What is backward and uncompetitive? Our institutions

INSTEAD of unceasing assaults on the Constitution, the two chambers of Congress should instead pass with urgency something along the lines of an Open-Ended Education Funding Act. This means allocating 10 percent of the yearly GDP to education until such time that our 10- and 15-year-olds (the cohorts in the Timss and PISA evaluations, respectively) can read and understand age-appropriate text and solve math problems and science lessons with relative ease. Until our learning poverty rate matches that of Singapore, instead of the globally embarrassing 91 percent. Until, the foundation for a world-class education shall have been built from the bottom up.

That same investment would guarantee the sustained production of breakthrough and cutting-edge research work at our public research universities, world-class research outputs that would, once developed into real-world products and applications, immensely benefit the public and the private sectors.