As we prepare for America’s 250th Anniversary, do we see a nation growing stronger or one so deeply engrained in a slump that we seem to be suffering a loss of self?
Just 75 years ago, our people’s unified effort, focus and belief made it possible to fight and win a World War in Europe and Asia at the very same time and in so doing become the most powerful nation the World had ever seen.
During the process we displayed a national genius by developing a lend lease program providing arms to our Allies on the promise of repayment at War’s end and then making it a peacetime program by lending money to countries throughout the World so that they could afford to buy our goods and services. Such an economic program was unknown at the time.
That America 75 years ago, recognized and understood that education built leaders, and so developed a Liberal Arts curriculum for colleges and universities to provide leadership potential – not jobs – and then offered that kind of education to returning service men free of charge.
Are we now that same super power? Not even close.
We no longer manufacture and sell anything to the World but military equipment. Once the World’s supplier of wheat we have been surpassed by Ukraine.
Then the World looked to us for goods and services. Today the World looks to China for the goods we used to provide. America is China’s best customer.
As this is being written the businessman President prepares to meet with China to set up some sort of business arrangement by bringing a number of top CEO’s with him.
At the very same time the people of Taiwan are buying guns and learning to use them. Does this sound like they see us as the military power able to stop China from coming in to overwhelm them?
Military power? Fighting the Chinese in the Korean War years ago we settled on dividing Korea into two nations.
We literally ran away from the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
And now we are in a war with Iran at a staggering cost to our defense and economic systems. Though we say we have destroyed them militarily they have been using drones to significantly bomb our military bases throughout the Mideast but there is little news about that nor about the cost of those bombings and even the loss of lives.
They have retained 75% of their military missiles and still control the Straits of Hormuz.
But perhaps worst of all in the years following our establishing America as the ultimate World power, we stopped educating our children. In 1970 our system of public education changed the way it taught reading and arithmetic, while ending memorization which helped people learn to think.
We began a more than a generation of education failure -one which crushed all attempts to help it. We fell as have all of history’s World powers and we have been falling ever since.
Today 23% of elementary school students no longer go to school regularly. Absenteeism is in full bloom.
Today, desperate to stop year after year of unending failure in our elementary and secondary schools, the system has returned to using phonics to teach reading as it again begins teaching cursive writing so that students learn to actually sign their names. This as it must first teach today’s teachers how to teach phonics and cursive writing.
Our Schools of Education, severely criticized for not properly preparing its students to teach, have done little to make up deficits. Teachers still appear at their first jobs unprepared to either deal with rooms full of children or to teach them educational material.
Today across America, three out of five teachers leave the field within five years because they cannot do the job. The fear is that those who remain do so to be able to receive pensions at the end of their thirty years.
There is a New York story that a high school senior, editor of the school newspaper, wrote two sentences about the recent Metropolitan Fashion Gala. The sentences included the words Extraordinary and Gauche. The student then approached his fellow seniors and asked them to read the two sentences. Not a single one could and most couldn’t even read words other than extraordinary and gauche. The senior printed his findings in the school paper. And was promptly expelled before graduation.
One wonders about the genuine honesty of public school leadership. One wonders about their fears of using AI to teach each individual child, something our system has never been able to do, even as teachers themselves use AI techniques to write their own materials and regimens.
Despite all the talk about improvement, third and fourth graders continue to fall well below expectations in reading and math as one system after another fails to meet expectations. And while the excuse continues to blame school closings during Covid, that excuse seems pitiful.
And now Gen Z, the generation which has come of age to provide the leadership to keep our economic and political systems working and improving, has shown itself incapable of doing either.
Once upon a time the New York Times would annually publish a small but important story about how college graduates that year supplanted (again) the successes of previous generations.
They stopped doing that three years ago…when the results failed to prove the previous stories.
We are advised by corporations that recent college graduates – some with advanced degrees – have trouble in the corporate and business world because they seem incapable and disinterested in solving problems on their own and become negative about pushing forward if they do not like the decisions being made for them.
While many college graduates today fear the impact of Artificial Intelligence on their chances for a job, perhaps they’d be better off thinking that the corporate world may be doubting their ability to be good prospects.
And finally comes news that the company that produces special pouches to hold precious iPhones and keep them out of classrooms has completed a study which shows that while there had been some early discipline problems, that has cleared and attendance seems to be on the rise.
It also shows that there have been very little if any, educational advances in those systems where the phones have been locked up.
We can blame things on easy to reach technology or about closing schools during Covid, but the real truth is harder to bear: we are not teaching our children and nobody seems to care.
THE POLITICS OF CHANGE
America’s political system has always reflected the different views of its leadership right from the very first – even as the Constitution itself was being written and debated.
The original document, containing very few words or specific directions was written and rewritten – the divisions in the minds of the founders clear to the relatively small group of wealthy men who were responsible for it and for laying the groundwork of a new nation in the World.
Political changes – the names of specific political organizations – changed from time to time as the years followed and finally, a century later, settled on Democrats and Republicans.
Hurt and angry, Ms. Stefanik announced she would run for Governor. The President then supported the campaign of Bob Blakeman from Nassau County. Ms. Stefanik then quit the government altogether.
Nationally the efforts by the Heritage Foundation to establish the Presidency as an autocratic power worked wonderfully with the personality of the businessman President to use fear of a primary contest to silence the Republican Party completely — and Congress along with it.
The Democratic Party has needed no help to completely lose its past identity. It no longer represents the interests of the middle class and blue collar workers and in fact appears to represent no one at all…unless one listens to disappointed Americans who believe the party represents only those linked to the need for social changes in America. While that is understood, those Americans want the same concerns to exist about them.
Combined with the age of their leadership, the Democratic Party seems to be lost as younger people with ideas established by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a political organization, not a political party, are leaning leftward beyond the comfort zone of many.
People impressed with those victories don’t seem to fully recognize that neither winner had any real opposition at all. AOC ran against a longtime Congressman who stayed in Washington and didn’t bother campaigning against her at all.
Mr. Mamdani ran against Andrew Cuomo, roundly disliked and deeply scarred by unfortunate personal and political activities.
This year’s midterm elections are now being influenced by the activities to change Congressional boundaries to favor one side or the other.
The Supreme Court, increasingly marred by what seems to be political bias, has just ended the Voting Rights Act passed years ago to guarantee that black Americas had genuine representation in Congress.
The idea that America has gotten past its caste system of racial intolerance -especially in the South – indicates either a genuinely memorable cerebral stroke or a very partial political stance. Or maybe both.
We will soon learn whether the Democrats can win back a majority of the House (and maybe the Senate) or whether we will continue to be led by an autocratic approach to government unlike any we have ever seen.
JULY 4, 2026
But in the meantime, we have that 250th Anniversary of the “once upon a time America” to celebrate.
Led by the reality host whose NBC television show ran for 15 years, longer than Archie Bunker or Seinfeld or just about anybody but for Lucy and the game shows like the Price is Right, we are going to see an attempt to be dazzling…memorable.
Now with all due respect, we are led by a man who deeply and sincerely needs recognition day after day after day.
This is not about politics or political ideas. This is about the human element of life. This is about the difficult – to -accept reality that we as individuals are a reflection of how and under what circumstances we have been raised by our Mother and Father. An abusive Father, a disinterested Mother and the mentoring of Roy Cohn, a man so angry with himself and the World around him that it killed him, gives us a man who needs everything he does to be recognized because it is “memorable”
And so we begin with the reflection pool before the Lincoln Memorial being repainted an American flag-blue. There will be other expensive steps because money is never the issue…but “memorable” is the key.
To some, the future seems bright.
To others not so much.
There is much to do to make America as those still old enough to remember it, stronger and positive again. To hear so many seniors reflect that we are not what we used to be, is genuine. There are still enough of those around to help re-steer the boat.
We, they – believe that knowledge outweighs ignorance and the attitudes and actions that reflect it.
The question remains: Is the energy and belief to support the knowledge strong enough to make a difference?
5/18/2026
I am back after a brief hiatus — the 25-26 school year is coming to a close, and it has been a hectic one. Here are my thoughts on Martin’s excellent column:
1. My hero and our 16th President,, Abraham Lincoln, saw the enduring value of education as a cornerstone of our republic and democracy. At his urging, Congress passed the Morrill Act in 1862, which paved the way for publicly supported land grant colleges in the United States. Similarly, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the National Defense/Direct Student Loan (NDSL) program in 1958, and which was expanded during the JFK-LBJ administrations. Without this loan program, I doubt if I would have finished my graduate/professional studies. And I can point other education initiatives launched during the Nixon-Ford administrations. Jimmy Carter, mindful of the need to have better trained managers in the Federal civil service, launched the Presidential Management Intern (PMI) Program, which was continued by every subsequent President except “taco man” Donald J. Trump. By the way, New York State relaunched its “New Leaders for a New NY” intern program a few years ago, but this is just a start.
2. There is a crying need for education reform, and I am starting to see clamoring for it. For example, the “STEM” program needs to be augmented to include civics and democracy education.
3. I agree with the noted historian, Jon Meacham, who has maintained that reform will come about, but only by the ballot box. Along those lines, I truly believe that the time is ripe for a re-alignment of out US political system — we need a new 3rd independent/centrist party. I am following recent developments in the UK — our friends across the pond — where the domination of the old Labor & Tory parties is changing. I hope that followers and advocates for a new party — No Labels, Forward Party, Unite NY, the Liberal Party and others — will form a critical mass.
I remain hopeful.
Prof. Stephen R. Rolandi
Larchmont, New York