Sounding Off:

Yes, we do have a number of immediate concerns like double-digit unemployment rates and a tanking economy, but when do we start worrying about long-term prospects for our future?

We have begun to take responsible steps to halt global warming, but our focus on education problems seems rather parochial. Education is not just a local issue.

No Child Left Behind was implemented and treated like a political stunt. It had no vision and no commitment to our future excellence as a nation, just as the profit-maximizing of globalization and outsourcing was corporate-centered and not nation-centered. On both fronts, we are now in trouble.

In the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, which measured the applied learning and problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranked 25th in mathematics and 24th in science. That means that our average teenager, who might be in leadership and/or in the workforce in four to eight years, is on par with teens from Portugal or the Slovak Republic.

Compared to our competitors for service-sector and high-value jobs, we do rather poorly. For example, Korea, Canada, Japan and Australia are in the top 10 in both science and math.

Older people remember and documentation supports our superiority in years past. In the 1950s and 1960s, America dominated the world in K-12 education, and we showcased an economy with robust productive resources, having advanced manufacturing tools and a highly skilled workforce. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, though other big economies, like China, were closing in.

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, manufacturing made up 25% of our economy. Now it is less than 12%.

In the last decade, education continued its decline, globalization advanced and outsourcing surged. Meanwhile, our industrial and technological base eroded. It left us with bloated credit cards, our economy with service industries, and a financial empire that has collapsed under the weight of risk and greed.

Now the only thing we seem to excel in is debt and arrogance — the latter fading with the departure of President Bush and his Texas swagger. Also losing its swagger is our economy with a swoon in consumption, sending downward ripples in Asian and European economies.

So when this economic downturn ends, our weaknesses in education, our lost industrial base and our declining technological edge could have serious consequences.

There are some hopeful signs. President Obama recognizes that we urgently need to invest the money and energy to take the geographically scattered best ideas in education to a national level. More money and focus is riding on improving education for national betterment instead of just gearing it toward sterile national test scores.

The recognized need for funding promising small business ideas and applied science is beginning with stimulus funds and the Obama budget. Our focus must be on the rich dream of America, not the narrow path of greed.

JIM HOOVER is a Huntington Beach resident.