The First Sophomore

By Dean Kedenburg

To shamelessly plagiarize from Dickens, American education is in the best of times and the worst of times. We turn out the world's best scholars, yet we wallow sadly behind many sister nations in the schooling of our young.

The national urgency for educational improvement is a standard rallying cry for every civil servant, from the sparest schoolhouse to the Capitol dome, but how can we seriously pursue excellence in learning when the centerpiece of our nation represents the single largest educational failure in American history: the president of the United States?

The president is the beneficiary of by far the greatest access to information, knowledge, and learned opinion in the world, all at his beck and call, yet in seven and one half years in office, Mr. Obama has learned nothing.

How can this be?.......... Read more