This Magazine Staff
Okay Andrew, I’ll bite. What I find equally interesting is that a company that runs a number of private schools in California was recently shut down by authorities for handing out high school diplomas to students after teaching them some wildly incorrect “facts” about the Excited States. In particular the students — most of them Latino immigrants hoping education would level the playing field for them — were taught the U.S. flag was out of date because it didn’t have stars representing all 53 states (the last three being Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico). The workbook they were given also added a fourth branch of government, the “administrative” branch, to the existing three: judicial, executive and legislative.
Instead of fishing for a story about the rest of the world’s miseducation on the U.S., perhaps American journalists should be holding their own education system accountable and helping to ensure citizens of the U.S. have a proper understanding of their own country (not to mention some education about the rest of the world. That’s another post in itself.)