The Dumbing Down of America

[danlux]

Umm, how has nobody mentioned TV? People watch stupid tv shows all day and learn nothing.

[captZEEbo]

wow every example in this thread seems bad.

Things that actually attribute to the dumbing down of america are things like:
social graduation
easier testing
no child left behind act
limitation of charter school openings
parents not as interested in what kids learn


Things that don't contribute to dumbing down of america:
google
calculators
gps navigation
spell checker
cheaper auto mechanics


I mean a lot of the skills that we no longer have to do doesn't make us "dumber" it makes us more efficient. Now that technology has grown to allow us to do less work on things that normally took a lot of work, we have more time to learn better, more useful skills. I mean, are you guys mad that we don't have farming skills anymore? We don't need that, b/c those skills have been outsourced to others.

[GotRivered?]

Check out Idiocracy... Very interesting concept on how we as people will get progressively dumb over time

[AceLuby]

Things directly related to the dumbing down of America:

1) US Govt (just look at the leader)
2) Standardized Tests (not college entrance tests, but the 'can you do 10th grade math as a 12th grader tests)
3) TV
4) Wikipedia (anyone can put anything on there and there are a lot of things that are straight up not true)
5) YouTube

There are plenty of others, but I think the others listed before are more Americans becoming lazy or technology exceeding what the common person can easily understand.

[XXXNoahXXX]

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4) Wikipedia (anyone can put anything on there and there are a lot of things that are straight up not true)

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There is really no way that Wikipedia has contributed to the dumbing down of America. People vastly overestimate the amount of incorrect material on there. Sure, there may be some misinformation but that is outweighed probably 5000:1 by the correct information provided.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
Things directly related to the dumbing down of America:

1) US Govt (just look at the leader)
2) Standardized Tests (not college entrance tests, but the 'can you do 10th grade math as a 12th grader tests)
3) TV
4) Wikipedia (anyone can put anything on there and there are a lot of things that are straight up not true)
5) YouTube

There are plenty of others, but I think the others listed before are more Americans becoming lazy or technology exceeding what the common person can easily understand.

[/ QUOTE ]


Ya, just think at how stupid we would be if Kerry was elected..you know, because he had a lower IQ than bush and all.

Is there really a difference between college entrance tests, and standardized tests? I think they are pretty much the same damn thing.

[XxGodJrxX]

It has been mentioned already, but technology is not dumbing down America; schools are. The two reasons that our schools cannot keep up with other countries is because of low teacher pay and not enough time invested. Teachers get paid obscenely low salaries, so it should not be surprising that the people you have teaching your kids are morons. Anybody with a brain would be able to recognize that teaching is going to put them below the poverty line, and choose a different line of work.

Also, the chief reason that other countries beat American schools is because of the amount of time spent in school. American kids typically study for six hours a day, Monday through Friday. In Asian countries, they are in school all day, and on Saturdays as well. In my opinion, life as a child should revolve around school. Going to school for six hours and doing homework for one is not really enough, especially when you consider that most kids don't go to school during the summer either.

If you REALLY want your kids beating the Asians in academics, push for higher teacher salaries and more time in school. I am pretty sure the second one will never happen with public schools, but that is what I think is necessary to stop the "dumbing down" in relation to other countries.

[econophile]

[ QUOTE ]
Things that actually attribute to the dumbing down of america are things like:
social graduation
easier testing
no child left behind act
limitation of charter school openings
parents not as interested in what kids learn


[/ QUOTE ]

i think no child left behind is the opposite of social graduation

[XXXNoahXXX]

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Is there really a difference between college entrance tests, and standardized tests? I think they are pretty much the same damn thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

MA has the MCAS standardized tests which are required for graduation and teachers are revamping their entire curriculum to teach towards this test. This sort of thing didn't happen with SATs, but is for tests like this.

The quality of the education is definitely going down as a result, because entire sections of the previous coursework has been tossed on the back burner to do practice questions for this.

Even look to the anecdotal cases of teachers helping their students cheat on these tests as evidence of how important these tests are. Also, getting top % on these can lead to free tuition at state schools.

[econophile]

all,

the premise of this thread (that america now is in some sense dumber than america in the past) has yet to be sufficiently demonstrated. could someone provide good examples for discussion?

so far howard has mentioned a high school exit exam that he might have read somewhere and samsonite has mentioned the purported decline in compositional ability.

i would like to see more concrete and quantifiable examples.