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Why America’s Most Educated Generations Are So Ignorant
What has all this school gained us?
I have two stories to tell about American education.
On the one hand, Americans are better educated than we’ve ever been. In 1960, when my parents were about to enter high school, they probably saw a diploma as an accomplishment that would set them apart: only 41% of Americans were high school graduates at the time. When my mom and dad went to college — the first in their families to do so — they were part of a small, elite minority; only 10% of Americans were college graduates in 1965.
By the time I went to college in the 1990s, Americans’ educational attainment had essentially doubled. My high school diploma was no longer special (in 1995, 82% of Americans were high school graduates), and my college degree put me in a growing minority (23% of Americans had finished college in 1995).
Now, my kids are in college. Everyone around them assumed they’d graduate from high school; 91% of Americans accomplish that these days. They’re both thinking about attending graduate school because their college diplomas won’t set them apart that much anymore; 38% of Americans have bachelors’ degrees.
My parents, then I, and now my kids, could all claim to be members of the best-educated generation in…
