Dumb and Dumber: How America Graduated with Honors in the Death of Excellence (and Became a Nation of Participation Trophies, Scantrons, and Unparallel Parking)

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May 19, 2025

Written by Frank Glassner:
CEO, Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants

INTRO: The Long Slow Climb Down the Ladder

There was a time—cue the violins and grainy newsreel footage—when “academic excellence” meant something. A time when college-bound seniors didn’t hyperventilate over red ink. When kids learned grammar like it was sacred scripture and failed tests didn’t require a grief counselor. A time when parallel parking was a test of coordination, not cruelty.

Back then, teachers were feared, respected, even admired. Now, they’re Yelp-reviewed, TikTok’d, and asked to “consider the emotional impact” of assigning Macbeth.

Parents used to ask, Why did you fail? Now they ask teachers, “Why did you make my baby feel bad”?

Welcome to America’s academic haunted house—where rigor is a microaggression, truth needs a trigger warning, and the only Latin today’s students understand is YOLO. It’s not that we’re getting soft. It’s that we’re melting.

Between “No Child Left Behind” and “Everyone Gets a Gold Star,” we managed to euthanize merit. Like a national lobotomy, we’ve dulled the edges of expectation in the name of inclusion, and now we hand out degrees like breath mints at a company retreat. We replaced excellence with equity, replaced thinking with templates, and replaced A’s with “Awareness.”

The essay exam—once the crucible of intellect, the barbell of mental discipline—has been gassed like a bad TikTok trend. In its place? Multiple choice. Click. Click. Hope. You don’t have to know, just guess close enough. Like darts in the dark—but don’t worry, the wall will be padded.

And it doesn’t stop at Scantrons. California, land of Teslas and trigger warnings, has officially removed parallel parking from the driving test. Because apparently turning a wheel and thinking at the same time is too much for the average 17-year-old. Congratulations, your future neurosurgeon can’t back out of a Trader Joe’s parking lot.

But these aren’t just random quirks of a society gone soft—they’re symptoms of a cultural Stage IV illness. The kind that spreads from kindergarten naptime straight into corporate America’s C-suites. We’re not just dumbing down education—we’re dumbing down the entire economy. Businesses now inherit graduates who can’t write a coherent email, can’t read a spreadsheet, and think “critical thinking” is a hate crime.

They have degrees, yes. They have awards, absolutely. But they also have the intellectual stamina of a dead houseplant. And the worst part? They’re proud of it. They’ve been told their entire lives they’re special for trying. Now they show up to work with TikTok wisdom and emotional support water bottles—ready to lead... something. God help us figure out what.

Can’t write. Can’t think. But they’ve got a ribbon that says, “Nice Effort.”

PART I: The Scantron Apocalypse

Once upon a time—not in a fairy tale, but in the flinty real world of No. 2 pencils and actual expectations—you had to write things down. On paper. In full sentences. With a beginning, middle, and end. You had to argue. Justify. Connect dots. Hell, sometimes even think.

Teachers didn’t hand you answers. They handed you questions—and then sat back to watch you sweat through the intellectual calisthenics required to earn a thought. There were verbs involved. Action. Tension. Mental lifting. It was glorious.

Now? Education has been flattened into a game of Whack-A-Mole—with multiple choice bubbles instead of mallets. Check the box. Click a circle. Trust the algorithm. Feel good about yourself. Rinse. Repeat. Score just high enough to avoid shame, but never high enough to spark glory. Congratulations—you passed. At what, exactly? No one knows.

Multiple choice isn’t just a test format anymore. It’s a worldview. It says there’s always one right answer and three legally defensible distractions. It’s the educational equivalent of fast food: cheap, consistent, and guaranteed to leave you bloated and undernourished.

And kids grow up internalizing that worldview. They expect life to present clear options and neat solutions. They panic at ambiguity. They think critical thinking is the same as process of elimination. But life doesn’t come with four neatly spaced options and a reminder to “fill the bubble completely with dark pencil.”

Worse? These tests don’t even test knowledge. They test gaming skills. Test-taking strategies. Elimination voodoo. It’s not about what you know. It’s about how well you play the guessing game without getting emotionally injured.

And so, by the time they graduate, they’ve mastered the art of empty correctness. They can pass standardized tests but can’t write a coherent paragraph. They can recite facts they don’t understand and feel intellectually entitled because the Scantron told them they were “Proficient.” In 2022, only 31% of U.S. 8th graders were proficient in reading, and just 26% in math, according to the Nation’s Report Card. But hey, they got a sticker.

This is how we’re building a nation of professional guessers—credentialed, confident, and completely unmoored from actual understanding.

Because if you don’t have to write anything, you’ll never have to mean anything.

And if multiple choice murdered intellect, then participation trophies buried the body and Instagrammed at the funeral.

PART II: Welcome to the Trophy Room: Where Effort Is King

Once upon a soccer field, a child tripped over their own shadow, tied their shoelaces together, missed every pass, and accidentally scored—on their own team. And still… they went home with a trophy.

Why? Because in modern America, disappointment is violence and losing is trauma. Somewhere along the line, we decided it was safer to reward effort than results, safer to protect feelings than forge character. So, we bubble-wrapped failure, gift-wrapped mediocrity, and handed out gold-painted plastic like it was a civil right.

It didn’t stop with kids’ sports. It metastasized.

Today, grades in school are inflated like parade floats. Johnny can’t read, can’t write, and thinks a semicolon is a type of foot surgery—but he’s got a 4.2 GPA and a viral TikTok thesis titled “Emotional Algebra: Solving for Feels.” A for effort. A+ for vibes.

The classroom has become a validation spa. Students don’t chase excellence—they expect it, like a DoorDash delivery. And teachers? They’ve been turned into customer service reps in the Ministry of Self-Esteem. “Constructive feedback” is now considered a microaggression. Even red pens are banned in some schools—too triggering.

And what happens when these glitter-dusted graduates enter the real world?

They walk into work expecting standing ovations for punctuality. HR departments have become emotional triage units. Performance reviews read like horoscopes: vague, flattering, and utterly useless. Corporate retreats now feature yoga with affirmations, aromatherapy journaling, and “trust falls” that double as metaphors for America’s academic backbone.

And God help the manager who tries to say, “You could do better.” That’s the corporate equivalent of declaring war.

The result? A workforce that thinks “showing up” is a superpower. That believes enthusiasm counts as a skill. That equates feelings with qualifications. And that sobs into their kombucha when asked to meet a deadline.

But here’s the inconvenient truth: Excellence isn’t elitist. It’s essential.

A society that confuses applause with achievement is one baby step away from celebrating incompetence as courage. And when we reward effort over outcome, we don’t just cheapen success—we bankrupt it.

We are living through the Great Trophy Inflation, where everyone’s a winner—except the economy, the company, and the country.

Cursive was more than pretty loops. It taught rhythm, form, and thoughtfulness. Each letter demanded patience. It was tactile, artistic, and dare we say—human. But we traded all that for a keyboard and autocorrect. And what do we lose when handwriting dies? Memory. Cognition. Creativity. Studies show that writing by hand strengthens brain development, improves focus, and helps encode knowledge. Typing is efficient. Writing is personal. One produces output. The other produces understanding.

But hey, who needs understanding when you can just Google the answer and copy-paste it into a group project shared via emoji?

PART III: The Vanishing Art of Handwriting (Or, What’s Cursive, Grandpa?)

There was a time—not that long ago—when your handwriting said something about you. It was your signature, your rhythm, your intellectual fingerprint. The way you shaped a lowercase “g” told the world if you were precise, passionate, or possibly dangerous. Now? Handwriting is an archaeological relic, somewhere between Morse code and the ability to make eye contact.

Ask a teenager today to write in cursive and watch their face contort like you’ve just asked them to milk a goat. For them, cursive might as well be Sanskrit, or worse - homework. Penmanship isn’t taught. It isn’t expected. Hell, it isn’t even respected. Most young adults now hold a pen the way raccoons hold chicken bones—tentatively, and with mild confusion.

Handwriting instruction? Extinct. Gone the way of rotary phones, encyclopedia sets, and any real expectation of legible thought. Schools quietly phased it out like asbestos—too tedious, too analog, too accountable. After all, you can’t “undo” ink. Employers don’t care, either. Why should they, when every résumé is typed, spellchecked, and templated into oblivion?

And what’s left in the wake of this silent collapse?:

• Memos that read like ransom notes;
• Cover letters that look like graffiti from a caffeine-deprived toddler;
• College students who print in jagged, all-caps kindergarten font - like it’s an act of rebellion to cross a “T; and
• ”A generation that confuses a semicolon with a sideways wink. ;)

But this isn’t just a visual crime. This is cognitive vandalism.

Cursive wasn’t just about pretty loops—it was about mental architecture. Each letter was a stroke of discipline. It taught rhythm. Structure. Intent. The slow, tactile joy of forming a thought you could touch. Cursive was the soul made visible.

And when we lost that, we didn’t just lose elegance - we lost intelligence.

Because when handwriting dies, memory dies with it. Cognition fades. Creativity flatlines. The act of writing by hand—of shaping every word with your fingers—activates the brain in ways typing never will. One produces data. The other produces depth.

But depth takes too long in a world trained to skim. So, we trade comprehension for speed. Understanding for convenience. Thought for automation. We outsource cognition to autocorrect and hope no one notices our prose is powered by predictive text and good intentions.

What once connected the mind to the page now connects the thumb to the dopamine slot machine. And we wonder why no one can focus for more than a TikTok.

So sure, you can copy-paste your way through a group project. Just don’t ask anyone what the project was about two days later. Because it wasn’t written. It was submitted.

We’ve turned the art of thinking into a transaction—and somewhere, a fountain pen slowly weeps.

PART IV: Everything I Learned in Life I Learned from YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram

Why read a book when you can watch a five-minute video with royalty-free ukulele music and a title like “This One Weird Trick Will Explain the Entire Economy Using Pancakes”?

Why slog through a semester of macroeconomics when a TikTok influencer with ring lights and lip gloss can explain inflation using a dog, a blender, and the word “vibe” 17 times?

Welcome to the modern classroom: a scrollable, ad-ridden dopamine farm where engagement outranks accuracy and the only thing students retain is carpal tunnel from swiping. Today’s education system hasn’t just surrendered to social media—it’s outsourced itself entirely.

YouTube is the new textbook. Instagram is the new literature class. And TikTok? That’s civics, baby—one vertical video at a time.

Why teach why something matters when you can just throw up a graphic, add some lo-fi beats, and call it “content”? Why think critically when you can just repost someone who sounds like they did?

We no longer teach students how to question. We teach them how to consume. The result? A generation raised not to understand, but to replicate. They scroll instead of study. They repeat instead of reflect. They don’t analyze—they react.

And what do we get in return?:

• Kids who can summarize every plot twist of Succession but stare blankly when asked about the First Amendment;
• Teens who can shoot, cut, and color-correct a 4K drone video—but can’t write a topic sentence without Googling “what is a topic sentence”; and
• College grads who can code in emojis but can’t spell “renaissance” without autocorrect—and even then, they think it’s a hotel chain.

They trust the algorithm more than their professor. They chase likes instead of logic. And when they do post something remotely thoughtful? It better fit in 280 characters, end with a hashtag, and not offend anyone within three ZIP codes.

But hey, why write a thesis when you can get 30,000 views for shaking your head at misinformation you don’t actually understand?

We’ve trained them to be emotional stenographers—curators of aesthetic outrage, parroting snippets of passion without the inconvenience of depth. They don’t read the article. They read the comments on the article. Then they base their opinion on a meme about the comments..

This isn’t just cultural rot—it’s cognitive malpractice.

Because when the algorithm becomes the teacher, knowledge becomes whatever trends. And when popularity replaces peer review, the loudest, flashiest, dumbest thing wins.

So yes, they can go viral.

But they can’t go vertical.

Because vertical thinking—depth, perspective, and context—is dead.

And we’re not just raising kids who are uneducated.

We’re raising kids who are uneducatable—because they think they already know. Because once the classroom becomes a scrollable feed, it’s only a matter of time before knowing why takes too many characters

PART V: A Generation That Knows What, But Not Why

Welcome to the Age of Surface Knowledge™—brought to you by Google, Wi-Fi, and the sacred scroll of Reddit threads. It’s a world where students can tell you what happened, when it happened, and who had the best outfit when it happened… but why it happened? Forget it. Too many syllables.

They can name dates, trends, and hashtags with frightening speed. Ask them who won the Battle of Hastings? Crickets. Ask them what year it happened? Dead stare. But ask them the Top 10 trending soundtracks on TikTok right now? You’ll get a dissertation, three curated playlists, and a dance tutorial.

This is a generation that can quote MLK—just not from books. From murals. From Instagram captions. From tee shirts in Urban Outfitters. Ask them to read Letter from Birmingham Jail, and they’ll say, “Is there a podcast version?”

They can retweet Nobel Prize winners but couldn’t tell you whether it was for Physics, Literature, or “best vibes.” They cite studies they’ve never read. Reference articles they skimmed during a bathroom break. They’re walking bibliographies with no footnotes—intellectual karaoke artists who sing the chorus but never learn the verses.

They have access to the largest repository of human knowledge in the history of civilization—and yet somehow, we’ve trained them to become expert regurgitators. Parrots with ring lights. They don’t investigate—they ingest. They don’t question—they quote. And they do it all at fiber-optic speed, with the comprehension of a wet sponge in a philosophy seminar.

We’ve replaced understanding with performance. Comprehension with curation. It’s all optics. They post TED Talks they didn’t watch. They share thought pieces they can’t summarize. They believe “lived experience” is a replacement for actual knowledge, and “I feel like…” is a substitute for evidence.

It’s not a knowledge gap—it’s a knowledge illusion. Brains on Wi-Fi. Stuck in airplane mode.

Knowing what without why is how you get legislation written like bumper stickers. It’s how you get protest signs with spelling errors. It’s how you get corporate policies based on vibes, not viability.

It's how we end up with CEOs who cancel entire business lines based on a tweet. Activists who can't explain the systems they're fighting. And voters who base their ballot on which candidate made the best meme about healthcare.

And in the workplace? It’s lethal. You get employees who can follow directions—but can’t improvise when the map runs out. Who can read the manual—but can’t rewrite it. Who panic at the first gray area because no one ever taught them that life is mostly gray areas.

We're not just creating a passive workforce. We're creating a directionless one.

Confident in what they "know." Terrified when asked to explain it.

This isn’t education. This is theater. And everyone’s on stage, pretending to understand the script.

PART VI: The Unbearable Softness of Driver’s Ed

There was a time—cue the Springsteen soundtrack—when learning to drive was a sacred rite of passage. A test of nerves. A teenage crucible of grit, gears, and geometry. You didn’t just get a license—you earned it. You learned to tame a stick shift like a wild stallion, executed a three-point turn with the surgical precision of a heart transplant, and—yes—parallel parked under pressure like a neurosurgeon threading a scalpel between two moving buses.

Today?

Welcome to Driver’s Ed: The Participation Edition—where judgment is frowned upon, difficulty is trauma, and apparently, the curb has feelings.

California, in all its sun-soaked brilliance, has officially eliminated parallel parking from the driving test. Why? Because it’s “too stressful.” That’s right: the Golden State decided that having to turn the wheel and think at the same time was a bridge too far for its teens.

Now, you can legally pilot a two-ton missile down a freeway at 80 mph—but don’t ask you to tuck it between two Priuses outside a Trader Joe’s. That would be inhumane.

And California isn’t alone in this national demolition derby of lowered standards. In Oregon, you no longer need to demonstrate the ability to drive on the freeway to get your license. Because obviously, freeway driving is a fringe skill—like fencing or nuclear physics. Who even uses the interstate anymore?

In Washington State, students can now pass without ever being tested on night driving. You know, that thing that happens every single day.

And in Illinois, a proposal floated to let teens complete their driver’s education entirely online. Because nothing prepares you for real-world traffic like a browser-based simulation and a Mountain Dew at midnight.

This isn’t just about convenience. This is about cultural rot. Lower one standard, and the rest collapse like a row of plastic traffic cones in a clown car.

But why are we doing this? Why gut the last few tests of competency that remain?

Because it’s politically expedient. Because failure is unpopular and votes are fragile. No governor wants to be known as the person who made your kid cry at the DMV. So, we soften. We dilute. We hand out licenses like participation ribbons because God forbid a 16-year-old be denied anything in this era of eternal affirmation.

Because insurance companies rake in billions on these barely trained drivers, profiting from premiums padded for the statistically inevitable fender-benders and trauma claims.

Because car crashes are now practically revenue streams: ER visits, body shop repairs, insurance surcharges, and yes—organ donation lists. There’s a whole ecosystem quietly thriving off our collective incompetence. Softened standards don’t just sell—they sustain industries.

And culturally? We’ve made discomfort the enemy. We’ve declared expectations oppressive. Teaching accountability is now tantamount to bullying. We don’t raise adults anymore—we raise survivors of inconvenience.

We’ve softened the test so much it’s no longer a test. It’s a wellness experience. You don’t pass or fail anymore. You simply “progress.” If you hit a mailbox during your exam, you’re not disqualified—you’re expressing anxiety through velocity.

The consequences? They go way beyond high school parking lots.

Employers now report new hires who can’t manage logistics, spatial reasoning, or basic navigation without GPS or divine intervention. Field sales reps who can't find the client’s office without a 17-step Google Maps itinerary and a backup prayer circle. Delivery drivers who miss windows because they can’t handle construction detours without crying in their cup holders.

We’re producing adults who panic at roundabouts, sob at detour signs, and treat left turns as acts of civil disobedience.

This isn’t just an automotive issue. It’s a cognitive collapse. In an economy built on movement, coordination, and timing—we’re raising a generation that treats motion as trauma and failure as abuse.

So yes, welcome to the soft launch of national inefficiency—where you may not be able to park, merge, or reverse… but at least you passed the test without hurting your feelings.

And if that’s not a metaphor for modern America, I don’t know what is.

PART VII: Grading on a Curveball

Once upon a time, the curve was a mountain—a brutal, unapologetic slope you clawed your way up while clutching a graphing calculator and a prayer. Now? It’s a hammock. For the intellectually drowsy. Draped in soft blankets of “effort counts” and “nobody’s a failure.”

We no longer grade to measure mastery. We grade to manage emotions.

The curve—once a mathematical acknowledgment of variance—has been twisted into a politically correct safety net. It doesn’t elevate the struggling. It tranquilizes the ambitious. We've traded meritocracy for mediocrity in the name of "fairness," and in doing so, we’ve created an entire culture of inflated self-esteem and deflated competence.

A ‘B’ is now the universal symbol for “you tried.” A ‘C’? That’s academic slander. And an ‘A’? That’s just what you get for showing up regularly, turning in assignments, and not setting fire to the lab.

In one high school district in California (yes, again), they’ve proposed eliminating D and F grades entirely—not because students are doing better, but because failing is “harmful to identity development.” Translation: if you can’t pass, we’ll change the rules until you do.

In some districts, teachers aren’t even allowed to give a zero—because zero suggests absence of value. Even if the student didn’t turn in a damn thing. Instead, they get a 50%, just for being listed on the roster. Not effort. Not output. Just existence.

And this delusion bleeds straight into the workforce.

Because when you inflate grades, you deflate standards. Employers now get résumés that read like fantasy novels: 4.0 GPAs from institutions where the toughest course was “Mindfulness & Instagram Ethics.” Everyone graduates magna cum laude but can’t spell “magna.” Or “cum.” Or “laude.”

Hiring managers are drowning in applicants who mistake confidence for competence. Who believe that "hard work" is a form of oppression. Who bring mommy into HR meetings when they’re passed over for promotion. These are the straight-A students who crumble when told their PowerPoint is garbage.

Because no one ever told them they weren’t ready.

And it’s not just bad for business—it’s lethal:

• Engineers who can’t calculate load-bearing thresholds;
• Accountants who can’t reconcile a ledger without asking ChatGPT; and
• Marketers who pitch campaigns that sound like therapy sessions with clip art.

You flunk a kid, and parents sue. You fire a dummy, and HR launches a six-month inquiry into “managerial microaggressions.” You ask someone to re-do substandard work, and they bring up their emotional bandwidth.

We’ve trained a generation to mistake “getting by” for getting better.

And when you do that long enough, guess what:

• They stop trying;
• They expect; and
• They demand protection from reality like it’s a hostile foreign language.

This isn’t education anymore. It’s image management. We’re not teaching kids to thrive. We’re teaching them to coast—until they finally crash into the real world, wondering why their gold stars don’t convert into salaries.

But don’t worry. There’s always grad school.

PART VIII: The Death of Dissent: Why Everyone Must Agree in A+ Harmony

Once upon a time—before safe spaces had Wi-Fi and facts had feelings—education was a contact sport. You came to class ready to get your ideas bloodied. You welcomed opposition. You sharpened your arguments like a whetstone on steel.

Today? Welcome to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood of Academic Groupthink, where everyone’s special, disagreement is mean, and the most dangerous phrase you can utter is: “I respectfully disagree.”

Dissent has been replaced with delicate alignment. Challenge the prevailing dogma and you’re not “engaged”—you’re “harmful.” Ask a probing question and you’re not curious—you’re “creating an unsafe learning environment.” Show up with an unpopular opinion and you might as well bring a live grenade made of microaggressions.

We’ve turned college campuses into emotional terrariums for The Squad of Sensitivity. Students march in ideological lockstep, chanting slogans like Gregorian monks on Instagram Live. Everyone agrees with everyone else—loudly, publicly, and with a carefully curated aesthetic.

And God forbid someone deviates from the script.

Professors now enter lectures like hostage negotiators—armed with trigger warnings, tone disclaimers, and the ever-present threat of a Title IX complaint if they “cause distress” by… teaching.

Gone are the days of intellectual brawls. Now it’s conflict-averse kumbaya with PowerPoint slides. The new academic motto? “No minds were challenged in the making of this degree”:

• What used to be called learning is now validating;
• What used to be called critical thinking is now emotional labor; and
• What used to be a university is now a hug wrapped in a syllabus.

And it’s not just the classroom. This infection seeps into boardrooms and bureaucracies where the guiding principle is: “Don’t say anything that might make Becky uncomfortable.”

Tough conversations? Replaced with breakout sessions led by a DEI consultant named Skylar who speaks exclusively in affirmations. Meetings resemble group therapy with slide decks. Leadership retreats now come with emotional support llamas.

And if someone does muster the courage to challenge the hive mind?

They’re labeled “toxic”, “uncooperative” or “problematic.”

Translation: Too awake for the woke….

The result? An entire workforce trained to avoid tension like it’s radioactive. No pushback. No risk-taking. Just agreement, alignment, and a slow drip of beige decisions that make nobody mad… and nobody better.

Because when everyone agrees, no one innovates. And when no one innovates, the company dies. Not with a bang, but with a trust circle and a 100-slide deck of color-coded mediocrity:

• The Squad gets their safe space;
• Mr. Rogers gets his cardigan; and
• The business gets a slow, polite funeral.

PART IX: Business Casualties: Dumb Is Expensive

Here’s the invoice, America—and spoiler alert, it’s not payable in “participation.” After two decades of coddling, curve-puffing, and intellectual bubble-wrapping, the graduates you sent into the workforce are now managing your supply chains, balance sheets, and Twitter feeds.

They can’t write an email without Grammarly. And even then, they spell “fiduciary” as “fajuchiary” in a public SEC filing.

They can’t do math beyond splitting the Uber bill. Which is fine… until payroll “accidentally” wires the intern $74,000 and forgets to pay health insurance.

They can’t think critically. That’s fine, too—until your company’s social media manager posts a Ukraine-Russia “peace meme” with cartoon pandas during an actual invasion. True story Sports Fans - Look it up.

We used to say, “Smart costs money.” Now we say, “Stupid costs everything.”

You think that’s hyperbole? Hey - you can’t make this s&%t up!:

• A major airline had to ground an entire fleet because junior analysts misread “feet” as “meters” in maintenance reports. Translation: the wheels literally came off the plane;
• A fashion brand went viral for launching a culturally insensitive campaign featuring toddlers, bondage gear, and “symbolic commentary”—created by a team of marketing grads who majored in Identity Studies and minored in Moral Ambiguity;
• A tech startup lost $42 million in valuation after an entry-level coder removed a single comma from a smart contract, triggering a cascade failure. When asked why, he responded: “I didn’t think commas mattered in code”;
• A well-known chain of juice bars had to recall 11,000 bottles after a team member labeled apple cider vinegar as "organic cleaning solution”; and
• A public transit agency accidentally printed 100,000 brochures in Spanish—with Google Translate—but failed to realize “exit here for your transfer” had been converted to “flee here for your transformation.”

Dumb is not just expensive—it’s explosive. And the detonation happens right on your bottom line.

Companies now spend billions in remedial bootcamps to teach things once covered in 8th-grade civics and freshman comp. Communication. Writing. Conflict resolution. How not to cry during a performance review. You know, business skills. In fact, American businesses spend over $3.5 billion annually just on basic skills training—reading, writing, math—because the college grads they hired can’t craft an email without AI doing the heavy-lifting.

Executive teams are stunned to discover that their new hires need emotional support Slack channels, “safe space” breakrooms, and passive-aggressive email templates. Try coaching innovation into someone who thinks “thinking outside the box” is ableist toward people who are neurodivergently uncomfortable with boxes.

Customer service? Don’t even try. It’s like navigating a Kafkaesque escape room designed by AI interns on Adderall.

Want to speak to a human? Good luck. You’ll first have to pass a CAPTCHA, sit through two auto-looped apologies, and enter a chat with “Kayleigh” who opens every message with: “Hey bestie! I totally understand your frustration 🥺💖.”

And while we’re politely dying inside, other countries are building the future:

• China is minting engineers by the millions;
• Germany is producing machinists who can manufacture parts accurate to within a human hair; and
• Finland is turning out 18-year-olds who speak three languages, know calculus, and understand context. - Go figure…

Meanwhile, we’re producing communications majors who think proofreading is a hate crime and writing in complete sentences is a form of fascism. They treat feedback like a physical assault and see deadlines as colonial constructs.

America isn’t losing its edge. We’re handing it over—in MLA format, 12pt font, double spaced, with a tear-streaked cover letter titled “My Truth.”

We used to export brilliance. Now we export apologies:

• Sorry for the delay;
• Sorry for the error; and
• Sorry you were offended by our complete collapse of competence.

But hey, at least our interns know how to design a pastel infographic explaining what Mercury in retrograde means for your quarterly projections.

PART X: The Great Dilution – DEI Meets GPA

Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. Three noble words—originally crafted to open doors, expand access, and shine a light on overlooked brilliance. But then… we let bureaucrats, brand strategists, and college consultants get their hands on it.

And just like that, DEI became a photo op with a mission statement.

Once rooted in justice, it’s now marinated in marketing. We stopped asking, “Is this person qualified?” and started asking, “Does this person complete the Benetton color wheel on our homepage?”

Recruiters turned into social engineers. University admissions into moral lotteries. Every résumé reviewed with the subtle math of: Does this hire hit the right quadrant of the corporate inclusivity Bingo card? Forget “what can you do?”—we’re now obsessed with “what do you represent?”

DEI, once about opportunity, became a talent-optional movement:

• GPA became a political instrument;
• Academic rigor was redlined; and
• Suddenly, a 4.0 meant nothing more than 4.0 shades of HR-friendly optics.

We didn’t expand the talent pool—we diluted it.

Students now float through elite universities powered by narratives over knowledge. No one’s checking for critical thinking—just compelling personal trauma and a Canva-designed identity matrix. Admissions essays have become trauma-themed Mad Libs:

“As a [marginalized adjective] [hyphenated noun] navigating [oppressor noun] in [overwhelming socio-geographic setting], I have [verb of resilience] to claim my space in [discipline you can’t define].”

And the consequences? Oh, we’re living them.

Teams assembled more for symmetry than synergy. Boardrooms so ideologically synchronized they might as well be performance art collectives. Think-tanks where thinking is forbidden if it doesn’t pass the vibe check.

We’ve replaced:

• Excellence with aesthetic equity;
• Results with representation; and
• Merit with marketing.

And the hiring process? It’s now a nervous HR minuet, where actual skills are taboo and the primary requirement is “has never made anyone uncomfortable at brunch.”

Meanwhile—overseas?:

• South Korea and Finland treat educational outcomes like GDP;
• China is graduating more STEM engineers per year than we have people who know how to use Excel without Googling it; and
• India is building tech campuses faster than we can pass out therapy puppies during midterms.

And what are we doing?

We’re debating pronouns in board memos and reprinting textbooks because “The Industrial Revolution was a bit aggressive.” We’re telling students that deadlines are “colonialist” and that grades should be replaced with self-reflection journals.

We used to build rockets. - Now we build identity-forward Slack avatars.

We used to explore space. - Now we explore how everyone feels about space.

We used to launch careers. - Now we launch sensitivity workshops.

This isn’t inclusion. This is intellectual euthanasia, lovingly administered by a 35-year-old DEI Director with a ring light and an MFA in Feelings Management.

DEI, when done right, levels the playing field. - DEI, when done wrong, burns the whole damn stadium down and then hands out ribbons for resilience.

And here’s the thing: diverse perspectives still matter. But they need to come with skills.

We don’t need more colors on the org chart - We need more people who can do the damn job.

Otherwise, while we’re checking boxes, the rest of the world is checking balances—and cashing in on our decline.

Sidebar: Redefining DEI – Honest, Not Hateful

Look—we’re not here to torch the principle. Done right, DEI can help uncover real talent. But when weaponized, it turns organizations into ideological hostage zones with pastel infographics.

So, for fun (and painful accuracy), here are some updated meanings for “DEI,” depending on how deep into the absurdity you’ve waded:

• Dumb Everything Intentionally
• Diversity Eclipses Integrity
• Didn’t Earn It
• Don’t Evaluate Intellect
• Dilute Every Institution

Still not funny? Try this:

“We didn’t diversify talent. We diversified liability.”

That’s a real quote from a board chair, whispered over cocktails at a conference after their DEI plan imploded in a PR disaster no one could explain—or undo.

So yes—be inclusive. But be competent. Be representative. But be relevant.

Because when DEI becomes a substitute for standards, what you get isn’t progress. It’s pageantry.

And trust us, your competitors overseas aren’t hiring based on optics.

They’re hiring based on output.

PART XI: The “New” SAT Exam – “Slowly Abandoning Thinking”

The SAT used to be not only feared, it was revered. It was the final boss in the video game of American adolescence. A sharpened pencil, a racing clock, and a sea of bubbles—brutal, yes, but at least it was fair. Everyone took the same test. Everyone bled the same multiple-choice ink.

But then we decided that measuring knowledge was mean.

Colleges didn’t start to drop the SAT because it was broken. They dropped it because it worked too well. It revealed uncomfortable truths—that not every student was ready, that effort doesn’t always equal excellence, and that words like “ubiquitous” weren’t actually weapons of privilege, they were… vocabulary.

But the woke whisperers decreed otherwise. “Standardized testing is inequitable,” they cried. “It favors students who study, who prepare, who practice.” Apparently, this was oppression.

So, the SAT was pushed down the memory hole, replaced by something more emotionally resonant: the “holistic review.” A phrase so vague, it might as well have been generated by a horoscope app.

You’re no longer judged by how well you think. You’re judged by how well you perform vulnerability:

• Did you overcome hardship?
• Were you traumatized by geometry?
• Did you feel things about learning?

Great. That’s worth at least 200 points.

So now, we graduate a new class of eloquent victims. Students who can narrate adversity like Ken Burns documentaries, but who treat data analysis like a hate crime. They can write op-eds about their emotional journey through algebra but can’t solve an equation unless it involves feelings.

They can speak truth to power—but not spell “power.”

The SAT used to reward logic, endurance, and strategy. Now? We reward story arcs. It’s not testing, it’s trauma theater.

And here’s the kicker: none of this helped the students it was supposed to.

By sidelining the SAT—or making it optional when it’s convenient and inconvenient when it’s not—we stripped away one of the last objective standards left in the system. For many low-income or minority students, the SAT was the great equalizer. A shot to say, “I belong here,” with a score that screamed competence even if their zip code didn’t.

But now? They’re thrown into a soup of subjectivity, judged not by skill—but by how closely they fit a demographic narrative. The very tool that could elevate them? Gone.

Why? Because the optics got uncomfortable.

And in its place? A “personal essay” and some letters of recommendation from teachers terrified to say anything less than glowing. Add a few “leadership experiences” from youth activism clubs and boom—you’re in. Doesn’t matter if you can’t read a spreadsheet or write a coherent paragraph. You felt seen.

This isn’t admissions. It’s casting for a coming-of-age drama.

The SAT had flaws for sure. But you know what it didn’t have? Bias toward fashion sense, family connections, or TikTok followers. It didn’t care how well you curated your identity. It just asked: Can you think?

And now, with that gone, we’ve officially surrendered to the doctrine of “everyone’s brilliant in their own way.”

Well guess what? Everyone isn’t brilliant. And the world still needs engineers who can do math, doctors who can read charts, and analysts who know what a regression line is.

But we’ve replaced all that with astrology-admissions: vague, emotional, unmeasurable. Like a college application written by Dr. Strangelove after three martinis and a TED Talk on self-care.

Even worse? The SAT is still around—but now it’s optional.

Optional—as in, “You don’t have to submit a score… unless it’s amazing. Then we might glance at it… unless it hurts someone’s feelings, in which case we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist.”

The entire University of California system ditched it, followed by dozens of states and elite colleges. But here’s the real kicker: when admissions officers do look at it, guess what? They look first at the SAT. Especially when they're sifting through 60,000 identical essays about resilience, climate change, or “that one summer in Ghana that changed my worldview.”

We’re now operating in Schrödinger’s Admissions Policy: the SAT both matters and doesn’t—depending on how much noise you’re willing to make about equity on LinkedIn.

And of course, the test itself has been gutted. No more long essays. No more paper-based sections. No more endurance. It’s a 2-hour, all-digital hug. The College Board finally gave in and turned the last great mental crucible into a BuzzFeed quiz: “What Kind of College Freshman Are You?”

So here we are, proudly admitting students who can’t pass algebra—but who’ve passed through a lot, emotionally speaking.

Welcome to higher education, where calculus is optional, but catharsis is required.

And yes, there’s a support puppy waiting in the admissions lounge. Please write your essay in scented gel pen.

PART XII: Can’t Write, Won’t Write: The End of the Essay

What the hell ever happened to the dreaded Blue Book? You remember it—the academic crucible of blank pages, no prompts, no spellcheck, no mercy. Just a pen, a clock, and a professor waiting to see if you could actually think in complete sentences.

Essays were the forge of intellect. To write well was to think well. You couldn’t fake it. You couldn’t outsource it. You had to start with an idea and drag it—kicking and screaming—across several coherent paragraphs. Essays required depth. Essays hurt.

So naturally… we killed them.

In their place? We got discussion boards, group projects, and “multimedia storytelling assignments” that amount to overpriced dioramas. One Ivy League “paper” in a media studies course was literally a PowerPoint slide with emojis. A college research assignment now might consist of three bullet points and a Canva infographic about “brand vibes.”

We created an academic culture where clarity is elitist, and grammar is oppressive. Where “You knew what I meant” is now a valid defense for a run-on sentence that reads like a bad fever dream.

And so, we graduate a workforce that can’t write—and worse, can’t think.

Business proposals that read like ransom notes. Legal memos that sound like Mad Libs written by a drunk AI. Marketing campaigns so baffling they require both a glossary and a therapist to interpret.

The death of the essay is not just academic.

It is economic:

• Every botched proposal.
• Every bungled brief.
• Every press release that triggers a shareholder panic.

Trace it back to someone who never had to defend a thesis on paper.

Bad writing is bad thinking—and bad thinking is unaffordable.

In the old world, you learned to write - by writing. A lot. You rewrote. You cut. You diagramed. You bled red ink. You were told things like “start over”, or “this is weak”, or “what the hell were you trying to say here?” And it made you stronger.

Now? That’s called “violence.”

One student recently filed a formal grievance because her professor wrote “unclear” in the margins of her paper. She claimed it was an “epistemological assault on her self-expression.”

Another turned in a paper about sustainability with no paragraphs. When asked why, he said: “I was experimenting with form.”

This isn’t creativity. This is academic anarchy.

We replaced essays with expressions. We replaced thesis statements with feelings. We replaced intellectual rigor with vibes.

We no longer ask students to defend their ideas. We just ask them how those ideas made them feel.

And so, we raise a generation that can’t persuade, can’t argue, can’t explain. They can narrate their identity journey—but not define a single term in their chosen major.

We used to train lawyers, journalists, analysts, and policy thinkers. Now we produce Instagram poets with business cards.

And while other countries still teach structured writing like it matters—because it does—we’re handing out degrees for vibes and TikToks and calling it “engaged literacy.”

The result? A national workforce of emotionally articulate underperformers who can’t draft an email, pitch an idea, or write anything more complex than a slack message.

But hey, they did great in their group podcast about the lived experience of procrastination.

PART XIII: When America Outsourced Excellence

Let’s face it: America didn’t just lower the bar—we buried it under six feet of educational therapy dogs, coloring books, and scented participation stickers. While we were busy replacing Shakespeare with TED Talks and calculus with “Math Self-Discovery Journals,” other countries were quietly sharpening their pencils—and their knives.

• In Shanghai, third graders calculate compound interest in their heads;
• In Germany, 16-year-olds build precision gearboxes while quoting Goethe; and
• In Estonia—a country we used to confuse with a Disney princess—kids leave high school with better tech skills than most Silicon Valley interns. On the most recent PISA rankings, Estonia ranked 1st in Europe for science, reading, and math. The U.S.? Stuck in the academic friend zone—somewhere around 25th.

A recent college graduate asked, in full sincerity, if “Brussels” was a type of cheese. You’ve got to be kidding me. (Sadly, I’m not).

A major U.S. airline recently hired a communications major who spelled “turbulence” as “terbulints” in a safety presentation script. It went through legal. Nobody caught it. The in-flight announcement that day caused five passengers to grip their armrests and two to demand refunds.

A marketing agency lost a major international contract because their junior copywriter thought “hyperlocal SEO” was a new strain of cannabis.

One CEO at a Fortune 500 company confided: “We now give writing tests to Ivy League graduates. Not to hire them—to determine where to seat them at the interns' table.”

A national bank had to pull an entire ad campaign after a recent hire confused "interest rate" with "interest vibe." The billboard read: "Feel the APR Energy!"

And hey, Sports Fans - you can’t make this s&%t up.

These aren’t punchlines. They’re obituaries. For rigor. For competence. For the American edge.

We used to export innovation. Now we export "oops."

Our competitors are building clean energy labs, artificial intelligence, and national cyber-infrastructures. We’re building “safe spaces” with beanbag chairs and coloring zones for employees traumatized by email tone.

Once upon a time, being American meant showing up to the global arena and winning. Now? We show up late, ask if there’s a vegan option, and start a Slack thread titled “This Tournament Doesn’t Feel Inclusive.”

We handed over excellence in exchange for comfort. For vibes. For a global gold star in emotional self-awareness while our competitors laughed and lapped us.

So no, this isn’t satire. This is a tragicomedy on wheels, and the brakes have failed.

America didn’t lose its edge. - It handed it over at the gate and asked for extra legroom.

So while America hits snooze on standards, the rest of the world is taking our lunch, our jobs, and our patents. Welcome to the era of The Real GDP.

PART XIV: The Real GDP – “Gross Dumb Product”

Let’s go full metal Glassner, because this one’s not funny anymore - it’s economically apocalyptic. The consequences aren’t just anecdotal. They’re macroeconomic.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, declining U.S. test scores correlate directly with declining productivity growth. Translation? The dumber we get, the slower we grow.

In a global economy where intellectual capital drives innovation, we’re exporting TikToks and importing semiconductors. Our top export? Confusion. Our top import? Everything important.

America’s educational free fall is showing up on balance sheets. Companies now spend an average of $1,286 per new hire—just on remedial training. That means teaching college grads how to write, add, speak, and sometimes just show up. Multiply that by millions of hires annually, and you get a GDP leak large enough to fund universal healthcare. Twice. With money left over for national therapy.

We once led the world in R&D. Now we lead in DEI checklists, onboarding nap pods, and mental wellness webinars hosted by former TikTok stars.

We used to build rockets. Today, we build executive coaching retreats to explain to 28-year-old employees why being asked to show up on time isn’t a microaggression.

Meanwhile, global employers are voting with their wallets. They're hiring overseas—not because it’s cheaper, but because it’s better.

They get graduates who can code, calculate, collaborate. - We get graduates who can cry, vibe, and host a decent vision board circle.

This isn’t just brain drain. This is brain implosion.

America has become the country that can’t take feedback, can’t find talent, and can’t ship product on time—because we’re too busy writing HR-approved apology statements for the trauma caused by a mildly worded Slack message.

This is our boiling frog moment: the water is already hot. But we’re floating in it—Instagramming our soft, declining brains while the global market surges ahead with focus, rigor, and the one thing we used to be known for - Excellence.

But don’t worry, we’ve got another mindfulness training scheduled for next Thursday. Bring your crystals and your gluten-free gratitude journal.

#GDP: Gross Dumb Product.

PART XV: Education as Entertainment – Lights, Camera, Mediocrity!

(Insert your best Sam Kinison scream here.)

REMEMBER WHEN CLASSROOMS HAD CHALK AND SILENCE?! HUH?! WHEN YOU COULD ACTUALLY HEAR YOUR OWN SHAME AS YOU STRUGGLED TO CONJUGATE LATIN VERBS?!

Now? Now they have beanbags and “focus playlists.” Teachers are basically content creators competing with TikTok, ChatGPT, and three open tabs of AI-generated anime memes.

So, what did we do? We decided to make learning “fun.”

Spoiler alert: FUN DOESN’T SCALE - EXCELLENCE DOES!

We started “gamifying” education, so kids wouldn’t notice they were learning. Points! Badges! Level-ups! Woohoo! And it works… until these kids reach adulthood and genuinely wonder why their boss didn’t give them five gold coins and a loot box for submitting a quarterly report.

One Fortune 100 firm had to rewrite its internal compliance training because a Gen Z new hire raised their hand mid-module and asked, “What’s the reward for finishing this section?”

THE ANSWER WAS: YOU GET TO KEEP YOUR JOB!

Not a trophy. Not a Starbucks gift card. Not a dopamine-soaked emoji of corporate approval. You get:

CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT!

And it’s not just entry-level flailing.

A once-top-tier American law school - #$%*ing LAW SCHOOL, Sports Fans! - had third-year students demanding take-home midterms and pre-approved essay templates because writing under pressure “compromised their emotional safety.”

The future lawyers of America - Who were so emotionally fragile they needed a rubric and a hug before outlining a contract dispute.

The judge who reads their future briefs? Not likely to grant a trigger warning.

We’ve created a world where classrooms look like Pinterest mood boards, every assignment is a collaboration opportunity, and every wrong answer is just “a different way of knowing.”

Kids don’t write papers anymore. They film themselves “reflecting emotionally” on a Google Slides deck while animated emojis cheer them on.

You’re not a student. You’re a minor-league Twitch streamer.

BUT WAIT - IT GETS WORSE!

We don’t have teachers anymore. We have edutainers. Facilitators. Learning influencers. They’re trained to “meet students where they are,” which these days means the corner of Low Attention Span Boulevard and Instant Gratification Drive.

We’re not teaching kids to think. We’re teaching them to feel good about not thinking.

So yeah, we turned school into a show. We handed out applause for effort, trophies for attendance, and A’s for breathing. And now we’re shocked—shocked!—that we’ve got adults who panic at deadlines, demand validation with every deliverable, and ask their boss for “more collaborative reflection spaces.”

This isn’t school. It’s Sesame Street with debt.

And the next time one of these “graduates” says, “I’m just not feeling seen in this org chart,” I swear to God I will bring back the Blue Book and the overhead projector and watch them cry in Helvetica.

EDUCATION IS NOT A THEME PARK!

You don’t need a soundtrack to solve for x. You don’t need a storyboard to understand Shakespeare. You need silence, structure, and a teacher who isn’t afraid to say, “No, that’s wrong. Try again.”

You want fun? Go play Fortnite. - You want a future? Sit down. Open a book. Shut up. AND THINK!

(Sam Kinison scream fades into sound of chalk on blackboard and America regaining its dignity... maybe.)

PART XVI: What Would Frank Do?

Frank would stand on the desk like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society and channel Howard Beale from Paddy Chayefsky’s Network with a righteous and guttural fury:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Then he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves – no, he’d rip them off like a man storming the barricades.

He’d charge into the nearest school board meeting with a flamethrower made of logic and a megaphone blasting The Battle Hymn of the Republic. He wouldn’t ask for permission. He’d commandeer the PA system.

He’d drag every board director, principal, superintendent, curriculum designer, and DEI consultant into a war room, lock the doors, and slam a whiteboard with one word written across it in blood-red Expo marker: RIGOR!

Then the reckoning would begin:

• Courses with finger painting after 8th grade? - Vaporized.
• Algebra assignments graded on "emotional growth"? - Erased with fire.
• College seminars titled “The Semiotics of TikTok”? - Airdropped into the Mariana Trench.

He’d bring back essays. Real ones. In Blue Books. With actual arguments. Frank would make students read Baldwin, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn—then defend their positions in class debates that end in sweat, growth, and possibly tears.

And yes—they’d write about it. In cursive. With ink. On paper.

Frank would reintroduce failure like an old friend. Because failure isn’t trauma—it’s tuition. It’s fertilizer for excellence.

He’d put the word "NO" back into the teacher’s vocabulary. He’d give teachers tenure for being tough—not trendy. He’d require public speaking like it’s oxygen. Coherent prose like it’s currency. And original thought like it’s the only thing that matters.

Every student who graduates on Frank’s watch would be able to:

• Speak clearly;
• Argue effectively;
• Write with force;
• Think independently; and
• Shut down a dumb idea without needing a therapy llama.

Frank would remind us that we’re not raising influencers - we’re raising leaders.

He’d remind parents that your kid isn’t gifted just because they made a Canva slideshow about their feelings. He’d remind teachers that “everyone learns differently” isn’t an excuse for teaching nothing. And he’d remind students that growth doesn’t come from being coddled - it comes from being challenged.

Because if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not learning - You’re just loitering.

So, what would Frank do?:

• He’d raise the bar until the weak cried and the strong reached it;
• He’d pull us out of our collective intellectual fetal position; and
• He’d fire the consultants, fund the classics, and put excellence back in style.

And then? He’d drop the mic, walk out the back door, and leave a chalk outline of mediocrity behind him. - “Class dismissed.”

(A nation rises to its feet. And this time? They’re not clapping - They’re signing up.)

PART XVII: The Veritas Way

This is not a mission statement. This is a battle cry.

At Veritas, we don’t issue praise like candy at a parade. We don’t grade on emotion. We don’t issue paychecks for presence. We set bars—and raise them. Again. And again. Until mediocrity taps out.

We believe that rigor is respect. That performance beats perception. That excellence, earned, is the only diversity metric worth tracking.

We don’t hire people to make us look good—we hire people who make us better.

As Albert Einstein once said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

At Veritas, we change thinking by demanding thought - the inconvenient, grown-up kind.

Aristotle reminded us, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

At Veritas, that habit is mandatory.

Leonardo da Vinci believed, “Learning never exhausts the mind—it only ignites it.”

Our minds aren’t exhausted. They’re on fire. Fueled by complexity. Ignited by contradiction. Caffeinated by standards.

And Steve Jobs? He said it best: “We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

That’s why we don’t settle for resumes—we interrogate readiness - and so should you.

At Veritas we train executives and board members to think in cause and effect, not tweets and trends. We demand logic, clarity, and courage—not charisma, not clickbait, and certainly not PowerPoint presentations that end with the word "journey."

Because leadership without thinking is just noise—and the world has enough of that already.

The Veritas Way means owning your ideas. Taking the heat. Admitting when you're wrong. And never, ever submitting your work with a shrug and a smiley face emoji.

We believe that:

• True grit still matters;
• Failure is a staircase, not a scar; and
• Excellence is the antidote to entropy.

And yes - Frank is watching.

The world doesn’t need more "influencers” - It needs builders; It needs fighters; and

It needs leaders who write like Cicero, think like Jobs, and occasionally scare the hell out of mediocrity just by walking into a room.

That’s the Veritas Way.

(P.S. This chapter was brought to you by many cups of incredibly good coffee, in-your-face confrontation, and a complete lack of patience for nonsense - See you at the Pulitzer ceremony.)

EPILOGUE: The Great Relearning

This isn’t just a landing—it’s a Frank Glassner, Mach-2-with-your-hair-on-fire, Chuck-Yeager-stick-the-hell-out-of-it landing. No autopilot. No soft music. Just thunder, truth, and touchdown.

We have a choice, America.

We can continue sliding into mediocrity, comforted by wellness check-ins and participation trophies—or we can rediscover the power of discomfort, discipline, and dissent.

Because the rest of the world? They’re not waiting. They’ve seen the headlines. They’ve watched the TikToks. They know that we’re one generation away from producing graduates who can’t spell 'Constitution' but can organize a protest against it in under four minutes—with Canva graphics and a brand partner.

This isn’t a crisis of capacity - it’s a crisis of will.

We can’t fix this with hashtags. We can’t Canva our way to clarity. And we can’t tweet our way to excellence.

We fix it with grit. With courage. With standards that mean something, and minds that can defend them.

We fix it by telling the truth. By calling things what they are. By giving kids books instead of excuses, and questions instead of slogans.

Let’s stop outsourcing excellence. Let’s stop grading on vibes. Let’s stop confusing volume with value.

Let’s not hand the future over to those who mistake virtue signaling for vision. Let’s hand it back to those who can read, write, calculate, question, and lead.

Before we can Make America Great Again, we need to do something far more fundamental:

Let’s Make America Think Again.

Landing complete. Engines off. Wheels chocked.

(And somewhere, Chuck Yeager looks down from Heaven, and Frank just looks up and flashes that famous killer smile of his…)

This isn’t just a call to action - it’s a challenge.

Let’s make thinking contagious again.

Let’s make rigor go viral.

Let’s make America laugh, cry, and think so hard they cancel brunch.

Onward.

FBG

**********************************************************************

P.S. - Sports fans, if you like what you’ve just read, don’t keep it to yourself.

Send Frank a note at fglassner@veritasecc.com (he actually reads them and answers them all - especially the ones with big words and bold ideas).

Better yet, share this manifesto of madness and meaning with your friends, your board, your boss, your Congressman, your bartender, or your barista. Click one of those handy social media buttons above - or go old school and write a letter to the editor of your favorite media outlet (yes, those still exist) - Bonus points if you use cursive.

Frank Glassner is the CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants and a widely respected authority on executive pay and strategic compensation design. Known for his discerning judgment, consummate diplomacy, incisive insights, and unwavering discretion, he is a trusted advisor and confidant to boards, CEOs, and institutional investors worldwide.