USA States Compared to Countries By Education Level

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As regular readers know, one thing that drives me to distraction is the myth of American exceptionalism, a myth most loved by Republican politicians but also foolishly embraced y Democrats as well.  The truth is that America is becoming increasing less than exceptional unless one uses ranks for gun violence and the percentage of the population of an advanced that lacks health care coverage.  Now, America ranks 28th in educational attainment and life expectancy is declining unlike in other advanced nations.   An article looks at how American states were compared to foreign nations based on educational levels.  The map they compiled is above.  Actually, Virginia did fairly well in relative terms, no doubt because of the high education levels in Northern Virginia.  Here are article highlights:

Americans like to think they’re the best when it comes to just about everything, when measured against other nations. While we’re certainly the richest, most freedom loving, and pretty much the bodyguards for the poor and defenseless, we’ve known for years that we’re certainly not the smartest country on earth.

Recently, we ranked 28th when it came to math and science scores, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

We’re really smart, people. Just not the smartest. And we’re working on it.

We thought it would be cool to align each state’s educational attainment to a country of similar intelligence. 

We used the U.S. Census to get the numbers on each state’s high school graduation rate, and then compared those numbers to the education index of each country in the world, provided by the United Nations Development Program

Many things stand out. For instance, most of the northeast – considered the ‘smartest’ region in the United States – is very similar to Europe’s education levels.

Note how the states that are GOP strongholds fared.   It actually strikes me as accurate, especially when one looks at the Deep South.  Embracing ignorance does not make "America great again."