I went to a public school and am not in jail

How can one of the most affluent countries on earth possess one of the least successful education systems? Bureaucracy and social negligence, according to Waiting for Superman. It's no secret that countries such as Belgium and Japan have far better results in education with equal if not lesser amount of spending, but where have the west gone wrong?

Let's forget the fact that decent public schools in America are so sparse that a child must enter an 'educational lottery' to grant access to a public system statistically worthy of being accepted into University. Let's also forget that most students are destined to fail their stream simply because they are in the wrong school with the wrong teachers, who may place them in a lesser 'track' in which they will be stuck due to the nature of their archaic system. This is a reality that can hardly be understood in countries like Australia, where even our public system offers an equally diverse syllabus as the private. The question is what are we to do with this knowledge?

All western nations are suffering a loss of skilled professionals. We are lacking the educated class to fill many of these positions, and this is solely because our own youth have an aversion to pursuing any type of career, let alone one that may need a 4 to 6 year tertiary onslaught. One of the major points in Waiting for Superman is the failing primary school system, which implies that a substantial impact on the forming of our children lies on what is developed in an early age. If they are raised in an environment of negligence and apathy, they are likely to grow into an adult that has little faith in their society and fellow citizens. This deserves just as much blame as the society in which these students have grown in.

The solution is simple, decent teachers in a decent environment. The money is there, and it's about time the money flew into the right hands. Education is still in need of reform (as it has been promised for years), but sadly true reform takes decades thanks to the layers of bureaucratic red tape. I am no optimist, but I can sense that the first world's leaders will see the benefit of keeping worthy teachers in decent schools, for nothing less than fiscal gain sometime in the future. This may be the only incentive, but it's better to have one than to have none.