The National Center for Education Statistics charted a significant decline in literacy of adults across education levels in the period from 1992 to 2003. Alarmingly, they showed that 69% of college graduates couldn’t read any reasonably complex material with an acceptable level of understanding, and even 41% of candidates for higher degrees were not proficient in reading. Studies by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in their 2011 book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, tracked students during college and found “limited or no learning for a large proportion of students.” That must also reflect failure of K-12 schooling to prepare students adequately. What is behind this dismal picture?

Unfortunately, we must yet again discuss how inadequate the educational system is in delivering on its promise to educate the young and prepare citizens for adulthood, and the various roles and careers in society they will need to perform, not only for personal benefit but the growth and expansion of civilization to meet the overarching yearning for progress. These statistics show the opposite has been happening. As a society, you are losing ground and you are rightly concluding this does not start in college but does get worse. And that has been attributed by critics to represent the great shift away from academic excellence as the goal of higher education, to be replaced with a focus on teaching students to become social justice warriors as the highest of priorities in every discipline. With the relentless focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the reinterpretation by political operatives masquerading as professors, the end result can only be a shirking of responsibility for education, in a true sense, in exchange for high‑priority political goals of what are truly activists, not educators. It has been true all along that government schooling is more a dumbing down, and a training ground in conformity and subjugation, than a stimulating learning and growth opportunity that inspires and enhances the intellect and pursuit of excellence. So given the orchestration to create mediocrity, any additional diversion from true educational goals, with new agendas focused on social justice as a be-all and end-all preoccupation, will make things only worse.