The solution should be readily obvious to everyone.
Well, it would be, if we could just cut through all the CR*P.
The educationist progressive, John Dewey, was a proselytizer of the "Prussian Model" of public education. The educational decline of America starts precisely with Dewey, around a 100 years ago.
The Prussian model seeks to build "productive citizens." It cares more about inculcating "job skills" in students than in training them to be critical thinkers.
John Dewey studied at the very knee of one Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), a prominent German philologist and man of letters, who believed that the very methods of education of our young must "evolve" with changing times and circumstances. In his own words,
"The ancients concerned themselves with the strength and development of man as man; the moderns with his material well-being, his property, and his earning capacity. The ancients sought virtue, the moderns happiness.... The highest ideal of human beings living together, I believe, would be that in which each develops out of himself and for his own sake." [emphasis added]In von Humboldt's educationist scenario, "the state is only viewed as a means, there doesn't have to be as much effort on the part of the individual to support this means.... As long as the subject obeys the laws, and keeps himself and his dependents well provided for in an occupation that is not harmful to others, the state is not concerned about the exact manner of his existence."
What better scenario can you think of, to undermine the principle of human liberty, and of human direct participation in a political culture of which we the people are supposed to be "sovereign?"
Dewey's model completely negates any appreciation of human history as being in any way relevant to the proper functioning of a free people. Ultimately, with this sort of Humboldtian-style education, the only freedom the people have left is to pay their taxes on time [or else]. Humboldt's educationist plan boils down to grinding out reliable future taxpayers, by giving them "job skills"— all for the benefit of the State.
And that's what "public education" is all about.
If that's so, then it seems to me that we are on a course leading to mass suicide....