Do you value learning? Do you learn from your mistakes? Okay, now that we have gotten your trained education makes the world go round response, mostly taught to you by television and job recruiters from various monopolies, answer the question again. Do you really value the notion that learning is key to the human experience? Well, if you are like half of America, you clearly do not value education. Half of the nation now wants education to occur from their personal perspective. They want to rewrite curricula to fit their standards, not that of educators. The rewriting of history, scientific discovery, psychology, and mathematics is rampant in America. No two schools seem to learn the same things anymore, and yet parents want even more learning options for their children. Instead of going to college, sixteen percent of parents now want their children to go to non-college training programs such as plumbing, automotive repair or other forms of job training skillfully dressed up as education. Eight percent of parents want their children to go to community college and to skip the four year degree. Finally, a whole twenty-two percent of American parents want their children to skip education altogether once they have graduated high school and to become a volunteer worker, a member of the military, start a paid job, or join a family business. This paints a much clearer picture, I think, of what many Americans actually mean when they say that they value learning. Many of them consider educational institutions like college to be a waste of time with no real benefit. Believe it or not this trend has accelerated in the last ten years with more and more people becoming disenchanted with the high cost of college tuitions and the seemingly low return on that cost. This makes sense because Americans measure the value of education with their finances, not the life lessons, business connections, exposure to diversity, and natural boost in self-esteem that comes along with a college degree. Essentially half of the nation believes education is just a way to get more money in their pockets. They are failing to realize the responsibility and stability that exist outside of one’s bank account like the fact that you develop long term relationships in college that can lead to work after you graduate or how college graduates are more likely to have children who value education or that states with higher educational attainment also tend to have lower crime rates. It is interesting to note that, while America saw its biggest jump in violent crime in 2020, that increase in crime was part of a larger trend that began in 2014, around the same time this interest in alternative forms of education began to develop along with a distaste for “intellectualism” and college education. It seems that many Americans are redefining what good education is, and by doing so choosing a path that could set their communities up for some serious failures. This surge in skepticism when it comes to our education system is partially due to an old myth that different people have different learning styles, a myth that, while rampant on both the left and the right, has never been scientifically proven. “Many people, including educators, believe learning styles are set at birth and predict both academic and career success even though there is no scientific evidence to support this common myth, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. In two online experiments with 668 participants, more than 90 percent of them believed people learn better if they are taught in their predominant learning style, whether that is visual, auditory or tactile.” (APA) Why do Americans still believe that genetics predict learning ability when there is not solid proof for that assertion? And, more importantly why are we measuring the quality of our education based on how well our children are doing in school instead of how well they recover from failure?