The fact they chose to reference Einstein as somebody who, implicitly, succeeded in part because of privilege is peculiar. He was a Jew born in Germany who ende

The fact they chose to reference Einstein as somebody who, implicitly, succeeded in part because of privilege is peculiar. He was a Jew born in Germany who ended up renouncing his citizenship when he was 17 to avoid compulsory military service - leaving him stateless at a time of growing across the world antisemitism. He also chose to drop out of high school, finding the curriculum restrictive and contrary to his views of education. He would then apply to university - and was rejected for poor score on the language section of the university's entrance examination - though he scored phenomenally on math/science. Back to high school. After improving his language skills he was admitted to a university. Following graduation he was unable to find any teaching post at any university after searching for 2 years, leaving him working as an assistant patent examiner -- where he was passed over for promotions for perceived lack of competence. Interestingly enough his 'miracle year', where he would publish four groundbreaking papers, happened while he was still working at the patent office! And even then it would still be years before things really started to rapidly progress for him, turning him into the namesake that he is today. Something else I find trite in these articles is the constant assumption that people have to be precisely demographically matched to function as role models. In a survey recently carried out in Russia on role models, Putin actually lost out to Elon Musk [1]. A soft spoken South African man who immigrated to American is now one of the biggest role models for Russians. And this article is talking about matching not only demographics, but down to the precise state somebody lives in! And one final critique. The article basically says "stop giving tax breaks to the wealthy, reinvest the money where it's needed." So where is it needed? Well, of course that's not at all discussed. There is 0 reason to think the failure of the American education system has anything whatsoever to do with money. We already spend vastly more per child than nearly anywhere in the world, yet our quantifiable educational performance continue to deteriorate by nearly all metrics compared to the rest of the world. [2] [1] - http://www.newsweek.com/putin-beaten-jesus-elon-musk-and-parents-young-russians-top-role-model-702357 http://www.newsweek.com/putin-beaten-jesus-elon-musk-and-par... [2] - https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/ https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-...