Victor Davis Hanson: Ode to America
Recently, the British magazine Times Higher Education rated the world’s top 400 universities. Seven of the top ten — Cal Tech, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley — are American. Even a nearly insolvent California hosts four of the top 13 — more than any nation except the US itself. While American K–12 education cannot turn out students who achieve top rankings in math, science, and language, our university system still remains by far the best in the world, training a global elite in the American way of engineering, math, science, business, and medicine. In fact, the world’s diplomatic corps is beginning to look like an American college reunion. This week, the Greeks appointed a new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, a former Harvard professor. And the newly appointed Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, is a former electrical-engineering professor from the University of Alabama.
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Nicely done.
Good thoughts.
“While American K–12 education cannot turn out students who achieve top rankings in math, science, and language”
But we do. Those top universities are mostly filled with American kids. We are not good at educating poor kids, especially minorities, but our rich kids are as good as their rich kids. Asians who come to the US perform on tests at the same level as Asians in Asia.
Steve
Good editorial.