The Education Dilemma

Today I read in the Sunday Oregonian, that the Oregon Department of Education made the following announcement. Students in 7th grade and high school can now use automated spell checking when doing the state writing test. Can you spell l-o-w-e-r s-t-a-n-d-a-r-t-s. Doing so will not do the students a favor. Americans are already falling behind compared internationally. Our education system is not doing a good job preparing our youth for the real world out there. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings right? You still can get a good education here if you are looking for one. But it also comes with a price. College tuition is up and it is not uncommon to be 100k+ in the hole when finished. Many other countries do it far cheaper and a lot better than we do. The entire system should be re-thought, because when your football or basketball career is over you want to have something to fall back onto. Unless of course you are very good at saying: "Do you want fries with that?"
To put that in perspective: Even Cuba has a better education system. A lesser known fact is that US students can get a very good and inexpensive medical education. in Cuba. Cuba has the third highest life expectancy in the Americas after Canada and Chile. So the quality is there. Higher than the US, which has the only for profit health care system on the entire planet. But back to education. This makes me appreciate my education even more. Coming from a country where I had the opportunity to do a three year apprentice ship program, getting paid for it, ok very little, but the astonishing thing was that I did not produce anything valuable for anything or anybody that could be used. It was all about learning and at that time the best apprentice ship program available. The same people offered me a full scholarship to go to college. Of course you cannot turn somebody down that enthusiastic. What I think is important in all of this is that an education system where you are only limited by your own brain grease is better than one where you are limited by the size of your wallet. Yo si puedo
A recent article I read was in my opinion pretty impressive and struck the core of the reason of the US education dilemma. Even if you do not agree with the tiger mom's regiment. The overall picture shows that US parents have to take it up two notches.