Lew Dobbs, for those of you that might not know, is the host of Lou Dobbs Tonight, a prime time program on the Fox Business Network.
In this interesting video Dobbs discusses a recent book by Eric Hanushek titled Endangering Prosperiy: A global view of the American school with the author himself.
As an interviewer Lou Dobbs tends to be more laid back than most of his fellow hosts on the Fox Network, but he did seem upset by two figures author Hanushek claimed showed the inadequacy of our public schools:
- one, students in the US were rated 32nd of 65 nations in math proficiency;
- two, US students ranked 17th in reading proficiency worldwide.
During the discussion Lou Dobbs asked Mr. Hanushek the following questions:
- What is the cost if we continue to fail?
- Why can’t we just depend on well-educated immigrants?
- Looking on the American education system as a business, why doesn’t it try to satisfy its customers, the American people?
- Why does the system refuse to use the same incentives used by other systems to ensure success?
- What would be the positive economic impact of our schools reaching the same level as Canadian Schools?
- Why won’t present politicians do more?
If you find the questions loaded, you’re probably dead on.
But the video is worthwhile watching and you will find the answers interesting even if you’re not in complete accord with them.