The Dumbing Down of America

[punkass]

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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.

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I don't think teachers' salaries are "obscenely" low, nor are they "below poverty line" wages. Sure, the quality of our teachers should be from top notch people, but teaching will never compete in wage or acknowledgement against the professional careers. NCLB and the ridiculous testing that comes with it have handcuffed teachers in what they want and can teach.

[captZEEbo]

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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


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

[/ QUOTE ]true, but it has other bad consequences. Teachers end up teaching to beat a standardized test, instead of teaching to learn the best possible stuff for the next levels of school and the rest of your life. If the std. tests were designed perfectly, it wouldn't be an issue, but since the std. tests aren't good, NCLB messes things up more. Other problems is that there's all sorts of problems with cheating NCLB and some students are much worse off. There's all sorts of loopholes where you can get students to not have to take the test so if you know in advance a student won't have to take a standardized test (transfer students for exmaple), they will get LESS attention than normal students.

[Claunchy]

Mason,

WRT Google: While it may make the average person more knowledgeable, I don't think it helps make anyone smarter. Reading actual books has a much greater positive impact on one's ability to think critically than getting some watered-down Wikipedia synopsis.

I'm not really arguing that Google has a significant negative impact on intelligence, but I don't really think it has a positive one either.

Also, I agree with you that we're not really "getting dumber" anyway, based on all the comparisons you made to earlier periods.


All,

As far as why we're less intelligent/educated (as a whole) than other industrialized nations, I think it has a lot to do with a [censored] public education system, but is also due to an anti-intellectual value system that's pretty unique to the US (at least as far as I know).

[captZEEbo]

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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.

[/ QUOTE ]something to add to this is that wikipedia has been shown to be MORE accurate than encyclopedias. I don't have a source but I know I've read it. If you have more people giving peer-reviews, you will end in a better results. If you ever see a problem on wikipedia, why don't you edit it yourself? Make it a better place for all.

[econophile]

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I don't have a source but I know I've read it.

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this is exactly where the inaccuracies that do exist in wikipedia come from

[Boris]

Wow. Lots of [censored] in this thread.

Whenever I read letters written before 1900 I get worried that we are stupid compared to how people thought in the old days. I'm talking about letters written by ordinary folks, soldiers, letters to the editor, etc...

[guids]

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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.

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This is another [censored] myth teh teachers unions will have you believe, teachers ARE NOT PAID OBSCENELY LOW WAGES.


The AFT teacher salary survey for the 2004-05 school year found that the average teacher salary was $47,602, a 2.2 percent increase from the previous year.


AFT = AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

not to mention teh amount of hours is so much less than your average salaried employees, and dont give me the [censored] that teachers do "a lot of work from home" or after school hours work. Your children's test scores, and aptitude prove that they dont.

[guids]

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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.

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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.

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Thats my point though, those MCAS test are basically the same thing as the SAT/ACT, so in essence these teachers are changing their curriculum to teach kids how to take these tests, correct?

[gumpzilla]

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add to this is that wikipedia has been shown to be MORE accurate than encyclopedias. I don't have a source but I know I've read it.

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Kinda funny given the topic discussed.

Yes, there was some study performed that suggested the error rate in Britannica vs. Wikipedia was similar. Britannica was still better but not by a ton. However, for serious scholarship, people would generally laugh at you for citing an encyclopedia, as well. Some of that is snobbishness, but some of it is that I think it would ultimately lead to something like a game of Telephone, where ideas become distorted down the line because people are interpreting interpretations and so forth.

[gumpzilla]

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Wow. Lots of [censored] in this thread.

Whenever I read letters written before 1900 I get worried that we are stupid compared to how people thought in the old days. I'm talking about letters written by ordinary folks, soldiers, letters to the editor, etc...

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As others have pointed out, rates of illiteracy were probably much higher in general, though, and so anybody who has letters to read for posterity was probably among the more educated of their time, regardless of their occupation. If you look at the correspondence of the best educated of today, I bet you would find comparable quality.