AMERICAN RESOURCES

While it is true that some students still manage to learn in the public schools, in most cases they accomplish this in spite of the schools rather than because of them. The American students still performing best are the 1.5 to 2 million homeschooled students, but they comprise only about 4% of the total.

How bad is this situation? In recent tests, U.S. 12th graders scored 19th out of 21 countries tested in math - ahead only of Cyprus and South Africa. In science, American students were 16th.

Among the top 10% to 20% of each country's students, U.S. students were second from last in math and were last in science - the worst performance of all 21 countries tested.

The tested countries were those in Western Europe plus Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithu-ania, Russia, Slovania, and South Africa. Had Singapore, Korea, and Japan been included, the U.S. would still have ranked at the bottom.

Of special note is the fact that America's best students are last with respect to the best students of all other developed countries. This destroys the myth that we are producing a highly educated subset of elite students even though our overall average performance is poor.

What do union leaders of the 4 million "educators'' and government bureaucrats prescribe as a solution? They, of course, want more money - even though their budgets (in contrast to their products) are already among the highest in the world.

Decades of efforts have been made to fix this failed system of education. None have succeeded. If any corporation in America had tolerated such a large, complete, longlasting, and comprehensive failure within its enterprises, that corporation would be bankrupt.

At a meeting in which we participated last year, the question was asked, "Should we try to fix this system or bulldoze it?'' My immediate answer was, "Bulldoze it!'' It is just unthinkable to stunt the minds of yet one more generation of American children while we wait for the same people who have repeatedly failed in the past and who are wholly responsible for the current situation - to fail once again.

This is doubly true at a time when technology has recently given us the tools to replace the education monopoly with far superior programs communicated by CD-ROM and the Internet. Electronics has broken the monopolies on information which existed earlier as a result of the cost of information storage and transfer.

We do not need tens of thousands of teachers of mathematics and physics - most of whom are doing such a poor job (not entirely as a result of their personal efforts) that our children are last in the world. We need just a handful of the very best teachers - brought into our homes by the new high bandwidth communications systems.

How do we know who are are the best teachers? Let free market providers make their selections - and the market place will sort them out. Testing, grading, and accreditation can easily be done remotely. This will require significant numbers of teachers - but few enough that they can be found among the good teachers now lost in the system.

It is unfortunate that the computer industry has shown such hesitancy in approaching the education market. Perhaps most of the denizens of this industry are so busy pursuing new technology that they have parked all of their children in public schools - schools that they do not want to admit are a negative in their children's education.

This market is ripe for a revolution. Our 22 CD-ROM home school curriculum is now used by about 25,000 children - and it is no more than the offering of one family and a few friends with little capital.

Socialized education is a $400 billion-per-year dinosaur. With modern technology, the cost of education could be reduced and the quality increased by factors of ten. Within a few years, test scores would be improved, American productivity would be increased, and a huge tax burden would be lifted from the American people. Financial fortunes await those entrepreneurs who have the courage to do this correctly. (None, however, for companies that bring in "education experts'' from the failing system to design products to aid that system.) The most widespread and pernicious form of child abuse in Amer-ica today is the daily incarceration of most American youths in institutions where their sociological development is distorted and their intellectual development is permanently retarded.