I Honestly Don’t See Any Way For the U.S. to Succeed

First, go read this op-ed piece over at the New York Times (no registration required). I’ll wait.

Ok, so if you read it this’ll be review, but either way here’s a couple of key points:

1. 1/3 of American high-school students drop out. Another 1/3 graduate but their diplomas are worthless as they didn’t learn enough to be successful in college. That means only 1/3 of our high-school students are leaving at age 17-18 with the tools to be successful in college.

2. We’re a bunch of mouthbreathers. In the Common Core survey, nearly 20 percent of respondents did not know who the U.S. fought in World War II. One in five didn’t know we fought in WWII?

Most smart people I know are hopelessly optimistic, to the point of ignorant denial in my opinion.

There is one outcome from what we’re seeing here. Let me set things up for you:

• The uneducated / poor reproduce more.
• The uneducated / poor suffer more.
• Less education means you stay poor.
• Only 1/3 of the population goes to college and gets degrees and good jobs.
• That one third is mostly White, Asian, and Indian.
• The majority of low-end jobs are done by non-White, non-Asian, non-Indian workers.
• The uneducated / poor reproduce more.
• The educated / “rich” reproduce less.
• 10 years go by.
• Public schools become daytime youth detention centers, with some educational programs.
• Public schools start graduating less than 25%, then 10% of children. And most of those can’t compete in college.
• The kids in those schools are dropping out and having kids.
• The educated / “rich” stop sending their children to public schools altogether.
• A new network of private schools crop up to take up the slack.
• A clear division forms; you either went to private school or you aren’t prepared for college.
• You either went to private school or you don’t have a good job.
• The uneducated / poor look around and don’t like what they see.
• The uneducated /poor see wealth and power divided by something visual — race — with Whites, Asians and Indians at the top, and Blacks and Hispanics at the bottom.
• The uneducated / poor get angry.
• The uneducated / poor get violent.
• Large parts of the country become unsafe to travel in.
• “Nice” neighborhoods are all gated and are protected 24/7.
• The police in “nice” areas become a hired security force that receive extra money from residents.
• The police in the rest of the country become horribly corrupt, and far more dangerous.
• The country fractures right down the middle according to class.
• Our country is lost.

But there’s a solution; I’m just worried nobody can bring it about.

We have to focus on colorless success. Chinese people aren’t acting White when they do well in school, so why are Black people? Indians aren’t acting white by doing well in school, so why are Hispanics?

We Have Culture Problems, Not Race Problems

American Asians and Indians, on the whole, have excellent cultures for raising children who will do well in school and in the workforce. Blacks and Hispanics, on the whole, do not. Whites fall all over the spectrum.

The key is that “culture” means so much. It means what happens in your household and it also means what happens in your peer group at school. It’s hard to say which is more important. But one thing is for certain — if your friends think it’s uncool for you to do well in school, you’re either going to get new friends or you’re not going to do well in school.

Another thing is pretty certain. If you don’t read for fun you’re probably not going to do well in life. And if you’re family doesn’t read for fun, you probably won’t either. It’s all interconnected. It’s culture.

Asian kids that do well in school ACT different than Black kids who don’t. Guess what? Black kids that do well in school act like White kids that do well in school. And White kids that act like criminals act like Asian kids that act like criminals. Behavior is everything, and culture defines behavior. Here are three basic rules that show what the problem is.

• Behavior defines results.
• Culture defines behavior.
• Race defines culture.

That last one is the one that’s killing us as Americans. That’s the one that makes up things like “acting Black” and “acting White”. Those terms are patently dangerous to our children. There should be only two ways to “act” — successful and unsuccessful. Take race out of it.

So if you take race out of it you end up with:

• Culture defines behavior.
• Behavior defines results.

So what makes a successful culture? Here’s a crude attempt:

1. The parents demand proper speech in the household.
2. The peer group uses proper speech as the base of their common communication, even as slang is added on top.
3. The parents and peer group encourage reading for fun. If reading for fun is considered a negative thing in your environment then you’re in trouble.
4. Going to do a good school and getting good grades should be a priority for the parents.
5. Getting good grades should be a sign of success within the peer group.
6. Critical thinking in the household. Children should regularly be asked to evaluate scenarios from multiple angles. They have to be trained to think about complex problems in a logical manner rather than from a single, emotionally charged perspective.
7. Parents need to expose children to the world. They need to be familiar with many types of food, at least be able to tell the different types of languages of the world when they hear them, know the different religions of the world, be able to tell different types of people from each other, etc.

So here’s how it works. Take a poll of 100 people who make less than 20K/year working full-time. Find out how many of them enjoy exotic food and know which countries they came from. Find out how many read for fun. Find out how many can find Iran on a map. Find out how many can tell Chinese from Japanese when they hear it on the street. Find out how many of them can tell an Arab from an Indian?

The answer will be a very low percentage.

That’s what makes a culture of success or failure. The general quality of an environment (this is my list, not a definitive one, obviously) — both at home and with peers. And this is where America is losing. The people who do NOT conform to the list above (or some better version of it) are reproducing at an alarming rate. Those who do conform to it are not reproducing much at all.

So, here we are. 2/3 high school graduates not ready for college. And it’s only going to get worse.

The question is really simple. How do you change a culture? How do you tell millions of people that they’re raising their children to fail? Especially when the parents you’re talking to are often no better off themselves. How? What do we do?