidence. Liberal "educators" are the reason half of American workers are unhappy and disappointed when they have to work hard at something. They inevitably view themselves as "victims" (aka Democrats). Intuition tempts us to call this "compassion," which is really feel-good lies fed to kids that take the onus off them and put the blame on others. It becomes a perpetual excuse.
Nothing is more telling than seeing a white millennial tearing down a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, calling him a Nazi, and seeing the statue fall on his Volkswagen with a "Peace" sticker on it. What we employers know is that those who don't understand history are not that good at any other subjects, either.
The left, represented by perpetually enraged leaders such as Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren, owns the education system. Warren got a job at Harvard by pretending to be Native American. She made $429,981 per year and taught one class - and then somehow blamed others for the high cost of college.
Campuses were supposed to be places where ideas were debated. Today they are places where opposition speech is labeled "hate" and shut down. Many college campuses cannot stand the idea of free speech unless it is speech they agree with; if they do not like what is said, they seek to silence the speaker.
John Mulaney wonders why he paid Georgetown $60,000 a year to study English - a language he already knew. He laments the misinformation we get as kids. He said of growing up, "I really thought from watching cartoons that quicksand was going to be a bigger problem than it turned out to be. I was not prepared for real-life problems, such as relatives who want to borrow money."
College kids are so Bernie Sanders- and AOC-like liberal today - 41% of them don't believe in free speech and the other 59% believe the federal government should pay for it.
The South wants SEC football, so I hope schools open. But Ivy League football has been cancelled, leaving students saying, "What, we have a football team here?"
In reality, I found meeting people by attending football games in college more valuable than a faux education. And at the SAE fraternity house I learned an invaluable life-lesson: You can keep throwing up booze long after you think you're finished.
Contact Ron Hart, a syndicated op-ed satirist, author and TV commentator, at Ron@RonaldHart.com or on Twitter @RonaldHart.