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...army's ability to fight depends on the quality of its logistics planning," an American soldier in Afghanistan recently told me. In the U.S. it can be taken for granted that the lowest grunt has basic reading, writing and computing skills. Not so in Afghanistan, where many of the desperately poor enlistees sign up with a fingerprint or the equivalent of a scrawled X. Yet the Obama strategy for Afghanistan envisions an indigenous military that will soon be able to take over security from its American and international mentors. How can a largely illiterate army plan the complex logistics that...
...look across the border to Pakistan, where 60 years of weak civilian governance interspersed with frequent military coups have created a nation perpetually in crisis and a haven for global terrorism. One of the best ways to encourage a strong and stable civil society is through education - not just basic literacy, but a thorough grounding in fundamentals such as mathematics, history, religion, literature and politics. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan...
Beyond saving money, Bobb sees his mission in broader terms: to improve the system's miserable academic performance. Again, the situation is dire. Last month brought news that more than three-quarters of the 900 eighth-graders who took a national math exam scored at "below basic" levels. In October 2008, some 57% of Detroit third- through eighth-graders essentially failed a state writing test. Detroit's graduation rate is 58%. "The system is academically bankrupt. This is almost academic homicide," Bobb says. (See pictures of a public boarding school...
...Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; and Denver as big-city school districts that have rebounded in the hands of strong managers. Detroit presents a very different situation. The tax base is nearly gone. Poverty and unemployment are far more pervasive than in most other major American cities. Many adults lack the basic skills necessary to qualify for the high-tech jobs officials are desperately trying to attract to Michigan, which has the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate. Home values, on which property-tax revenues are based, have plunged to pennies on the dollar. Over the past decade, the Detroit schools weren...
...absolutely right that this seed that we've planted is going to have to be carefully nurtured. And for readers who aren't familiar, the basic idea is that we should not only fund the usual repaving of highways - although that's important - but we should also think, What's the 21st century infrastructure that's out there? And those decisions should be made by people who really have clear ideas about the kind of infrastructure we're going to need. As opposed to it being determined solely by, you know, "Who's the chairman of the transportation committee from...