Education been going down since the sixties, when teachers suddenly decided that actual usable skills where no longer needed. Why do you think we always talk about importing the smartest people, when we should be talking about how we can create the smartest people.
In the late 1800's education was done privately, the books the kids had were Christian based, they were interesting and pertinent to having a life... the whole thing got turned over to the public sector and Dewey was put in charge. He considered religion to be a mental disorder and things went downhill ever since... the people that run education are so biased towards atheism that any atheist activist with a gripe is all they need to bring about a major change...
Not to worry, somebody far less stupid is coming along to fill the gap. Muslim liberal arts college takes root in Berkeley http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-zaytuna-20100828,0,741658.story?track=rss
Oh my!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I opened that link, took one look at that "female," and my monitor stopped working! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On a serious note, can you believe this mess we have in the USA???? Amazing!!!!!!!!
A hippie walks down the road, a genie appears in front of him. "I'll grant you two wishes," says the genie. The hippie replies, "I want a never ending joint." The genie says, "As you wish," and gives him the joint. The hippie takes a long drag and says, "Awesome! I want another one.
What does religion has anything to do with quality of education? If that is the case, religion fanatics will have all the smart people. You can argue private schools do better than public schools but I think that is due to the market force at work.
Downhill?? Are you crazy? As the century turned, technology started taking off. People were actually allowed to further science instead of believing in fairy tales.