It surprised me to see Russia as having a higher percentage of young people with degrees than the U.S. But then I guess that is probably due to my ignorant view of that country. We in the U.S. have been lead to believe that everyone in Russia is poor, uneducated, and starving due to lack of opportunities in a communist system.  To see that they are actually more educated then we are is a cultural shock but not an unpleasant one at least to me. I need to spend some serious time learning more about Russia instead of just believing what is fed to me by others.

The point of this post is why is it that 40% of Americans have only a high school education in the 21st century where robots are replacing all repetitive tasks? I personally think the following are a few possible reasons:

1. Its just too expensive for most to go to college or even trade schools for that matter.
2. Many teachers don’t instill the desire to learn in their students at an early enough age.
3. Parents are not doing enough to promote lifelong learning in the home.
4. Our country is geared more to sports/competition than to education/learning.
5. Kids in the U.S. have in entitlement mindset.
6. U.S. education is more about memorizing than learning how to think.
7. Not enough kids have mentors/examples in their lives.

I don’t have enough space here to expand on these things so I will just say that all of them are in need of improvement. Instead of trying to find the “silver bullet solution we should be tackling each of the multiple underlying causes.  I hope someday that we can manage to put the solution to these things on a high priority that they deserve.