[jwvgoethe]

Repeatedly I see articles of this theme and the comments insisting that "education is broken." Well I would like to advance the argument that education in the United States at the present is better than any place else in the world and better than it has ever been. But with one caveat, and that is that children, like people, differ in their abilities and not everyone will or can become a great mathematician or engineer or writer. However, for the ones who are have talent, our educational system, at the secondary and post-secondary level is unique in its ability to nurture budding genius.

American education still has a emphasis on liberal education which practically only exists in the anglo world and most strongly in the US. For all the antagonism towards the general curriculum requirements here on HN, which IMHO is a strain of philistinism, our mental life, and the strength of our democracy depends on citizens well aware of the world around them and capable of critical argument. While some are innately born with this ability, a liberal education is the way to ensure it in those who are not.

Beyond this, for our most promising scientific minds are very well served by our educational system. Generally attending a strong public or good private secondary school, they will be recognized early in their ability and encouraged to supplement their mathematical and scientific coursework at a local institution of higher learning. During summers, they will work in the lab of a prominent university professor and get early exposure to research. This will continue in university as they become further familiar with the state of the art as an undergraduate and are better prepared for graduate school than someone without these benefits so early, say in India or China where the state of research is not so strong.

Do some talented individuals fall by the wayside? Yes, but not as many as imagined. The only real criticism of american education is that it leaves those who may not want or be capable of a high status creative profession underserved. But this is a uniquely american calculation in the interests of equity and idealism. We accept some measure of inefficiency here in our educational system to maintain coherence with our national mythos that all men are created equal, an ambiguous but politically useful statement. Otherwise we could follow a german model and single out the talented children from the rest around the age of 10 and send them to different schools. But I can't really imagine this working in the United States.