One of the most woeful failures of America's (essentially state-run) school system is its lack of willingness to require that our youth be aware of what is truly going on in the rest of the world. How could it possibly be that almost no high school student in America could point out where Darfur (or 5 years ago Iraq or Afghanistan) is on a map, let alone tell you what is happening there? How could it be that the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and, much more importantly, the crumbling of the Soviet Union occurred and almost no high school student could even explain what had happened, not to mention understanding the long-term social and geo-political ramifications of it, nor the history of what led up to it. The fact is that the History and Social Studies curricula are so homogenized as to be mind-numbingly boring, and so laden with leftist propaganda as to be devoid of useful content. Teachers in the classsroom should be above the political fray, presenting an even-handed, objective view of history and current events. Instead, our youth are treated to an ideological brainwashing the likes of which propagandists throughout history would be envious. Yet (on the bright side) in spite of this ideological indoctrination, the country's rightward shift continues.
