Vivek Ramaswamy is right. America has a culture problem. | Opinion
The day after Christmas, Vivek Ramaswamy threw a rhetorical hand grenade into the immigration debate. What really blew up, however, was his apparent insult to American culture.
As part of a post on X (formerly Twitter), the former presidential candidate and suburban Columbus entrepreneur, wrote, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over 'native' Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH: Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG."
Ramaswamy went on to claim that “a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
To date, his post has been viewed more than 116 million times and attracted over 50,000 comments, the vast majority of which were critical.
I’m not surprised. I doubt most people are fond of having their culture criticized, particularly when that someone is a child of immigrants with a foreign-sounding name.
Even so, mature adults should be able to brush off the slight and open our eyes to the reality that Ramaswamy’s comments reveal.
He’s right: The American K-12 education system has been failing its students for far too long. I’ve written about those failures in previous columns and will likely continue to do so because it’s so important to our nation’s – and our children’s – future.
Youth sports are place over academic achievement
A 2021 opinion column in Education Week paints a grim picture: “The millennials in our workforce tied for last on tests of mathematics and problem solving among the millennials in the workforces of all the industrial countries tested.”
Another reality is that there’s far too much focus on youth sports, often to the detriment of academic achievement. This is particularly so when that focus is on travel teams, which can demand more than a dozen hours of weekly practice, plus entire weekends for games and tournaments.
Youth sports have undeniable value. They help build healthy bodies and foster habits of physical activity, competition and teamwork. For some students, sports can offer a path to college, with a select few earning full or partial scholarships.
These benefits are important, but school is a student’s full-time job. Adding the equivalent of a second full-time job with intense youth sports is too much for most. Exceptional students, like Ramaswamy, may thrive in both areas, but the majority cannot.
If you want to be hired as an engineer, academic achievement matters – a lot.
That’s because engineering is about following well-established rules of math, physics, chemistry and logic. I certainly want the engineers designing the products I depend upon to master and apply those rules.
Similar rules apply in medicine, law, finance and virtually every professional domain.
We’ve allowed our schools to lose focus on their primary educational mission and substituted nonacademic partisan pablum and extracurricular activities like sports to distract ourselves and our kids from those failures.
Academics aren't everything
Of course, academic success isn’t everything for everyone. Hard work and entrepreneurial zeal is a winning combination, too.
A study cited in a 2017 Money magazine article showed that the average college grade point average of more than 700 American millionaires was just 2.9.
Some of the most successful people didn’t even finish college, if they went at all.
Part of America’s strength lies in this entrepreneurial risk-taking and a culture that fosters it. Such risk-taking is often about breaking rules rather than following them. Think SpaceX, Apple or Netflix.
We need immigration reform
That’s where U.S. culture has historically triumphed, including our willingness to welcome and leverage the talents of highly skilled immigrants.
Until 2010, the United States led the world in patent applications. Now, China does.
We need to develop our own engineers while simultaneously offering a path to citizenship for immigrants who come to study here and are committed to advancing American interests. Sending them home is shortsighted.
Our immigration system is deeply flawed, including the H-1B visa system that many of our technology companies use. We need immigration reform so we can bring in the best talent while not putting equally qualified American citizens at a disadvantage.
I’m far more concerned with our nation’s turn toward "safetyism" and a preference for so-called equity over excellence than I am with any possible overreliance on immigrants. But those are topics for another day.
Americans have to compete against the best from around the world. That’s reality whether we like it or not. So we must adjust our priorities – and our culture.
Our nation’s history suggests we can rise to the challenge, but it’ll take all of us: engineers and prom queens, jocks and valedictorians, and talented, hardworking immigrants to do so.
Philip Derrow is a retired business owner who lives in New Albany, Ohio. He was a two-term member of the New Albany-Plain Local Board of Education. He is a frequent contributor to The Columbus Dispatch, where this column originally appeared.
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