You may have heard by now that a sitting member of Congress, U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, stunned students and teachers alike, at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, by telling them the moon is a “planet” that is “made up mostly of gases.”

Of course, the moon has nearly no atmosphere. And it’s rock solid. And there’s only 8 planets (well, at least now since they kicked Pluto out of the line-up).

So, she got it wrong. She misspoke. Who cares? We’re all human. Move along, right?

But it’s not that. It’s more than that, and it’s not the first time Jackson-Lee has demonstrated such a lack of basic understanding of common knowledge. For example, when Jackson-Lee was visiting the Mars Pathfinder Operations Center in Pasadena, California, she asked if the Pathfinder succeeded in taking pictures of the American flag planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong in 1969.

Of course, humans have never stepped foot on Mars. Our flag was planted by Neil Armstrong on the moon, not Mars (although Jackson-Lee thinks the moon is a planet, like Mars, so maybe you’ll give her partial credit here).

Yet she’s a Yale graduate. And a graduate of the University of Virginia law school. She sits on the esteemed Judiciary Committee in Congress, as well as the Homeland Security Committee and the Budget Committee.

She influences decisions that affect millions of Americans daily, not to mention the balance of freedom on this planet, yet she is unable to use basic contextual clues that Earth’s moon is not a planet because – wait for it – then it wouldn’t be a “moon” in the first place.

With this kind of nonsense thinking, is it any wonder why 3 out of 4 Americans believe this country is on the wrong track?

But it’s not just Jackson-Lee, though, or other elected officials. They are more of a symptom of the disease.

You see, there has been a deliberate, persistent effort in this country to minimize the importance of education, or to become smarter than we are. Some argue that the media has become overly focused on entertainment rather than education, with news programs more concerned with sensational stories than in-depth reporting.

And it shows.

For example, according to a report last year from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. Only 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34 percent in 2019.

Math proficiency among fourth graders also declined in 41 states. Just 36 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, and reading scores declined in more than half of the states, as well.

In researching to write this article, I Googled “is being smart important?” The search results surprised me, maybe for you too. Here’s a sampling of the links that were served up: “Why You Don’t Want to Be Smart,” “Being Smart is Useless,” “Why Highly Intelligent People Are Miserable,” “Why Being Smart Isn’t Enough To Be Successful Anymore,” and I could go on and on listing more search results like these, but it’s almost like we’ve given up.

We’ve succumbed to the notion (or rather the lie) of why bother trying to study hard for the exam, or go back to college, or get that certification or training in whatever your profession might be because it obviously (according to Google) won’t be enough to make a difference in your success and won’t make you any happier than you are now.

Whatever the reason(s) that becoming “smart” was abandoned in this country or is no longer en vogue, it’s unconscionable. 1 in 4 Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. 1 in 5 of us confuse astronomy with astrology. 70% of us do not know what the Constitution is.

Now, some folks might say, “Well, some people are just born smart, it’s not my fault I’m not good at high-level math,” or some may say, “I’m not good at this (fill in the blank with this subject) or that (fill in the blank with that subject).”

And I get it. We’re all born with certain, natural proclivities.

But being “smart” (or getting smarter) isn’t about what you were born with, it’s about a choice; choosing what you do with what you have been given. It’s really about a work ethic. Do you improve your mind through study and learning every day, keeping up with current events, or have you bought into the lie that it doesn’t make a difference anyway, so why bother trying?

Aristotle once wrote, “Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead.” And no, that doesn’t mean you need to have some fancy framed degree on the wall. My father didn’t and he was the smartest man I ever knew.

The question we must answer every day is, “Do we want a country with more Sheila Jackson-Lees, or do we want to be smart again?”

And while that answer might be lost in space for far too many Americans, why is this even a question, at all?

Louis R. Avallone is a Shreveport businessman, attorney, and author of Bright Spots, Big Country, What Makes America Great. He is also a former aide to U.S. Representative Jim McCrery and Trump elector. Follow him on Facebook, on Twitter @louisravallone or by e-mail at louisavallone@mac.com, and on American Ground Radio weeknights from 6 – 7 PM on 101.7FM/710AM KEEL in Shreveport, or weeknights from 9 – 10 PM on 96.5FM KPEL in Lafayette, or weeknights from 8 – 9 p.m. on 990 AM WGSO in New Orleans, and streaming live on iHeart.com, on iTunes, at americangroundradio.com and in over 40 markets across the country.