The Dumbing Down of America

[Triumph36]

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DirtyDiggs -
So are you saying that people were smarter in the 1800's when most of them spent all day working on the farm?

The only art and science we get from the past is the good stuff so we have a romanticized view of it. When people think of the ancient Greeks we think about all the great philosophers, but really there's only a few over the course of many many years. The average person wasn't sitting around philosophizing all day.

The people who sit around watching TV all day now are the ones who were working on farms all day in the past. It's just that we don't think about those people because we don't ever hear about them whereas today we see them all around us. Personally I think it's a good thing that we've advanced to the point where many people who do manual work have time to relax instead of waking up and performing hard labor all day just to survive.

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ah ha - therein lies the rub. my contention wasn't that people as a whole are getting dumber - this is according to some sort of outlandish standard and probably not true - but that smarter people are getting dumb and the truly dumb aren't getting smarter.

and the internet is partly to blame - with the explosion of possible information and the ease at which it comes, it fosters a kind of intellectual laziness.

[sublime]

steve you owe me money and havent responded to PM's

[Boris]

Claunchy - I'm pretty sure you are retarded. Breadth of vocabulary is certainly one strong indicator of education level and intelligence.

All - Let's compare two random kids who just graduated from 8th grade. One kid graduated in 1850 and the other kid graduated in 2007. My contention is that in the areas of reading, writing and math, the 1850 kid will be better educated. That's fine if you want argue that kids today are smarter because we teach them about so many of the scientific advances made since 1850. It's just not comparing apples to apples, imo.

[bwana devil]

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otnemem,

That wage doesn't support a family of 6 either. It might take $100k to support that family. What does the number of members in a teacher's household have anything to do with how much they are paid? I think this was guid's point, and an obvious one. Your logic is the one that's flawed.

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It's not flawed logic at all. What you're saying is that teachers deserve to earn a liveable wage, but shouldn't be able to make enough money to comfortably support a family. How does that make sense at all? And then the suggestion that teachers should get a 12-month job like the rest of us... Okay, so that solves the problem of why nobody wants to teach?

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where are you getting your expectations for liveable wage? based on your calculations if two school teachers are married you expect them to be able to support a family of eight on nine months' of work? i could see how that could be a bit difficult financially but i dont think that's a reasonable expectation. im not sure why you do.

[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.

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You should qualify this statement.

QUALITY teachers/administrators are grossly underpaid. The problem with your average teachers union (At least here in Milwaukee this is true) is that you can't get the [censored] teachers fired. It is literally impossible to fire a teacher around here unless they're caught looking at porn during the school day. (This is the only example of successfully getting a teacher fired that I can come up with)

While I acknowledge that a part of our poor student performance can be blamed on [censored] teachers, there is a much larger societal issue here. Namely that the parents do not put nearly as much emphasis on academic achievement as they have in the past.

That, and organizations like the ACLU are hindering our teachers abilities to deal with problematic kids. Heaven forbid you hurt their precious little feelings!

The day we started grading papers in purple ink because red is "too harsh" was the day that we went too far. Our public school system is in desperate need of reform.

There is a reason that private schools on average produce much higher test scores.



Accountability.

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Qualify that statement how? its just a fact, i agree quality teachers may be underpaid, but who's fault is that? its not becuase there isnt enough money to go around, it is becuase the Teachers Union, the aclu etc, are more about protecting their money than they are about giving children a good education. I agree with what you are saying I guess, but everyone thinks the answer is to throw more money at the teachers, well, Im telling you it is not, all that does is to get the people who are already [censored] up the system richer.

[XxGodJrxX]

The AVERAGE salary of a teacher may be $45,000, which is not that much in my opinion, but the STARTING salary is much lower. The starting salary of a teacher in the United States is, on average, around $30,000. The poverty line is not much lower than that in many cases.

This isn't about teachers getting paid enough to eat, it is paying teachers enough so that the talented ones will teach. The prospect of going to college for four years just so you can be making $32,000 to start in not a good one.

The logic used in this thread is exactly why some people say there is a "dumbing down". Teaching is not something that people want to do. Smart people go on to do things that pay decent wages, and not-so-smart people teach your kids.

I also have no idea why people think that calculators and the internet is dumbing people down. Technology makes mundane things easier, so that you can concentrate on more advanced problems. If I have to spend three hours in the library to find a book because I have to use a card catalog, how is this making me smarter? If I can just download a book online, or find it in thirty seconds, that is more time that I can be reading the book.

The same thing goes for calculators. Once you grasp the concepts behind arithmetic, I don't see a reason why you should continue to waste time doing those things by hand. Technology is what makes the amazing things we can do now possible. By bypassing the tedious stuff, we can concentrate on the real problems at hand. How much faster will it be to put a spaceship on Mars with a computer, compared to doing all the calculations by hand?

[gumpzilla]

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All - Let's compare two random kids who just graduated from 8th grade. One kid graduated in 1850 and the other kid graduated in 2007. My contention is that in the areas of reading, writing and math, the 1850 kid will be better educated.

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That could very well be true, assuming "8th grade" existed back then. But, what fraction of the populace received an 8th grade education then? I think if you control for that, and consider comparing people with the same proportional amount of education relative to the populace, this won't necessarily be true.

[otnemem]

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If $47000/yr isn't a livable wage, something like 60% of America must be dead.

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More than 60% of the country lives in areas where $47,000 is an easily liveable wage.

I believe the original point about teachers in this thread was that there aren't quality teachers because teaching pays a notoriously low wage. Even if the NYC average is around $55k, this is not going to draw as many dedicated, talented teachers, considering you can earn a much higher wage in so many other jobs. Those of you who seem to think that $45k or $55k is a big salary have a very limited scope. When you're paying $600 to $1,000 a month to SHARE one bedroom with someone, that liveable wage shrinks up considerably.

[Boris]

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All - Let's compare two random kids who just graduated from 8th grade. One kid graduated in 1850 and the other kid graduated in 2007. My contention is that in the areas of reading, writing and math, the 1850 kid will be better educated.

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That could very well be true, assuming "8th grade" existed back then. But, what fraction of the populace received an 8th grade education then? I think if you control for that, and consider comparing people with the same proportional amount of education relative to the populace, this won't necessarily be true.

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Jesus effing christ. I'm done with this thread.

[Shadowrun]

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Claunchy - I'm pretty sure you are retarded. Breadth of vocabulary is certainly one strong indicator of education level and intelligence.

All - Let's compare two random kids who just graduated from 8th grade. One kid graduated in 1850 and the other kid graduated in 2007. My contention is that in the areas of reading, writing and math, the 1850 kid will be better educated. That's fine if you want argue that kids today are smarter because we teach them about so many of the scientific advances made since 1850. It's just not comparing apples to apples, imo.

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You seriously believe a kid in 1850 would be smarter, really?