The people are uneducated. In order to protect them from themselves, a strong government must control them. Since a strong government controls the people, there is no need to educate them. The people are uneducated...
Fortunately, many of our founders also believed in the ideals of the Enlightenment, and this led to the United States strongly favoring universal education.
Arguably, the current Communist regime in China was founded on ideals that also favor universal education.
I'm all in favor of folks getting as much education as they want.
I question, though, whether the current system of universal education is really doing all that much educating, or whether it's mostly a jobs program for unionized teachers.
It (very) roughly means something like "basic cultural quality level."
To focus on the "education" inflection of that word could result in misunderstood arguments like the Chinese government wants to keep its population uneducated. If anything, their basic educational policies over the past few decades have been the complete opposite of that.
As long as the sentiment like this is taking precedence over, and please pardon my French, the fucking world-wide web then I'm afraid the Zap Brannigans of America will continue to control all of you.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention this. . .Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001_suptables.pdf