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Diplomas for Dunces

“The quality of education that graduates get today is substantially inferior to that of students 50 or even 20 years ago,” said John R. Silber, president of Boston University in an interview published in U.S. News & World Report. He went on to explain: “Quite simply, today’s high-school diploma is a fraudulent credential. It doesn’t guarantee a level of literacy for the graduate. It doesn’t imply anything about a person’s ability to do ordinary arithmetic​—much less algebra, solid geometry or trigonometry. It doesn’t certify competence in science, world or American history, or anything else. What the high-school diploma tells you is that a student was institutionalized for about 12 years. That’s all.”

Of course, some properly motivated students do apply themselves and graduate with a good level of competency, but the trend in the U.S. has been away from rigorous academic standards. Silber points out that in Japan schools deliver reasonably well-educated young people to the work force at age 18. This is because the students “work much, much harder in the first 12 years of school.”​—September 7, 1981, p. 53.