Well educate them on that instead of trying to control the information flow. History taught us that will always backfire.
The US is a rich country. If anything, using percentage of GDP understates just how much we spend on education. For primary & secondary education (everything before college), there are only four countries in the world that spend more per student than the US: Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and Norway. For post-secondary education (college and grad school), the US spends more per student than any other country.[2]
If you look at other metrics such as the percentage of adults with college degrees, or the percentage of adults who graduate high school, the US has never done better.[3][4] If you look at PISA scores, we're very close to the OECD average and that number hasn't changed much over time.[5] (Like most developed countries, absolute scores have slowly decreased over time. It's not clear why this is happening.)
If people have been working for decades to destroy public education, they're doing a very bad job of it.
1. https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/public-spending-on-educati...
2. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp
3. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-51....
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...
I teach in college. I was born early sixties. My daughter teaches math in high school. Recently I showed her my math books from my old high school. Her response: No way that my students could follow this.
Where I teach we have to give extra classes in basic math (I'm in STEM).
We're definitely sliding. Reading seems to be sliding worse even.
By the way, I don't think there is much of a correlation between how much a country spends on education and the quality of it.
I'll defend their right to be stupid.
I won't prevent people from learning rather I won't force them to learn if that what they prefer.
>A democracy requires an educated electorate, so you are anti-democracy?
Democracy doesn't require an educated electorate, it only require majority. If the majority is 'stupid' (stupid is relative) then stupid it is.
A democracy ruled by an ignorant majority winds up as authoritarian, but you already knew what that quote I paraphrased means. Keep deflecting.
No, unless you force somebody to put that link.
>A democracy ruled by an ignorant majority winds up as authoritaria
If majority wants authoritarian then authoritarian it is, thats democracy.
The problem isn't that people "don't like" what elected officials say. It's that people often take what elected officials say as truth without even considering that it might be false (they must be Smart and Good if they're in office, right?)
Fact checking and censoring prominent figures isn't going to affect people who already have strongly held beliefs. But it will make a difference to people who are impressionable or vulnerable or don't know any better.