The Lack Of Education Worldwide Is Startling

I was reading news articles at FoxNews.com, this morning, and on the homepage for that site there was an article: More Than Half of Aussie High Schoolers Don't Know Nation Is a Democracy. While the statistic mentioned in the title of the article would be disconcerting if Australia was actually a democracy, such a headline it is not to be unexpected, in toady's world, because reporters simply do not seem to be of the caliber of those of past times. My understanding is that Australia is more akin to a constitutional republic than it is to a democracy. Even if you grant the reporters that Australia is a democracy, the truth is that the quality of education around the world, at least in countries that were once near the top of the socio-economic ladder, seems to be suffering. Another example of that fact was soon to become evident to me on the website of FoxNews.com.

After reading the brief article, mentioned above, I clicked on the link World  to look at additional articles on world news. Once on the page for world news, I looked at this and that and then came to a section that broke down distribution of articles as follows: Latest World News, Mideast, Europe and Asia. First of all, you may have noticed, that there are no sections covering two hot beds of news around the world: South America and Africa. Shame on FoxNews.com for excluding those two continents from the breakdown. You will note I did not say that they excluded Antarctica or Australia. The reason I did not mention Antarctica is because, let's face it, there is a paucity of news coming from the icy cold continent. As for Australia, it was not excluded by FoxNews.com but was instead, sort of, misplaced. If you visit the web page in question, and look for the column I mentioned, you may still be able to see that links to articles about events in Australia are listed under the header of Asia. The two links to articles, I found relative to Australia, under the header of Asia, were Proposed Australian Law Would Make Muslim Women Lift Veil and a repeat link to More Than Half of Aussie High Schoolers Don't Know Nation Is a Democracy. The below representation, although not exactly how it looked at FoxNews.com, is how it copied and pasted here:

ASIA

• More Than Half of Aussie High Schoolers Don't Know Nation Is a DemocracyJuly 11, 2011
• Proposed Australian Law Would Make Muslim Women Lift VeilJuly 10, 2011
• U.S. Admiral Visits Beijing to Improve TiesJuly 10, 2011
• Japan Tsunami Warning Canceled After 7.0-Magnitude Quake

Was I saying something about the decline of he quality of education round the world and how such is in evidence at the FoxNews.com website? I think I was doing just that and now you have additional evidence, well you may have it if you visit that site quickly; due to the nature of the beast it is sure to change rapidly and those same articles, the ones I present as evidence of the decline of quality of education round the world, may no longer appear under the header of Asia. What evidence? You mean you do not know that Australia is not in Asia! For a reporter, website developer, or editor not to have known that before including articles about Australia under the header of Asia is truly discomfiting for me. If you are wondering why it is such for me, let me just say that, FoxNews.com is my favorite news source and I expected better from them. I wonder, does the person, or people responsible, for including articles about Australia under the header of Asia, realize that Australia and Asia are different continents. Maybe it just all part of the worldwide government thing that some folks seem to be wishing will become the norm but I think it is more likely due to ignorance that is seemingly imbued in students by failing educational systems around the world.

All the best,
Glenn B