THE POINT OF NO RETURN?

      There was a story circulating in the European news today wherein the EU leadership has become concerned about illiteracy levels within the Bloc. Specifically Austria produced some less-than-stellar numbers in a recent survey. This came as something of a surprise because a century ago, Austria was one of the cultural hubs of Europe. The country suffered a huge wave of anti-intellectual sentiment after the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918; and like a lot of other EU nations has more recently been the target of American Exceptionalism spreading its toxic influence. 

      For us Americans, however, therein lies the story that we should all note. According to the article, "a total of 29.0% or around 2.6 million people have a low level of literacy...The number of those who have problems with reading increased by 11.9% between 2012 and 2023.The average literacy level among Austrians aged 16 to 65 stands at 254 points, which is significantly below the average of 260 points set by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)."

    While these numbers are alarming, if the US had the same levels of literacy it would actually be an improvement. Even more importantly, our literacy rates have shown a consistent level of decline over a longer period of time. However, the numbers in Austria showed a hopeful trend:

   "People from 16 to 24 performed above the OECD average, while older people appear to have significantly lower reading skills than the expected level, the agency said." This is decidedly not the case in the US.

     In the recent controversies surrounding Harvard University and student visas, it was revealed that around 27% the attendees at America's nominally top-rated academic institutions were educated outside the United States. This led our Department of Education---which itself has been headed by a collection of complete morons for a very long time to scapegoat international students rather than focus on our own longstanding and very institutionalized decline.

    That the American Public Education System is hopelessly corrupt can hardly be denied; though most of the American Public itself generally does. Compared to Austria (and most countries in the world) American parents and local authorities actually have a great degree of control over public education. In spite of this greater freedom, Americans mostly have remained wholly apathetic towards---and even supportive of---the increasingly worsening Status Quo. 

   The underlying reason for this is that we, as a society, do not value children or young people generally. We live in a culture that is deeply Narcissistic and completely focused on the present. We have both contempt for the past (as is reflected in our treatment of the elderly) and little to no concern for the future (as is reflected in our treatment of our youth). This trend has been going on for several years, and, like the rampant dumbing-down of our society, is by design. We have allowed ourselves to outsource our thinking and put our future generations in the hands of Mass Media, Mass Schooling, and Big Tech and the result has been predictable. 

    For this reason, the 'solutions' proposed by the Left Wing of the Uniparty (i.e. throwing more money at the problem and trusting self-styled 'experts' to use it responsibly) or those proposed by the Right Wing of the Uniparty (i.e. outsource more of it to Corporate Robber-Barons and Megachurches and trusting grifters to exercise accountability) won't work. We have to face the fact that the problem begins at home. While it maybe so that, to some extent, it does take a village to raise a child---in the sense that the community should be supportive of raising and training children---handing over the youth to the community and hoping for the best hasn't worked out well and never can. Austrians are figuring this out. Maybe instead of looking down our noses at the Europeans we could learn something from them.