failure of american high schools

You wrote the answer yourself: separation of church and state and keeping God out of the schools . All citizens, disregarding their religion, race, etc are Americans, and MUST respect a set of values that they (you, Americans) share. Earlier I wrote something similar, but I deleted it because I didn't want to offend anyone. Those values (based on freedom, its price, its costs, its advantages, etc) must be perfectly known to every kid, to every future citizen, and should be taught in secular, independent schools to avoid intoxications or brain washing. As you said many parents (MANY) aren't probably fit to be parents, but they still are (who is to say who is or who isn't fit to be a parent) so someone must take the responsibility to create citizens out of them. But this is a really complex issue that perhaps I don't fully understand.

 

1. Darn right.

2. I think the problem here is that 60s relativism has people brainwashed into thinking that they can't take a stand on anything, but it's pretty obvious that a parent that isn't teaching his/her kid any values is incompetent.

3. Having someone else there to take responsibility gives out the message that it is okay to fail because somebody else will always clean up your mess for you.

 

Thanks JLV. Shall we call it the “American influence”? I haven’t met many Americans in my life (except some Christian Missionaries during my college days) to support that claim, though, their books did.