The Dumbing Down of America

[econophile]

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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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Boris,

These documnets might have been written by ordinary people, but they certainly are not a random selection of 19th century writing. Anything that is still being read 100 years after it is written was written very well, and thus much better than the average.

[Nonfiction]

Definitely cell phones and text messaging, that one commercial where the daughter and mother are talking entirely in "BRB OMG BFF" etc abbreviations makes me want to smash things.

[Boris]

I'm aware that the time filter has excluded much of the idiot stuff written in the 1800's. I stand by my statement.

[mason55]

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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.

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THANK YOU. This is was I was trying to get at when I asked "WTF are we dumber than?"

No one seemed to have a response. Everyone just wants to point out all these things that make them feel superior (I get my knowledge form scientific journals not wiki, I can fix my car, I can cook) but no one is looking at the big picture. This thread is just a bunch of people pointing out skills they have that many people don't with no evidence or thought as to why these skills are important now other than to make you feel superior.


Edit: I'm not saying these things are unimportant necessarily, just that they also shouldn't give you an air of superiority. Lots of people don't know how to cook because they spend all day curing cancer and [censored].


Edit 2: No one has yet defined what we're dumber than.

[otnemem]

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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.

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In many parts of the country, $47,602, while not obscenely low, is not nearly enough to support a family of four. Not anywhere close. My girlfriend and I work in NYC and make a combined $80,000. Without some kind of savings, which we both have, this is basically paycheck to paycheck without car payments, car insurance, family expenses, etc.

[guids]

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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.

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In many parts of the country, $47,602, while not obscenely low, is not nearly enough to support a family of four. Not anywhere close. My girlfriend and I work in NYC and make a combined $80,000. Without some kind of savings, which we both have, this is basically paycheck to paycheck without car payments, car insurance, family expenses, etc.

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That is average salary, in NYC the salary is about 55k, not factoring in that teachers only work 9 months a year. WTF does a family of four have to do with anything, absolutely nothing...if you want to raise a family of four, do what the other 99% of the population does, and figure out a way to do it, work an actual 12 months out of the year, or have your spouse work too.

[KotOD]

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The thing that I've noticed, mostly because I've been trying to hire a few entry-level people, is the lack of writing skills caused by instant messaging and text messaging. College graduates can't write in full sentences any more, let alone use correct grammar.

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I think this is the correct answer. There's been a real deemphasis on grammar and composition in high school over the last few decades. I'm not sure what to attribute it to, but the internet, computers, and related technology seem like good guesses.

The fact is that a reasonably intelligent and somewhat educated person of our parents' generation is capable of organizing their thoughts in a logical paragraph. Kids at the (top tier) university I attend, by and large, cannot. I've read quite a few of their papers, and what passes for a B these days is pile of logical fallacies, garbled syntax, and grammatical errors.

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You said it. I cringe when I read cover letters, introduction paragraphs in resumes and thank you notes. I had a tech writer submit his "portfolio" from his senior project in tech analysis prior to the interview. I was shocked that he received an 'A' on the project. I couldn't go more than half of a page without finding either a fragment, a run-on, a spelling mistake or some other grammatical mistake. He also kept using the abbreviation "CPu" instead of CPU, and this was for an entire senior project!

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Mason has made a lot of good points in this thread, and one might extend his arguments to cover this phenomenon--maybe compositional skills just aren't as important as they used to be.

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BAHOOOOOLCHIT. If you write like a moron, prospective employers are going to think you're a moron, regardless of your qualifications. In a world where management gets flatter and the average employee gets more and more contact with all remaining levels of management and even customers, writing skills are extremely important. If a kid can't write a cover letter that makes sense, how am I to trust that he can write an understandable email to a customer contact? How can I trust that an internal email he writes won't end up making our department look like a bunch of monkeys effing a football?

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I'd argue, however, that marshalling your thoughts into a coherent group of sentences is closely related to logical ability, and the decline of our ability to do so as a society is kind of troubling.

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I agree whole-heartedly. About two years ago, I started telling every college-aged person that I know to make sure that someone proofreads every single word that they send to a prospective employer.

[Dids]

The issue isn't that teachers are in poverty, is that they're not being paid the 6 figures that it would take to lure the really exceptionally gifted.

[Claunchy]

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No one has yet defined what we're dumber than.

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I think there's a pretty good argument that the average American is dumber than the average Western European or Japanese person, so I guess that's something we're dumber than. I will admit I don't have any evidence to back this up (and I think most "evidence" of this sort is pretty misleading anyway), but based on personal experience it certainly seems to be the case.

Anyone arguing that people in the 18th/19th century were smarter than people today is probably retarded. Based on what? That the Declaration of Independence has big words in it?

[otnemem]

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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.

[/ QUOTE ]
In many parts of the country, $47,602, while not obscenely low, is not nearly enough to support a family of four. Not anywhere close. My girlfriend and I work in NYC and make a combined $80,000. Without some kind of savings, which we both have, this is basically paycheck to paycheck without car payments, car insurance, family expenses, etc.

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That is average salary, in NYC the salary is about 55k, not factoring in that teachers only work 9 months a year. WTF does a family of four have to do with anything, absolutely nothing...if you want to raise a family of four, do what the other 99% of the population does, and figure out a way to do it, work an actual 12 months out of the year, or have your spouse work too.

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In the context of your point, this is the dumbest [censored] thing I've ever read. DUCY?