# Education is no longer tied to national greatness In 19th century Europe, leaders saw their country’s education system as deeply tied to national greatness. Prussia’s defeats early in the century spurred the development of the “German System” of research universities that would become the envy of the world and is one of the intellectual parents of our modern system. Later, France’s defeat by Prussia was the impetus for the French to At least in 21st century America, the quality of our education system has become decoupled from the narrative of national greatness. To a large extent, “education” has become a [[Suitcase Handle Word]] — we put cultural emphasis on it because we put cultural emphasis on it. People lament performance on standardized test scores compared to other countries, but there is no narrative that American greatness depends on the quality of our education system. If there were There are a few threads connecting education and national greatness. It’s also notable that they saw the education system as a *system* — all the pieces needed to work together to contribute to a result. The optimistic view is that if we had a narrative connecting education I don’t really have a sense of the true causal connection between the quality of a country’s education system and their success in the great game. But I *do* think that using real outcomes as the impetus to improve it is good. ### Related * [[History of the university book club]]