CLEVELAND, Ohio — I don’t know what to make of our education system, though the fault I find might be commonplace in the profession. I know one thing with certainty: Education does an extraordinary job of producing averageness.

In the eight-plus years I taught journalism at Ohio University, I had an up-close view of mediocre students. I felt deep concern for those 18-year-olds who came to the campus with inflated GPAs. Too many of ’em hadn’t read a novel for the joy of it in years, didn’t know how to navigate a public library and couldn’t write a complete sentence if I spotted them the subject and the verb.

I don’t mean to single out my former employer, because Ohio U. was playing the cards U.S. high schools dealt it. The university recruited hard. With a diverse student body, its campu

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