"Our schools can not compete so we will fall behind in high-tech."

Why does everybody else in the world want to come here to work and study? Why has the USA always been an industrial and economic powerhouse?

Our educational philosophy is different from others, not necessarily worse; so direct comparison is like trying to decide whether a winning long distance runner is better or worse than a winning sprinter.

Identical claims of "we are last in 'this and that' in the schools (always comparison of test scores…) and this is the reason our productivity rate is low" were made with the same gusto in the mid-80s because the USA was somewhere around 12th in the world for worker productivity. However, within three years we had the highest productivity rate in the world. The school system couldn't change that fast, let alone have the time to educate and send people into industrial positions capable of turning around the country's productivity growth within three years.

"Nothing is impossible in this industry."

This always seems to be a quite unprovable banality of post-successful events. The euphoria of an achievement and the pushing by a coach is usually the sparks for this platitude.

There are impossible things 'in this industry', given limited time, money and resources, and people should find out where effort is futile before committing to ridiculous claims. By this I don't mean that you should not press the limits, I just mean that up-front critical thinking can save setting yourself up for obvious failure when you do not have either the time, money or resources to achieve the claims.