Are we (Americans) getting stupid?

greenLED

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Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees – and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees – have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies, according to a new national survey by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The study was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Source: American Institutes for Research

Here's a link to the full news release:
New study of the literacy of college students finds some are graduating with only basic skills


A few snippets (emphasis mine):
More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
Comparing interest rates a complex task? :huh2:

Students in 2- and 4-year colleges have the greatest difficulty with quantitative literacy: approximately 30 percent of students in 2-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in 4-year institutions have only Basic quantitative literacy. Basic skills are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.

No wonder, we're heading to McDonald's!! They have a $1 menu - no thinking required to order *that* :ohgeez:


The good news:
"Despite the lackluster performance of many graduates on quantitative literacy, we should nevertheless be encouraged that current college graduates are not falling behind in terms of literacy when compared to graduates from earlier generations," says Emerson Elliott, a former Commissioner of Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education.

:wtf: So we're only slightly less stupid than we thought we were??! :ohgeez:I'm *really* encouraged by the news. Thank-very-much! That makes me feel much better in confident in our education and our future. No wonder the world looks on and laughs. :shakehead
 
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ACMarina

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From my experience, the education system ignores quite a bit of the real "life" skills that people require to do well in today's society. Our local school district regularly takes the intervention students to the grocery store to teach them how to shop, budget their money and find the best options to provide for their needs. They don't do this for the "regular" students, though. I know for a fact that there are students in calculus classes who can find derivatives without being able to balance their own checkbooks.

I smell a misdirection in priority..
 

greenLED

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

Brighteyez

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I'm surprised that this is just coming to light now. Why did it take so long for someone to figure it out? No, we're not getting stupid, but we sure are getting lazy. Yeah, we're definitely creating generations of test-takers, it's a by-product of the materialistic orientation of the 80's and fast-path thinking.

Where are the critical thinking skills? Probably the same place as American jobs, ... overseas.

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

Lightmeup

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We're not getting stupid, we got stupid a long time ago. The educational system in this country is a joke. Every watch Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" bit? The people are dumber than a box of rocks.
 

Brighteyez

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But did you ever stop to think that the Jay Leno skits may be orchestrated? Maybe even using actors?

Lightmeup said:
We're not getting stupid, we got stupid a long time ago. The educational system in this country is a joke. Every watch Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" bit? The people are dumber than a box of rocks.
 

PhotonWrangler

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I think that we are getting dumber. Not the people here, of course, but students in general. I could go on forever about this and I don't think the answer is blindly throwing money at the school systems.

A significant part of the problem is a general abdication of parenting duties by a large sector of the population. When kids walk into a school with no sense of right or wrong, or even an inkling of an idea that they might suffer consequences if they misbehave, there's no way in hell that they're going to become disciplined students. And the sadder part is that they'll drag other kids down with them.

There are other factors, including "certain" media glorifying certain types of violent and irresponsible lifestyles (you know what I'm referring to). Many kids wind up wanting to be nothing more than a gangsta when they grow up.

Who's going to hold the media responsible for their part in this? :mad:
 

Bravo25

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I do know this, even the vast majority of people getting a Phd today could not pass an eighth grade exam from 1927.
 

PhotonWrangler

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I knew a guy who was an E-E and had no idea how to fix a problem in his car radio.

I'm not implying he was dumb (he was fairly sharp) but in this case I think the college failed him by not teaching anything about failure modes.
 

Lightmeup

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Brighteyez said:
But did you ever stop to think that the Jay Leno skits may be orchestrated? Maybe even using actors?
That's a possibility, but I don't think that that is the case. Kids these days just seem very uninformed about a lot of really basic topics. For the most part they seem to be trained to pass their "No child left behind" exams, and the hell with anything else.
 

offroadcmpr

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I can agree. School also isnt a test of your street smarts, or knowledge that you will actually use.

I had a friend who's sister did not know what the mona lisa was, and a bunch of other things like that. She was 14 at the time! And she gets mostly A's in school.

Bravo25 check this out http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm
it is similar to what you are saying.
 

Vee3

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When you take away competition in any industry (ESPECIALLY where the government is involved) , you end up with a lower quality of goods and/or service. Same with public education. It's pretty clear to me and my wife (Both of us were public and private school teachers in the past) that the US should dump public education and let private schools do the job. Either that or at least break the teachers' unions...
 

fieldops

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I think we are getting dumbed down more as a society every day. Its not just the schools, its everywhere....

  • We hear a speech on TV, and we then get a reporter telling us what he really says
  • Alot of people can't even make change at a store, try giving them some coins to get a buck back and suddenly they are white as a ghost
  • Do we really need a sign on the top step of a ladder with a person falling, use your squash or learn english
  • Most exams are multiple choice...you might pass by being lucky
  • I hear globe sales are down...maybe cause somebody might want you to actually find a place
In all seriousness folks, we are not getting better. Somehow it got to be progress=easy, you don't have to know anything. I guess it boils down to a philosophical question. Is making life easier (or more correctly..lazy) really a good thing in its eventuality? I remember seeng a very low budget movie whe I was a kid about life several thousand years from now. Nobody had to think or know anything because your brain was hooked into a super computer network. You didn't know anything about food or going to the bathroom because a molecular transport system did all that. Suddenly there was a catastrophe in a nova or something and all the systems went down. The people couldn't think for themselves or do basic tasks on their own. They started to die. The last scene was some old woman who lived outside the system in a cabin in the woods. She was teaching kids reading from old books. It was kind of scary to think about even then. Let's hope it never comes to pass.
 

lightlust

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DOWNWARD SPIRAL?
Every generation bemoans the ongoing decline of society.

Morals are always said to be slipping, crime increasing, and society breaking down. You know, dogs and cats, living together ... mass hysteria.

BELL CURVE?
I suggest instead that the Bell curve applies:
  • As population increases, the number of knuckleheads proportionally increases as well.
  • Remember: 50% of all students graduate in the bottom half of their class.
Ha! But seriously, I submit that:

MOST DON'T CARE IF THEY ARE GETTING STUPID
  • It is almost the exclusive province of a very few to improve the human lot through new invention or refinement of existing technologies. That includes teaching improvements, too.
  • While almost everyone has some desire to create, learn, and continuously improve, most are content to learn only what they need to get by.
  • Over-specialization is a kind of stupidity. Humans have been successful (so far) because they have been generalists, adapting to changes and overcoming challenges constantly.

    But these days ....
WHY TRY TO LEARN MORE? TAKE THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE (TO GET PAID.)

A once-wealthy computer programmer down the street told me he didn't need to learn C++, because he could "make a career" out of Fortran. (Now he's a pauper.)

The order of the day seems to be: Learn enough to pass the tests, get the diploma(s), and sit back to enjoy a job where you spend as much time slacking off as possible.

DARWIN...WRONG?

I think Darwin may well have been wrong about "survival of the fittest" ... because I know a few people who are so stupid, they can only be living "missing links".

You doubt me? We all know someone like that. (If you don't know someone like that, then that someone might be you.) As for my morons, I can provide addresses and phone numbers. You are welcome to pay them a visit and see for yourself people too dumb to make soup from a can.

MY HUMBLE OPINIONS

Remember that downward spiral I mentioned at first? Well, we know it happened for certain during the Dark Ages, and was reversed with the Renaissance. If we are going down, history shows we can go up again.

Despite all else, I still have a great deal of faith in my fellow man.

Only more time than I have will tell where we are headed now.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go laugh and make soup from a can.
 

Samuel

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I am definitely not as intelligent as my father and I'm pretty sure I don't have the work ethic of his generation either. :( I don't see that trend changing any time soon...

Compounding the problem is that society seems all too willing to cater to and/or accommodate stupidity and irresponsibility... :mad:
 
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