>American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture.
What does lack of culture even mean? We have plenty of culture, in fact we export it to the rest of the world. It may be different, but just because you don't like it, you can't say it's not culture.
>...but the lack of attention paid to education...
How can you possibly say that. We spend more money per student than all but a few countries. And we are constantly worried about our students falling behind. This stuff is regularly all over the news--nearly every politician ever elected talks about improving education.
So, yes we definitely "pay attention" to education.
Obviously the problem is not with the attention we pay, but with something else.
For example, the US also spends more healthcare (per capita and percentage of GDP) than any other country, yet our healthcare is not noticeably better. That's putting it politely - many would argue that it is in fact much worse than comparable countries.
So I agree with your point, that it isn't the amount of "attention paid" that determines quality, but throwing money at the problem is also not the solution.
Sadly, education will never improve until it is nationalized. As long as states can influence the coverage of something like evolution they are unfit for making choices for those children.
Not all states push creationism on the curriculum, and some states, like California, are both economically productive enough and populous enough to be their own nations. Despite that, California has some of the worst average educational attainment in the nation. How, exactly, would nationalizing improve the situation?
This is happening to an extent with the wide adoption of the Common Core. Unfortunately, at least with regard to math, this curriculum is not better than all of the state versions it's replacing. I'd rather see something like tying funding to evidence that a particular strategy might work.
Except that education has gotten worse and more expensive as it's be centralized. I in fact would prefer a much more distributed form of education where school vouchers allow schools to compete for students and parents can choose a school that educates in the way they'd prefer.
American culture is extremely variable, and that's a good thing. It's a strength. The mean is low but the variance is extremely high so we hit quite a good share of the high notes.
However, we still live in a society where bullshitting, useless rainmakers get more respect than engineers, scientists, doctors and professors who actually build, fix, make, and understand things.
That last sentence is true for every single country I've ever lived in or spent time in. Wether it's highly paid footballers, cricket players, Starcraft players, or some other form of celebrity. Don't pin that as anything remotely close to uniquely American.
But everything is a matter of degree, and America's got quite a severe degree of antiintellectualism. For example, in most countries, if top scientists say the globe is warming because of CO2 emissions, people simply accept it and start trying to find ways to lower their CO2 emissions. In America, whole organized fronts start claiming that the scientific method is a conspiracy concocted to bring certain politicians to power.
What does lack of culture even mean? We have plenty of culture, in fact we export it to the rest of the world. It may be different, but just because you don't like it, you can't say it's not culture.
>...but the lack of attention paid to education...
How can you possibly say that. We spend more money per student than all but a few countries. And we are constantly worried about our students falling behind. This stuff is regularly all over the news--nearly every politician ever elected talks about improving education.
So, yes we definitely "pay attention" to education.
Obviously the problem is not with the attention we pay, but with something else.