Commentary In 2021 there’s an outright holy war against scholastic achievement. Oregon has passed a bill that suspends the requirement that students must be able to read, write, and do math to graduate from high school. Mathematics should be replaced, we are told, by “social justice” mathematics, in which there are no correct answers, and students must not be asked to show the calculations that led to their conclusions. Standard American English should no longer be the standard, and students should not be judged on the quality of their writing. And recruitment of future scientists and science teachers and researchers should no longer be based on achievement, merit, and potential, but on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Even before the year and a half of schoolwork lost to the pandemic, the performance of American school students fell far behind many countries that are America’s competitors and threatening enemies. According to a …