I think that both the USA and Europe is letting themselves down in the area of education.
Look at how they study in China, Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries.
Russians used to be top class scholars too, study really hard - I don't know what it's like now.

But large parts of Europe the school discipline is awful and the kids know almost nothing.

I read about some refugee kids coming to Sweden from Syria. They were way ahead of the Swedish kids in all subjects, because they were actually forced to sit down, pay attention and study in their school. They were totally shocked that we have all the prerequisites to have good schools here, yet the schools are a disgrace. From what I understand, things are even worse in the USA where gang members turn up with guns to school and most of the kids care only about showing up in school for the social life.

China must be laughing at us, and if we all don't get our act together in this area.

A while back, this excellent series was on the BBC.