It shouldn’t be a secret that the public education system in the United States is collapsing, although a vast number of people don’t appear to notice that fact. This is a testament to mental inertia. It takes a steady drumbeat of evidence and perhaps the bravery of a few in the MSM to say the quiet part out loud.

There has been a modest decline in Americans’ approval of the execrable system, but 42% of Americans still approve of the system either completely or mostly. COVID did enormous damage to the prestige of the system, as has the descent into ideological grooming, but far too many people approve. Of course, it is no surprise that the approval rating of the system closely mirrors that of Joe Biden.

Make of that what you will.

What most Americans don’t know is that the rather poor state of public education is not limited to the United States, where teachers’ unions seem to run the schools in the way inmates would run an asylum. It seems that the sorry state of public education is spreading into the entire Anglosphere (a new obsession of mine, the decline in the sanity of the home of classical liberalism). I am ignorant of what is going on in the non-English speaking world, although I suspect that the damage is less severe. One day I will look into that question.

A great example of this fact comes from a story in The Telegraph, a newspaper far superior to anything published in the United States.

📝 Some Year 6 pupils were left in "tears" by this year's Sats reading test, according to parents and teachers.

Try the questions yourself here 👇 https://t.co/hjVL0E4L3c

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 18, 2023

The story is about how 10-11-year-old students can’t do a basic reading comprehension test. It is disturbing in the extreme because it not only reveals how we are raising a generation of whining idiots but also how many parents are more concerned with the affirmation of their children’s genius than the actual development of basic skills.

Sixth-grade students, apparently, cannot read and understand things. At all. Worse, when confronted with this fact they break down in tears, offended that they are required to read and understand a few hundred words. Even worse, some teachers complained that even they couldn’t understand the questions.

Apparently, emojis are the only language they understand.

Some Year 6 pupils were left in “tears” by this year’s Sats reading test, according to parents and teachers.

The paper was sat by 10- and 11-year-old children across the country on May 10, with the marks being used to inform their target grades and sets at secondary school from September.

It has 38 questions, based on three texts in a 12-page reading booklet, with Year 6 pupils expected to understand words such as “hotspot”, “vulnerable” and “eradicated”.

But parents have lambasted exam chiefs for making it “too hard for children”. Kerry Forrester, the head at a Cheshire primary school, warned about the “negative impact” on her pupils and she said some were reduced to tears.

The National Association of Head Teachers said some staff also struggled “to understand the questions”.

How difficult were the questions? I won’t post many of them, but a few should give you an idea.

Now perhaps the students haven’t heard the expression, but the context is clear enough. Nobody literally HIT her, and for God’s sake, the answer was literally right next to the turn of phrase. Rustlers!

All right, maybe getting this wrong is understandable. I was a serious reader in my youth and remain one today, so perhaps my recollection of what it means to be a sixth grader is off. I was reading hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages a week by then.

How about this one? After reading that piece of text, in which Austin is referred to as the capitol of Texas, could you answer “In which American state is the bridge?”

I hope so. It says “the capital city of the state of Texas” right there. If you are crying after that question perhaps you can’t read at all, or reading two paragraphs is beyond your attention span.

You get the idea. Every answer is glaringly obvious. You don’t have to understand every damn word to figure out the answer. You just have to have the ability to pay attention for 30 seconds. That is it. The only requirement is basic reading skills and the ability to pay attention.

Now let’s go back to the quote from the article. “The National Association of Head Teachers said some staff also struggled “to understand the questions”.”

In what possible universe is it acceptable for “Head Teachers,” who are the equivalent of principals in the United States, to be so incapable of understanding these questions and answering them?

Granted, my IQ is above average, but I am pretty sure that it is not so extraordinary that I am incapable of recognizing what an average person should be able to do. This isn’t theoretical physics. It is being able to discern that being the capitol of Texas pretty much means that Austin is in Texas.

See the problem?

The Anglosphere is dying, and it is doing so because our Elite class is apparently happy enough to have it happy. They want us fat, stupid, and compliant. And a vast percentage of our population is just as happy to let it happen, apparently. They kick, they scream, they throw tantrums, and sic the FBI on us if we complain about the obvious decline of our basic institutions.

Some brilliant social scientist, of which there are far too few, needs to do research on why the Anglosphere, in particular, is becoming so decrepit. Is this just a normal imperial decline? Is the infiltration of cultural Marxists?

Why is this happening, and happening so rapidly? The roots go back decades, of course, but the trajectory is just like the joke about bankruptcy: it happens slowly, then all at once. There is a tipping point where the accumulated rot leads to sudden collapse.

We are, it seems, at that tipping point.