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Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "How to fix our crisis" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The "crisis" in question pertains to the U.S. education system, which the original poster believes is failing on many levels. According to her, the SAT is not rigorous, American students are dropping out of STEM programs "like flies", and students are not graduating with the skills needed to compete for entry-level jobs. This is a 19-page thread full of fairly dense posts and, as such, not easy to summarize. Two things the thread demonstrates are the acute politicalization of education and how data can be manipulated to support an argument. Almost immediately, posters associated the original poster's argument with recent statements by failed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who has similarly argued that American culture has accepted mediocrity instead of striving for excellence when it comes to education. When a poster described a comedian who had joked about "MAGA friends", a poster immediately assumed that this was a rebuke of rural White kids, and one poster instinctively posted about alleged deficiencies among urban kids, presumably meaning Black and Hispanic children. It is not clear why posters made the connection between "MAGA friends" and rural White students or even why remarks about MAGA attitudes about education are considered derogatory. After all, it was President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump who famously said that he loved the "Poorly Educated" and attacks on higher education have been a hallmark of MAGA ideology. While many posters preferred to support their arguments with data, there was considerable disagreement about how data was used. For instance, some posters referred to data showing that American students lagged behind those of other countries as evidence that the American education system is failing. On the other hand, posters suggested that if the U.S. data was limited to the performance of White and Asian students, the U.S. performance would be near the top. This, the posters argued, showed that the U.S. education system was clearly capable of producing high-performing students. If true, however, this data does show the inequality in our system. Similarly, some posters refused to accept that the U.S. education system is failing or suffering from significant problems. Other posters agreed with the original poster that there is room for improvement, but there was little agreement about what exactly should be done. The original poster proposed that calculus be made a requirement for high school graduation. Many posters objected to this, arguing that, for most people, calculus has little value. The original poster also proposed not awarding high school diplomas to those who failed to meet the increased graduation requirements. It is not clear to me that the original poster's proposals would actually increase the education level of American students. Rather, it would probably just create a larger number of individuals who lack a high school diploma. A better strategy might be to ensure that calculus classes, as well as classes necessary to prepare for the course, are widely available as options for those students who want to study the subject.