A world which begins in their own country. In the last decade, I was struck by a gradually increasing double-process concerning the new generations

On the one hand, there is the general and overwhelming statement regarding the drift all along the last 2-3 decades of the primary and secondary educational system.

On the other hand, there is the flagrant lack of intellectual curiosity of the young Americans.
These two aspects must be related to a major fact : for the elder generations, the statement is the reverse, i.e. presenting good quality of education and a real intellectual curiosity, particularly when it comes to the " foreigner ".
Something has therefore happened, or is happening, which modifies radically (in the wrong sense) the level and quality of education of the new generations of Americans.
We shall come back more in detail on the difficulties of the educational system in some next article. At this stage, let's concentrate on the result : an important part (the poorest one) of the growing generations of Americans have a very weak level of education (confirmed by American and international studies), reaching close to 25% of illiterates. Moreover the international approach is so much ignored that President Clinton had to place international education as a priority of "national security" in an "Executive Order" in 2000. At the centre of the global exchequer, the Americans educate their children to ignore the rest of the world.
Worrying for them … worrying for us ! It could be useful that the Europeans bring some active support to those in Washington or in the various networks of teachers and economic leaders, who try to counter this dangerous tendency.
Educated by "Multiple Choice Items" rather unlikely to develop intellectual curiosity and autonomous thinking, without any external reference enabling the comparison, fed to the ideal image of Golden-Age-America, intellectually anaesthetized by a system that favours systematic encouragement and political correctness, the American growing generations are in fact the great unknown in the landscape described before. One thing is already certain : the America of multinationals will increasingly draw their executives from non-American human resources. It has already began.
Moreover one of the main factors of opening to the outside world that had affected generations of Americans since 1942 gradually disappeared in the 90's, and that is the presence of numerous American troops all over the globe (and Europe, particularly). This phenomenon enabled millions of young Americans from various social backgrounds to discover something else than their own country … today, this "window" on the outside world is closed, already affecting those generations which were 20 in the 90's. While the " family window ", that of the family links of the white majority from Europe, is closing now that the time of massive migrations is that of the grand-parents and even great-grand-parents.