I find the weird USian national inferiority complex and obsession with being number one at everything and acting like anything else is abject failure to be strange and disturbing.

Well, the education system at this point is a product of the neo-liberal and neo-conservative deform movement. And that movement? It's been all about the fucking DATA. I'm sorry that deGrasse Tyson doesn't understand this. In the modern system, all students are bits of data; you weigh them, you measure them, you enter the data so you can make pretty colored graphs and pie charts and so forth that "informs instruction." When you meet to talk about how to help kids, the conversation is all about those pretty graphs and charts, and never about "what we can't affect." Of course, "what we can't affect" is usually the source of the struggle, so the conversations tend to be a pretty damned good waste of time.

That said, the part he gets correct is that there has been a blurring of fact and opinion. He might want to look at history, and notice that the deregulation of mass media under Ronald Reagan began this long slippery slope to "I have free speech. I can say anything I want is true, and I can present my opinions/beliefs as true."

It's really not a product of public education. Of course, education has a piece of the pie, though. You see, along with the deregulation of the media, there was also the encouraged growth of anti-intellectualism. That anti-intellectualism was used to start a war on public education, public ed teachers, and, of course, their dreaded unions. The myth of "can't fire teachers" took off, and "blame teachers for everything" became a national sport.

Which led to teachers censoring themselves and being very, very careful about how hot-button topics were handled in the classroom, because the public was primed to attack, and the admins, on defense, were often willing to offer up the teacher as the scapegoat. Or, when defending the teacher, ordered more censorship to prevent future events.

I'm happy to see deGrasse Tyson, as a scientist and an educator, take on the sources of this national problem.

The problem has more to do with the "news" programs and the media in general than education per se.. On paper at least Americans are better educated now then they ever have been, a higher proportion of college graduates than at any time in history.

I wouldn't comment, but Tyson's one of those pushing the "STEM shortage" fairy tale that justifies the program: public ed has constantly bulked up on STEM ever since the Sputnik panic--terrific per se, but the other programs have been cut hard while STEM gets raised

he is right - why are so many people enamored with Trump? It is very disturbing they cannot see through him.

that we will solve our political problems simply by providing more education is ridiculous: it merely invites a further politicization of the educational process, with all the resulting struggles against forced indoctrination -- and we are not guaranteed to win such fights

Different people are enamored with Trump for different reasons, and not all of them are reachable. Political views are compounded from some complicated mix of whatever currently passes as cultural "common sense" together with the effects of deliberate propaganda and people's limited understanding of their own interests and their self-rationalizations of their behavior. These influences can be counter-acted but effective efforts to do so must change with time

but people unable to think for themselves certainly seems to be a growing problem

And there is no room for political discussion. Every parent has a lawyer ready to sue the teacher and the district.