the destruction of American education over the past decade is an incredible self-own competence is objective. a child can either do the math or they can’t. but in the u.s., a lot of people have reasons not to say that! parents don’t want to hear their kid is struggling. teachers don’t want scores used to manage them. districts don’t want embarrassment. progressives worry accountability will create inequity. conservatives don’t want federal authorities. so we end up with process, weak standards, and excuses to explain away bad outcomes. people object that it’s phones, covid, demographic change. ok! but we fail globally when others have phones, covid too — vietnam is much poorer than the u.s., yet performs well in international math comparisons. some countries treat math as a basic skill everyone needs to master. here, it is part of a fight about fairness, autonomy, and feelings in the age of AI — if people can’t do basic math, read closely, or think through problems, ai won’t make them more capable. it will become something they rely on without understanding. the countries that come out ahead in the global race won’t just have better technology. they’ll have people who know how to use it, question it, build on it. we need the national ability to decide something is worth doing coherently (teaching math!) the US has the money to teach math well but it has not shown the will. we are failing the next generation