America Falling Behind?

I have read that America is falling behind in testing.  Yes, that's right.  The great United States is falling behind other countries...and I have a theory as to why that's happening.

Because of the media and what we see on a day to day basis, we've discovered that you don't have to be educated to make lots and lots of money.  Look at today's reality television stars who have made ridiculous amounts of money without having to have any sort of education.  They're simply themselves and they get paid to do it in front of lots of other people.

When mind-sets like this start to settle in, we develop a laziness that is practically an epidemic.  No one is free from it.  No one.

We trun on the television and we're hit with television shows that tell us that we don't really need to work to be rich or famous.  All we have to do is worry about ourselves and do whatever we gosh darn well want, and things will eventually work out.  This is another reason why exercising has also gone down the drain.  We don't want to do all of that hard work, and this is the same with school.  When we have everything at our fingertips, we begin to think that we shouldn't have to work hard in order to get things, but all this truly leads to is an unhealthy mind-set that hard work is old-fashioned.

Because of this mind-set, we are practically encouraging kids to cheat their way through school and not put any effort into the learning process.  When we let them think that this is okay, we are degrading the values that our nation was founded on.

The idea that hard work can get you anywhere is true, but the problem is no one seems to want to put in the effort to do so, which is what is causing our gradual downslide in testing and in almost every other aspect in our lives.

This is an epidemic.  It's called...

Laziness.

I was once a victim, and I admit that I'm still recovering from it, but it can be cured.  I was put through a series of harsh wake-up calls about my life in order to notice it and catch it in time, but at least I finally noticed it.  I was raised in a family where hard work was a part of our daily lives, and my parents enforced it, but I'm just now understanding what it truly means.

It means this:

Get up and be productive, gosh darnit!!

The link to the New York Times article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28friedman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss