Again, Why do people in the USA think we have to re-invent the wheel?

I 'get' the ideas we operated from in the past. I get our weird concept of "Manifest Destiny". I get "Brotherly Love" being an ideal at the same time we had slavery and were genociding the Indians. I understand that we won the walk-on-the-moon race. I comprehend that we suffered the illusion that we had created the best democracy on the globe. What I don't understand is where, in our perfection we have lost the ability to take from other countries their more successful programs and replicate them.

Here is an example of what I mean: I met many Canadians in Nicaragua this past winter. They have figured out how to get away from the cold. To a one, they all said they were proud of the Canadian educational system. Every child gets an excellent education regardless of what province they inhabit, regardless of their parent's financial situation, regardless of their race. This sounds like a system we should look at closely. I have never even remotely heard such a statement from anyone in the USA.

I would like to be able to say that about my country. The opposite is true. A basic education is not a very complicated deal. Teaching reading and maths and history to 6,7,8 year olds is not a very complicated project. Yet, we have towns and school boards and parents and educators struggling with this problem from sea to shining sea.  And it is getting worse everyday. And it is costing more. And it is failing larger. If we can't seem to solve a simple problem like how to teach a 6 year old how to read, then maybe we should ask Canada.

According to the CIA Factbook (!) the US is about 50th from the best infant mortality rate on the planet. Should we spend millions of people hours and truck loads of $ trying to figure how to improve this rating or should we perhaps call someone in Japan or Singapore and ask them how they manage to do better?

Several answers come to mind when I ask myself these questions. One is that we do not have the will to do things better. That is sort of obvious. One reason might be that we don't believe in equality. We believe that the wealthy are better and deserve better. Another answer comes from Fox news and that is that Jesus prefers the successes and thinks any attempt to help (even educating a kid)  anyone, to offer them an equal chance is Socialism, and that is the work of the devil or the antichrist. (Obama).

My conclusion for today is that we are a country so polarized that each day we are lucky to function at all. I expect that none of our huge national problems will get sorted very soon, if ever, and we are way too proud (in the negative sense of the word) to ever look outside of ourselves to find solutions to our failings.