Our education system is failing for several reasons.

1. Family structures aren't what they used to be. Then again, neither is the country. Respect for symbols, adults, each other, has gone the way of Common Sense. If it isn't on social media readily available on an electronic device, then why bother thinking about it, researching it, questioning it?

2. Apparently there isn't a lot of reading going on in a lot of families. If the parents don't read it is guaranteed the children won't, either. Good luck getting a child to curl up with a good book on a rainy or just-too-hot-day to be outdoors. They will play video games until their eyes dry up. No student should be allowed past 3rd and 8th grades without being able to read for understanding at those levels. This newspaper I believe, is written for an 11th grade level, if I am not mistaken. This means that ninth-graders should be able to handle it. Most adults read at 7th or 8th grade level. Most books are at this level. This literacy fact says a lot about us as a nation.

3. Our educational system structure is partially to blame. K-12 demands regular annual progress regardless of whether any material was learned for understanding and retained. There's another class coming along, and heaven forbid we hold any student back, at any age. Social promotion has been the standing order of the day, for DECADES. Teachers' hold-back recommendations are routinely ignored.

4. An overhaul of our educational structure is long past due. K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-14. Students should start K at age 6, 1st grade at age 7. Middle school should run three years, grades 7-9. High school should be lengthened to 5 or 6 years. I don't make this recommendation lightly. To borrow a phrase, students are getting "a mile-wide education one inch deep." Look up SC (or any state) high school core subject standards. Read line by line what teachers are expected to teach. On too many facets, teachers could spend weeks, months, or an entire year on them, to insure learning for understanding. They don't have the time, so they merely introduce topics, not study them. Imagine sending more mature and actually prepared high school graduates out into the world at jobs, or at college, able to actually function without needing remedial courses. It's a concept. It's supposed to be the whole point of education.

All the disgraceful national stories about college behaviorial problems on campuses, including frats and sororities, would probably be greatly reduced if the environment consisted of older and more mature young citizens, actually interested in learning and questioning. Our brains don't fully develop for about 23 years or so. Until all those neurons are connected, why push students through a system they aren't ready for?

Annually, everywhere, because students mature at different paces, there are 7th graders not ready for 8th, 8th not ready for 9th, 12s not ready for college, etc. This is fact, and this is fixable. Students in each of the numeric categories I listed would be able to proceed at their own pace. Under this overhaul, the best would still graduate in four years, and NOT need remedial college courses, and NOT need help filling out a job app. There would be no social stigma staying an extra half year, year, or up to two years.

The goal of education is to produce qualified, literate citizens ready to take their place in the world. Who cares how long that takes? We are failing at that, annually, in great numbers. That failure is showing up everywhere, in the low quality of elected leaders at every level and job of govt; low levels of journalism; medical mistakes, you name the career field, it has problems it didn't use to have.

Our current crop of citizens can't lift their heads up away from their devices to walk, talk, drive, or be civil. They can't carry on a conversation unless they use their thumbs. Their standard response to social confrontations however minor or major, is to either flash a middle finger, or a gun. The complete visible lack of manners, tolerance, and Common Sense, is atrocious. They don't even like our Flag.

This is nuts. We allowed this to happen. We created this. We can fix this. We will not fix it if we continue to support the current education structure, one in which too many certified teachers become expensive administrators, or simply quit; where we socially promote the un-ready; where we praise the few with particular skills in whatever (sports, mostly) and ignore the majority; where we allow tax dollars to be pulled away from public schools to fund charter schools that, even with selective admittance programs, show barely more progress.

States need to tell the feds to stay out of public education, and learn to go their own way. States know where their problems are. Relying on blanket programs from the feds that don't allow for individual fixes is wrong, and proven wrong.