<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Labor Day Weekend September 4,5,6, 2021</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">September 3, 2021</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Labor Day in a Nation Still at Risk in a
Dangerous World</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Thomas Sticht, International Consultant in Adult
Education (Ret.)</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">September 6, Labor Day 2021, finds the United
States in a quandary because, on the one hand we celebrate America’s workers
for the richness of life they have provided through their labor, while on the
other hand we are deeply troubled by the continuous erosion of the knowledge
and skills of our laboring workforce over the last half century and its effects
on our international competitiveness.. </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">National attention was called to this erosion of
America’s skills in 1983 when the blockbuster report “A Nation at Risk” was
introduced by the U.S. Government with the opening grabber "Our Nation is
at risk. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the
mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed
it as an act of war." Among the indicators of the risk facing America in
1983 were the findings that about 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United
States could be considered functionally illiterate, with functional illiteracy among
minority youth running as high as 40 percent. 
As adults, 23 million Americans were declared functionally illiterate.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Over 30 years later, the American Institutes for
Research (AIR) reported in An Education and Workforce Challenge “</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">An assessment of
adult skills by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) found that about 18 percent (35 million) of 16- to 65-year-olds in the
United States have low literacy skills and 30 percent (58 million)  have low skills in working with and using
mathematical information (numeracy). Hispanics and Blacks are three to four
times more likely than Whites  to have
low literacy skills and some one-third of low-skilled adults are immigrants. This
represents millions of American adults, including many working adults, who
struggle to use written text and numbers, and some two-thirds of these low
scoring adults possess high school diplomas or higher educational achievement. Among
the 22 OECD member countries included in the assessment, 12 countries ranked
above the United States in literacy and 17 countries ranked above the United
States in numeracy” (<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf020/t/55df6d61e4b0496d7ba2a500/1440705889654/PIAAC+Lit+and+Num-Infographic.png">https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf020/t/55df6d61e4b0496d7ba2a500/1440705889654/PIAAC+Lit+and+Num-Infographic.png</a></span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">).</span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><em><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-style:normal"> </span></em></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><em><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-style:normal"> </span></em></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><em><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-style:normal">The Modern Language Association (MLA)
reports that the average Scholastic Aptitude Test       (</span></em><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> SAT) “ verbal score among
college-bound seniors decreased more than 8% between 1968 and 2014. From 1992
to 2013, the percentage of 12th graders who scored below basic on reading
achievement increased from 20% to 25%, while those at or above proficient
decreased from 40% to 37%. In international reading assessments, the U.S.
scored 23rd, behind China, Estonia, and Poland.” (</span><a href="https://www.mla.org/content/download/52219/1812312/Infographic-Language-and-Literacy-3.pdf" style="color:blue">https://www.mla.org/content/download/52219/1812312/Infographic-Language-and-Literacy-3.pdf</a>)</p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">A study by the
Education Trust of some 350,000 high school graduates aged 17-20 who applied
for enlistment in military service between 2004-2009 found that 23 percent of
the test-takers failed to achieve a qualifying score for entrance into the U.S.
Army. The report went on to say, “Among white test-takers, 16 percent scored
below the minimum score required by the Army. For Hispanic candidates, the rate
of ineligibility was 29 percent. And for African-American youth, it was 39
percent. These dismally high ineligible rates for minority youth in our
subsample of data are similar to the ineligible rates of all minority Army applicants
as recorded over the last ten years” (</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black"><a href="https://edtrust.org/press-release/shut-out-of-the-military-more-than-one-in-five-recent-high-school-graduates-is-not-academically-qualified-to-enlist-in-the-u-s-army/">https://edtrust.org/press-release/shut-out-of-the-military-more-than-one-in-five-recent-high-school-graduates-is-not-academically-qualified-to-enlist-in-the-u-s-army/</a>).</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">At
the officer level, and consistent with the MLA data for high school students,
in which there was a three percent decline in the more proficient students,
researchers at the Brookings Institute reported that “…the intelligence of new
Marine Corps officers has declined steadily since 1940. Two-thirds of the new
officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of
1980, 41 percent of new officers in 2014 would not have qualified to be
officers by the standards held at the time of World War II…. This trend has not
been caused by Marine Corps policies; it is a reflection of the expansion of
higher education in America. In 1980, 18.6 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were
in college. Today, that number is close to 30 percent. The dramatic rise in
college attendance has increased the pool of people eligible to become officers
in the military (possession of a bachelor’s degree being one of the chief
requirements to be commissioned as an officer in all branches), but it also
means that possession of a college degree is a less significant indicator of
intelligence now than it once was. Marine Corps officers have reflected this
trend, declining in average intelligence along with the population of college
graduates” </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">(</span><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookingsnow/2015/07/24/understanding-the-steady-and-troubling-decline-in-the-average-intelligence-of-marine-corps-officers/" style="color:blue"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"">https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookingsnow/2015/07/24/understanding-the-steady-and-troubling-decline-in-the-average-intelligence-of-marine-corps-officers/</span></a><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">).</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Giovanni-Book,serif"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This
 Labor Day while we celebrate America’s
workers for building a great Nation we must also aim to bring greater numbers
of the workforce to higher levels of achievement of the knowledge and skills
needed in an increasingly technologically complex and interactive world. Our national
abundance, international competitiveness, and national security demand it.  </span></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:12pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">###</span></p>

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