America is powerful because of geographical and historical context, not because its people or systems are exceptional. There isn't a nation that comes anywhere close to our geographic setup...two huge moats surrounding dozens of warm-water ports, the largest area of arable land, a country to our north that has no top-soil, a nation to our south that is mostly mountains, massive amounts of coal, oil, natural gas, and it was isolated following the last ice age from Asia and Europe so it couldn't settled and dominated until the last 200 years.
Our education system is a product of an upstart civilization which grew exceptionally wealthy on opportunism and immigration and not education, The spirit of America is to come up with an idea and steal the solution from a less "savvy" person and apply that en masse because we have the size and resources to scale everything. One example of the differences between the new and old is the memoirs of soldiers from world war II. German soldiers are constantly quoting Kant or Hegel, or writing or reading poetry...their points of view are existential or moral. America soldiers are quoting comics, drawing pictures of pin-ups, or talking sports. Our education system comes from easy money, easy luxury of being America. It generally just gets in the way of our fun. And that how parents and students treat it.
