A shocking report from the Council on Foreign Relations finds that 75% of Americans 17-24 are physically, intellectually, or criminally unfit to join the U.S. military. The Independent Task Force report, “U.S. Education Reform and National Security,” states, “The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role, finds a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)–sponsored Independent Task Force report on U.S. Education Reform and National Security.”
In short, Americans have become too complacent, stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and overweight to protect ourselves in the global economy or from our enemies. Our war on drugs, our racism, our abstinence-only education, and our creeping Christianity have put us at risk.
“Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk,” warns the Task Force, chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state. The country “will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long,” argues the Task Force.
“Human capital will determine power in the current century, and the failure to produce that capital will undermine America’s security,†the report states. “Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy.â€
James Marshall Crotty at Forbes notes:
75% of U.S. citizens ages 17-24 cannot pass military entrance exams because they are not physically fit, have criminal records, or because they lack critical skills needed in modern warfare, including how to locate on a map military theaters in which the U.S. is fulsomely engaged, such as Afghanistan. Ancient Greece the U.S. is certainly not. The CFR Report argues that this egregious knowledge gap will make it increasingly hard to fill the ranks of U.S. foreign service, intelligence, and armed forces. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, the 25% of American students who drop out of high school will not be able to serve in the U.S. military. In addition, 30% of those who do graduate high school still lack the basic math, science, and English competency to pass the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
Crotty adds:
In a global economy, where foreign language competency is critical, eight in ten Americans only speak English (with no foreign language capability at all). Sadly, my second language of American, extolled in my bathroom-reading Bible, How To Talk American, is not yet recognized as a foreign language. In addition, an increasing number of schools are dropping their foreign language programs. Meanwhile, only 1.4% of American students study abroad, mostly in Europe. I stand guilty. For my junior year abroad from my undergraduate alma mater of Northwestern, I chose the University of Sussex in Falmer, England in part because of my weak foreign language skills (though the London new wave and post-punk scene was another un-mentioned draw). This lack of foreign language training (long an American Achilles heel frequently noted by my Swiss and French compadres) means the U.S. State Department is experiencing a lack of trained linguists in the mission critical languages of Korean, Russian, Chinese, Turk, and Dari. Yes, Dari (the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan).