The other night, I heard a PSA on the radio in which the announcer urged the listeners to get involved in their local public schools. American schools, he said, were dangerously underfunded and out-of-date, and needed community support if the United States was not to slip behind other nations.

This is hardly cause for comment, except at the time I was listening to The Big Broadcast, an old-tyme radio show, on WAMU at the time, and the PSA was part of a Studio One production of The Red Badge of Courage, recorded in 1947.

American education isn’t in crisis. Our high-schoolers score lower, on average, on university entrance exams than students in other countries because a much larger percentage of American students take the exams. A lot of students do poorly because they come from cultures and from families that don’t give a rat’s ass about education. And money has nothing to do with quality of education.

Don’t expect to see the government saying any of this any time soon. Left-wingers like the idea that education is in crisis because it allows them to get more involved in children’s lives, and because it allows them to spend more money. Right-wingers like the idea because it gives them an opportunity ot attempt to destroy the NEA.