A guy that comes into one of our food joints is an exam marker.
The missus got talking to him about the state of education, and
a couple of days later, he brought in a GCSE level maths paper
for 15 year olds. They apparently had 90 minutes to complete this
paper, and were allowed to use a calculator. I was able to finish it,
in my head, in about 20 minutes. I think that I would have been able
to do the same at age 10, back in the days when we were taught
properly 40 odd years ago. The maths papers that we took back
then at age 15, were way, way above the level of this Mickey
Mouse paper. The standard even appears to have taken a nose-dive
since my own kids were that age 10 years or so ago.

The US of A is a country that believes the most-important thing in life --
other than trying to force your religious beliefs on other people -- is to
be "successful" (ie, wealthy and powerful). Getting a real education --
which includes science and the liberal arts -- is of no importance, unless
it promotes "success".

Ours is a profoundly anti-education, anti-intellectual country. This is
amazing, when you consider that most of the Founding Fathers were
intelligent, well-educated or well-read people.

I've never had trouble with math. Pardon the brag, but when I took the SATs
way back in 1965, I got an 800+ on the math part. * You read that right --
eight-hundred-plus. I asked about this. "How can you get a score higher than
800?" I was told 800 was not "perfect" -- just very high. And you could get
a score higher than /that/. Hence, the plus.

* I probably would have gotten an 800 on the English, if it hadn't been for
the analogies, which were thrown out several years ago.