Are we (Americans) getting stupid?

[Crenshaw]

7 words...

"Are you smarter than a fifth grader?"
Its a flawless plan...making money out of dumbness.

It IS embarrassing though...i cant answer the questions sometimes..

Crenshaw

 

[Badbeams3]

"Are we (Americans) getting stupid"?

I don`t feel I`m smart enough to answer that, but will try.

I did not buy any flashlights last month...thats smart.

I did not buy any DVD movies last month...but rented several...so I will have to actually remember them to talk about them. That should make me smarter!

So...my answer is NO. The decline in wealth we are/will go thru will make us smarter :tinfoil:

There is a whole bunch of money in the stimulus plan for the "arts". I plan to get my government paint brushes and supplies as soon as they come out. Now all I need is something stimulating to paint. Yea, we`re getting smarter! No doubt!

 

[Hooked on Fenix]

As far as schools go, I think the problem is too many tests, not enough learning the material. I was always taught don't confuse activity with accomplishment. Constantly taking multiple choice tests doesn't teach students. With multiple choice tests, they can guess on enough questions to pass. Even if they get the questions right, it doesn't mean the answers sunk in. They need more time reading and studying the material so they can absorb all of it instead of one word answers. Constantly taking tests is activity. Actually knowing the material inside and out is an accomplishment.

 

[dudemar]

As far as schools go, I think the problem is too many tests, not enough learning the material. I was always taught don't confuse activity with accomplishment. Constantly taking multiple choice tests doesn't teach students. With multiple choice tests, they can guess on enough questions to pass. Even if they get the questions right, it doesn't mean the answers sunk in. They need more time reading and studying the material so they can absorb all of it instead of one word answers. Constantly taking tests is activity. Actually knowing the material inside and out is an accomplishment.

What you describe epitomizes the kids I go to college with. Every time there's a test, a kid's text messaging his buddy on his cell phone to cheat on his answers. Or if I meet some fresh-out-of-high-school-kid, it's "Did you take X class? Did you pass? YOU DIDN'T?!?!? Aw you're hella dumb." If you do pass, it's "Aw you're hella smart!" It seems the only goal to acheive in college these days is to simply "pass the class", regardless of what you did in between to achieve said goal. As long as the goal is met, that's all that matters.

...and to think these are the people who will be running our country.

We really do have a brain drain in our country. We are obligated to fix our "instant" society before it's too late, our apathy/complacency will be our doom.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Two words: cellphone jammers.

There are all sorts of reasons for out collective dumbing down, and cheating on tests via texting is only one of them. At the risk of causing some rolling eyes here, it starts with the parents. There seems to be a geleral lack of teaching kids about respect and responsibility, and this winds up contributing to disruptive and sometimes dangerous classrooms as well as truancy. A child can't be expected to learn when the school hallways and the neighborhood are war zones.

 

[Nitroz]

You do not learn what it takes to make it in school, you learn it at home. Schools are just a place to allow more experiences than your parents can provide.

If you want kids to learn, they have to believe that there is a reason, and that reason, quite frankly, is to make money.

This is why my kids are homeschooled.

And before anyone says anything about social interaction, my kids do plenty of things outside of the home. They participate in the 4H club, have volunteered at home shelters, and have done several community service projects. We make sure that they stay quite involved in the community and they do have plenty of friends.

The Goverment does not mind a dumbed down America at all.

 

[Lightraven]

I'm supposed to have a Jupiter sized ego from graduating UCSB? Wow! Take that Harvard! You know you want some of this, Yale!

But USC? C'mon man! You killed the vibe, dude!

 

[RyanA]

...and just this morning, I read a news piece about someone sueing Apple because the iPod may harm their ears.

I hate to dredge up a post for so long ago. But this hits dead-on when it comes to a particular pet-peeve of mine. Right up there with talking on cell phones in libraries (usually about useless crud as well, if it was about something even slightly academic I might be more sympathetic). But people who blast the volume on headphones so loudly that everyone else can hear Nelly or Panic at the Disco drive me insane. For one, now they're probably slightly deaf, and are going to need ever louder "headphones" from this point onwards. And secondly headphones have the defining feature of being able to listen to something privately, so as not to bother one's neighbors or be an embarrassment if Millie Vanillie still regularly ques up on one's playlists. If these people really are so proud of their exceptional choice in music and really must make it known to the world there are specific devices designed for that purpose. And one doesn't even have to go through the charade of putting them into one's ear canals. Brilliant!:sigh:

 

[Hooked on Fenix]

Don't forget about the person who sued McDonald's for not having a warning on their coffee saying "Caution, Hot" because he spilled hot coffee on his lap. Then, there was the guy who sued fast food restaurants for making him fat. If these people don't have enough common sense to avoid doing stupid things, they deserve to be fat and burned. You can't legislate common sense and you can't fix stupid. These people will only learn from their mistakes if they stop blaming others, accept the consequences for their actions, and stop making money from their stupidity. Every time someone wins money in court for doing something stupid from a lack of common sense, stupidity spreads. This includes accidentally shooting someone and blaming the gun, putting a fork in an electrical outlet and blaming the fork for shocking you, and blaming your teacher for saying "You can do anything you want to do as long as you believe" when you try to fly off a building. People need to accept the fact that every choice they make has consequences. If you do something stupid, you're going to have to pay for your mistake. If you make a choice to live an unhealthy lifestyle, it may shorten your life and you have nobody to blame but yourself. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's safe or won't cost you. Just because the government allows it, doesn't mean they endorse it and will accept the consequences for you. Just because someone doesn't like what you're doing doesn't mean they are prejudice against you. In most cases, it means they actually care for you and your health and safety. Your actions do not define you as as something like a racial group. Discrimination against an action in many cases is a good thing unlike racial discrimination. We discriminate against criminals all the time. If a man robbed a bank, I wouldn't hire him at one. If a child molester wanted to be a elementary school teacher, I'd call his parole officer. And to be honest, if a man admitted he was gay and wanted to be a boy scout leader, I wouldn't send him alone in the woods with a group of boy scouts to teach them about the birds and the bees. I wouldn't leave a straight man alone with a group of girlscouts either. That's not being prejudice, it's using common sense, something this country is starting to lack. As soon as society starts to accept you choices as something you have no control over, you lose the power to learn from your mistakes because you no longer view them as mistakes and can't grow as an individual. This is one of the reasons we have so many criminals. If someone gets away with something, they don't learn their lesson and repeat what they did and the cycle of stupidity continues.

 

[jtr1962]

Discrimination against an action in many cases is a good thing unlike racial discrimination. We discriminate against criminals all the time. If a man robbed a bank, I wouldn't hire him at one. If a child molester wanted to be a elementary school teacher, I'd call his parole officer. And to be honest, if a man admitted he was gay and wanted to be a boy scout leader, I wouldn't send him alone in the woods with a group of boy scouts to teach them about the birds and the bees. I wouldn't leave a straight man alone with a group of girlscouts either. That's not being prejudice, it's using common sense, something this country is starting to lack.

Your post was excellent up to this point, and the funny thing is here you contradict everything else you said about being free to make bad decisions and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Now I agree to some extent with the parts about not hiring a bank robber, and not hiring a child molester for a job in an elementary school. In both cases these people demonstrated that they couldn't be trusted. Now I'm all for second chances, but I would give these people their second chances in an environment where if they screw up again the consequences won't be as severe. I wouldn't put the bank robber in a situation where they're responsible for money, and I wouldn't put the child molester in a job involving children.

That being said, I would be vehemently against automatically assuming the worst in people. That's the problem nowadays. Society is being dumbed down, and people refuse to take responsibility for their actions, precisely because they're not allowed into situations where they might screw up. A straight man in charge of a bunch of girl scouts in the woods might well turn out to be their best scout leader ever. And it's up to the parents of those girl scouts to teach them what is and isn't appropriate behavoir for a scout leader. The responsibility to avoid problems falls on both sides here. Also, while we're discussing inappropriate behavoir, I feel compelled to mention that touching a child or a coworker of either sex as praise for a job well done isn't the sexual harassment our society is conditioned to think it is. I've read that humans actually need a certain amount of such non-sexual contact for their health and well being.

To assume that the worst will always happen, and deny people opportunities accordingly, is exactly what is wrong with today's society. I remember a while back getting a form letter from my old school about mentoring. Now I didn't have the time or desire to mentor anyway, but one line in particular sealed the deal as far as not doing it. Namely, men would be paired with male students and women with females. I was like, WTF? Granted, I knew what the reasons probably were, but be aware that this was one of the better schools in the city, with a high caliber among both the alumni and students. 99.99% of alumni wouldn't even consider tarnishing their reputation by doing something stupid, and most of the students probably wouldn't let them even if they tried. In short, the sex of which students were matched with which mentors should have been a non-issue. However, because of the stupid behavoir of a relatively small percentage of the overall (not even from the school) population people on both sides were effectively denied opportunities. Of course, so long as society continues to have its mind in the gutter, and assumes the worst of people, this nonsense will continue.

The hard fact is people need to be put in situations where they can fail. Granted, sometimes bad things will happen. But in the past, before we adopted this wholesale attempt at legislating away all danger, it's amazing how many times the opportunity existed for bad things to happen, yet nothing ever did. Why? I happen to think we used to be brought up better. Codes of conduct actually meant something. Even if the opportunity to do something inappropriate was right in your face, and even if the prospects for being caught and punished were slim, many still opted to take the high road. Not so of today's society based on prevention and punishment. The way many people nowadays are brought up, the minute the thin blue line went away we would have wholesale rape and pillaging. I think that's a sad commentary on society. You shouldn't do certain actions because you've internalized that they're wrong, not because you fear punishment.

 

[mossyoak]

call people out
if someone is fat they are fat, no one has ever lost weight and chose a healthier lifestyle because of people accepting them the way they are (overweight).
no one has ever worked harder in school after someone told them that they were smart enough to pass.
i hate coddlers, i am an anti coddler, some people call it being an a-hole, i call it effective.

 

[Fallingwater]

The increasing stupidity is not just a problem of the US. I dare say it might be in a more advanced state there (based purely on personal experiences), but the rest of the world is not far behind.

Seems to me we're creating generations of test-takers. Where're the critical thinking skills go?

We're creating generations of minimum wage, brainless worker ants. The critical thinking skills will go to the few who have the ways and/or the desire of acquiring them, and who will then have an easy time controlling the rest.

 

[Hooked on Fenix]

Your post was excellent up to this point, and the funny thing is here you contradict everything else you said about being free to make bad decisions and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Now I agree to some extent with the parts about not hiring a bank robber, and not hiring a child molester for a job in an elementary school. In both cases these people demonstrated that they couldn't be trusted. Now I'm all for second chances, but I would give these people their second chances in an environment where if they screw up again the consequences won't be as severe. I wouldn't put the bank robber in a situation where they're responsible for money, and I wouldn't put the child molester in a job involving children.

That being said, I would be vehemently against automatically assuming the worst in people. That's the problem nowadays. Society is being dumbed down, and people refuse to take responsibility for their actions, precisely because they're not allowed into situations where they might screw up. A straight man in charge of a bunch of girl scouts in the woods might well turn out to be their best scout leader ever. And it's up to the parents of those girl scouts to teach them what is and isn't appropriate behavoir for a scout leader. The responsibility to avoid problems falls on both sides here. Also, while we're discussing inappropriate behavoir, I feel compelled to mention that touching a child or a coworker of either sex as praise for a job well done isn't the sexual harassment our society is conditioned to think it is. I've read that humans actually need a certain amount of such non-sexual contact for their health and well being.

To assume that the worst will always happen, and deny people opportunities accordingly, is exactly what is wrong with today's society. I remember a while back getting a form letter from my old school about mentoring. Now I didn't have the time or desire to mentor anyway, but one line in particular sealed the deal as far as not doing it. Namely, men would be paired with male students and women with females. I was like, WTF? Granted, I knew what the reasons probably were, but be aware that this was one of the better schools in the city, with a high caliber among both the alumni and students. 99.99% of alumni wouldn't even consider tarnishing their reputation by doing something stupid, and most of the students probably wouldn't let them even if they tried. In short, the sex of which students were matched with which mentors should have been a non-issue. However, because of the stupid behavoir of a relatively small percentage of the overall (not even from the school) population people on both sides were effectively denied opportunities. Of course, so long as society continues to have its mind in the gutter, and assumes the worst of people, this nonsense will continue.

The hard fact is people need to be put in situations where they can fail. Granted, sometimes bad things will happen. But in the past, before we adopted this wholesale attempt at legislating away all danger, it's amazing how many times the opportunity existed for bad things to happen, yet nothing ever did. Why? I happen to think we used to be brought up better. Codes of conduct actually meant something. Even if the opportunity to do something inappropriate was right in your face, and even if the prospects for being caught and punished were slim, many still opted to take the high road. Not so of today's society based on prevention and punishment. The way many people nowadays are brought up, the minute the thin blue line went away we would have wholesale rape and pillaging. I think that's a sad commentary on society. You shouldn't do certain actions because you've internalized that they're wrong, not because you fear punishment.

I agree that people need to be put in situations where they have the opportunity to succeed or fail, so they have a chance to earn back trust. However, they shouldn't be put into a position of power where they have the opportunity to harm others in the same way again. Let the thief or child molester work as a janitor or garbage man or other low paying job. If they lost society's trust, they have to earn it back starting at the bottom and working their way back to a position that requires a trustworthy employee.

As for me not trusting a straight man to be left alone in the woods with girlscouts, I'm sorry to say that opinion is based more on past experiences with sex affenders, not merely prejudice.

When my autistic brother was younger, my family had to place him in a group home in Oceanside, CA because we didn't know how to deal with him. He was screaching every few seconds, all day, every day. He was there two weeks before we had to take him home. One of the other boys in the home had molested him. The police wouldn't help us. The group home protected the molester by not releasing his name to us. We weren't able to sue.

Later, when my brother was in high school (for disabled students), one of his counselors was arrested. Apparently, he had videotaped disabled students after making them take their clothes off and sold the footage to scumbags over the internet. I was praying all that week that my brother wasn't in these videos. Once something like that is on the internet, it's impossible to remove. After a week, the news released the victim's names and luckily my brother wasn't one of them. The scumbag had used his own children for the videos.

Last year, in August, the karate school I worked out at was closed down. One of the instructors and coowner was arrested for having child pornagraphy on his home computer. The media had a field day when they found out that our school had karate sleepovers maybe once a month. They made him out to be a potential child molester (Honestly I don't think he was). What the media didn't know is that there were always some parents who stayed and helped chaperone. The other blackbelts would never have let anything bad happen to the children. This was a man that I trusted and had trained with for 5+ years. None of us saw it coming until he was investigated by the F.B.I. six months earlier. At the start of the investigation, his business partner and head instructor had the good sense to tell him he couldn't teach anymore. He only came back to the school a few times since then and before his arrest to pack up his things. Unfortunetly, for everyone in the school, he was one third owner, and his parents owned another third. The media decided to destroy the schools' reputation. They showed up two days in a row trying to film inside. We had to cancel classes and dodge being filmed. We permenently closed the school down that week. Our students had to train in a local park for months before we were able to open a new school. We still haven't recovered as we have to rent space by the hour at another business. We don't actually have our own place anymore. This is the cost of trusting someone who seemed trustworthy: the destruction of the entire business, the loss of many students, the inability to teach those lost students how to protect themselves from child molesters, and damaging the reputations of some of the most outstanding citizens in the community.

Now, imagine if something similar happened at your business. Would you want to be the one explaining to the parents, media, or stockholders why you gave the person a chance, but knowing their past problems? I wouldn't want to be in anything like that situation ever again.

 

[jusval]

Would Y'all not rite so fast, I kan't keep up.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but I think that people in this area seem to be getting much more lazy and seemingly indifferent, thoughtless and uncaring about learning the really simple things in life. Basic common sense is one of them that's missing.

There was a survey here to see if the average HS student was smarter than a box of rocks. It never was completed, because they are still waiting for the rocks to answer the questions.

Yes it's a mess and it's history repeating itself, as it always does.

 

[kaichu dento]

I taught English in Japan for a couple years at about 50 public schools altogether. If I've heard it once I heard it 10,000 times that the Japanese can't pronounce English correctly, and that therefore it's a waste to try.

However, I noticed right away that when I corrected 3rd & 4th graders to say 'hello' the same way I did, they immediately sounded like American kids. The big problem showed up with the 5th & 6th graders, but eventually I could tell what kind of teaching style their teachers had by whether they could form proper English pronunciation or if they just looked at me in confusion.

The kids that had teachers who taught them how to think had no problem fixing their pronunciation, but the ones who only became confused invariably had teachers who only taught them to memorize what they had been told.

Kids naturally think a lot, but too many teachers are simply indoctrinating the kids to memorize by rote what they believe is correct, and to hell with teaching them how to think for themselves; hence, an unthinking society is born.

 

[dudemar]

kaichu dento,

You bring up a great point, and being from Japan I know what you mean...

...but it also brings up another interesting point.

While it's not so much about stupidity, my point will be more about common sense/respect. As you already know, in Japan it's mandatory for kids (yes, elementary school kids) to clean their own classrooms. That's right, janitor work. The results are cleaner classrooms and respect for their work area. While I'm sure there are a few "less than clean" classrooms in Japan, it's a far cry compared to classes here in the States.

I'm a teacher/tutor, and asking a kid to pick up their garbage will get you a look like you're an alien.

 

[nisshin]

As you already know, in Japan it's mandatory for kids (yes, elementary school kids) to clean their own classrooms. That's right, janitor work.

Japanese education is a bit militaristic in flavor. All the mandatory duties create dutiful "salary men" and "office ladies" who follow orders and who loathe to offer original ideas.

When I look at university students in America and Japan, what I notice first off is that American students are still activists: you will see Young Republicans, Young Democrats, Anti-This and Anti-That, etc. Americans still think. The Japanese students can only look forward to using up their free time at part-time jobs to buy their goodies and feed their cell phones. (Ma & Pa already paid their tuitions.)

For me, the next two quotes summarize the great tension in "educational theory":

I'm also worred about the obsession with self-esteem in kids. Growing up is inherently traumatic.

I do some teaching. I make it interesting and somewhat fun. Everyone likes my classes (even the docs).
But, I don't let people off lightly--I have high expectations, yet assure all students that their capabilities will always exceed their limitations.

I have to institute tough love on those that were unfairly coddled in earlier education. I can spot them right away: they immediately form excuses when things are difficult. I show great confidence and pride in them, and they do well.
I do not relax my standards, and people rise to meet them.

idleprocess brings up the central theoretical point behind all the politically correct educational movements, whereas pedalinbob highlights the "real world" extra work and talent it takes to be a good teacher, not just a person transferring information from expert to novice.

 

[UncleFester]

To address the post title..... In a word.... YES

 

[RyanA]

kaichu dento,

You bring up a great point, and being from Japan I know what you mean...

...but it also brings up another interesting point.

While it's not so much about stupidity, my point will be more about common sense/respect. As you already know, in Japan it's mandatory for kids (yes, elementary school kids) to clean their own classrooms. That's right, janitor work. The results are cleaner classrooms and respect for their work area. While I'm sure there are a few "less than clean" classrooms in Japan, it's a far cry compared to classes here in the States.

I'm a teacher/tutor, and asking a kid to pick up their garbage will get you a look like you're an alien.

This is true. It's almost as if the idea that no-one is longer responsible for the results of their actions anymore is being promoted, maybe not on purpose. But I think a lot of young people are getting this impression, some-one will always be along to clean up the mess.:shakehead

 

[dudemar]

Japanese education is a bit militaristic in flavor.

It depends on your definition of "militaristic", but to each his own...

All the mandatory duties create dutiful "salary men" and "office ladies" who follow orders and who loathe to offer original ideas.

Talk about oversimplifying a country/culture. I hate to break it to you, but not everyone in Japan grows up to be a "salary man" or "office lady".:laughing: Quite the opposite, actually. In fact, out of all my Japanese relatives, there's only one salary man (and I have a HUGE family). He's not the stereotypical-overworked-and-stressed-out salary man either- he lives a quiet, happy life with his family.

The youth are actually becoming more "Americanized", more rebellious (or as they say in Japanese, "hankouki"). In fact a lot of words from English are being borrowed and incorporated into their daily language. As for university students in Japan having part-time jobs to buy their goodies and feed their cell phones, it's really no different here in the US of A (including Ma and Pa paying for their education- that's a big one).