Dumbing Down University

[MooNiNite]

if students do better on tests year after year, it doesn't mean they are getting smarter. it means the facilities are becoming more efficient at pushing their belief systems into people's minds. Are you a good student because you managed to regurgitate information? Or are you becoming less connected with the truth?

[zerostao]

my pov is that the dumbing down began around 1964 in the us at least.

is it politically incorrect of me to suggest this?

[Brian]

my pov is that the dumbing down began around 1964 in the us at least.

is it politically incorrect of me to suggest this?

I'd probably go with 1912.

[Karl]

It began with forced schooling around 1880. By 1919 it was well under way.

[Brian]

I think a case could be made for associating it with the emergence of the Young Hegelians in the 1830s, too.

[dust]

1964, 1912, 1880, 1830s... I think I see where this is going

 

There's an interesting parallel here:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/feb/12/state-of-the-union-reading-level

 

From

 

17.9 for Washington,  21.6 for Madison

 

to

 

8.6 for Bush Sr.,  9.4 for Obama

 

and...

 

4.1 for Trump.

Edited February 3, 2016 by dustybeijing

[Karl]

I think a case could be made for associating it with the emergence of the Young Hegelians in the 1830s, too.

 

Yes, or for that matter, right back to Plato and the Greeks vs Spartans.

[Apech]

I was thinking the end of king Djoser's reign in 2611 B.C. was the beginning of a downward slide.

[Brian]

Djoser just got a bad rap from those stick-in-the-mud supporters of Sekhemkhet.

[Apech]

Djoser just got a bad rap from those stick-in-the-mud supporters of Sekhemkhet.

 

Yeah where's Imhotep when you need him?

[Brian]

In case anyone was looking for evidence...

 

 

Sad thing is, these are all eligible voters.

 

(Maybe I should have put this in that US election thread.)

[redcairo]

If that's real, then you know what it means, right?

 

It means the massive shift in education country-wide to being controlled by socialist gender-feminism and unions has apparently resulted in the most profoundly incompetent educational base in the history of forced schooling.

 

Although to be fair it isn't a very long history.

 

For the bigger picture or the paranoid or the interested in history, John Taylor Gatto's first 8 chapters of "The Secret History of Education in America" is fascinating and free online at several places. His own website is having an odd but recent error or I would link there.

 

I realized when I was 18 and in jr. college that I'd missed something. I actually made myself read half the english lit list I never had (realization: I don't much like english lit, and am dearly grateful that I spent the previous six years obsessively reading science fiction / fantasy instead) and go through grammar in the language lab (the teachers there laughed at me as I'd scored better than they had. But I had no clue. I got language through feel, not intellect. I wasn't even sure what a verb was). (Result: grammar knowledge did absolutely nothing for me, except that I have learned not to end a sentence with of, for, with, etc.) I had already taken up reading history (a topic I despised in most of high school -- it is taught SO badly), and had gradually become a science buff (another topic I thought I hated thanks to school). 

 

In retrospect now as an old woman (I'm 50), I would start children in school vastly later (development is affected by certain kinds of knowledge at too young an age), it would be far more focused and play similar to Montessori, and it would obsess on incredible reading skills as the base of everything. That's the one resource -- ala fishing rod/net -- that changes lives and makes everything else possible. Oh right: and it would be competent so when they were 14 they were old enough to start apprenticing somewhere or a year of 'competence training' before college or whatever, because I think extending childhood as late as we do robs the primary drive years from youth and causes all kinds of issues.

 

Every person I know who voluntarily reads for fun (even if, these days, it's mostly internet) is substantially more intelligent and better educated than those who don't. I've got no study telling me why, but I observe this.

 

I'm willing to bet that a huge amount of the information I have about history (and politics) of all kinds I got as an adult. And thanks to reading. I didn't have it when I was the age of these people in the video. I knew about the civil war but that was due to reading following my meeting a man in Canada whose near ancestor had been a paid German mercenary imported by the North to fight in it and I found his account interesting. I hadn't known the North did that.

 

When I was 18, I thought -- I am not making this up -- that "Palestinian Refugees" were a few hundred people in tents outside a chain link fence around Israel.

 

I thought Africa was mostly people'd with two 'races' both dark: Pygmies and Bushmen. As some humor on the latter, my best friend in college for a couple years was a young man from Nigeria, who could not understood why all the guys/athletes in our college called him "Bushman." He had never even heard of either of these groups. He took a black studies class, mostly filled with jocks. Lectured them one day when he lost his temper, and everyone including the teacher just broke down and cried. Totally different cultural perspective for sure... although my favorite part of having a foreign best friend like that was the white women accosting me in the ladies room wanting to know if it was twue about black men. Like I would know, just a friend. Ah Madeline I miss you... if anybody gets that.

 

I also thought that I was a liberal. Because conservatives were bad, right-wingers were bad, neocons were bad, and government was bad. I was at the fair and there were two political booths on opposite sides, the dems who were really cool and had fun music and cool clothes and lots of people, and the reps who looked like a bunch of mormon young republicans. (They probably WERE mormon young republicans.) Being a contrary sort, I went over to them while my friends reacted in horror, just because I wanted to hear, with great humor, what they would actually have to say. Then I discovered to my horror that everything I intuitively believed, and everything I had been taught at age 5-6 about "my country," and everything I assumed was obvious and good, was in fact... not only conservative but even what today would be called "constructionist." (Because it is -not- corporatist like both parties actually are now.)

 

I didn't know I had been "politically brainwashed" by school, but due to a strange home life I had no TV, almost no radio, was nearly on room restriction for six years, and had nearly no interaction with my parents (except the run for your life kind). And due to that and related stuff, only a couple friends at lunch. I only had two influences: the books I read -- scifi and everything in the library, and a lot of Robert Heinlein; and school. Heinlein ironically ended up a socialist but he was an "individualist" first and always (which I perceive as fundamentally capitalist) and I see the former affiliation only as something he did in later years, both in recognition of what wasn't working here, and in support of a close friend. (So there I was, a southern coastal California girl, a total hippy, long tie-dye skirt (way out of fashion time) and a sailboard and a guitar, mystic leanings and a desire to save the world starting with animals and trees -- and it turned out I was a staunch political conservative. The universe has a sense of humor. But conservative women have no fashion sense at all!)

 

Anyway I'm rambling. Yes, they're idiots, but adult professionals making money had TWELVE YEARS to teach these kids basics so the REAL incompetents are those adults.

[Karl]

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/gatto/gatto-uhae-1.html

 

 

John Taylor Gatto's book is available in full, chapter by chapter from Lew Rockwell's site for free, but has to be read online unfortunately.

 

Funnily enough my formative years had no tv either, a very absent Father and a hippy mother into Carlos Castaneda. I read every science fiction book in our town library and every flat space in our home was eventually piled several feet high with novels.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Karl

[Basher]

Think we're in Dire Need of a TV Reality Show featuring re-enactments of real life Historical Events.

(featuring young good looking air-heads)  :D

[dust]

In case anyone was looking for evidence...

 

...

 

Sad thing is, these are all eligible voters.

 

(Maybe I should have put this in that US election thread.)

 

That is pretty impressive.

 

I would expect a little more knowledge than that purely from exposure to pop culture, if nothing else. As a non-American with little interest in such details, I knew all the answers.. and could probably have learnt most of them from South Park. And it does strike me that someone with the power and will to vote should be able to name the current VP, among other things.

 

Having said that... it almost leads to an interesting discussion in another area.

 

I'm a proponent of the Sherlock Holmes school of thought. That is, importance placed on imagination, breadth of knowledge, and subject-specific knowledge, but not on knowledge irrelevant to one's life or position, or particulars that one will never make use of, simply because it is generally and erroneously believed that such knowledge is 'important'.

 

It is not, for example, of any use for me to know who or when the monarchs of England have been, or to give dates of civil war or revolution. I could name a few kings and military types, give the year of a few famous events (1066, 1215), but honestly wouldn't think less of myself if I had even less knowledge of such things than I do now. And I think no less of anyone else for not knowing the wives of Henry VIII, or who the Roundheads and Cavaliers were...

 

None of this makes any difference to my ability to be alive now, to make responsible and intelligent decisions, or to understand current events. A general understanding of political systems, war, revolution, etc throughout the centuries is of far more value in this respect. Not knowledge, but understanding.

 

Like I said, I'd expect the people in the video to know more about the events and people mentioned from exposure to mainstream media alone, and I kinda doubt that any of them do have even a basic understanding of political systems, war, revolution etc. But on a general level, I don't think much importance need be placed on naming details of distant historical events unless one's life or profession particularly depends upon knowing.

[zerostao]

In case anyone was looking for evidence...

 

 

Sad thing is, these are all eligible voters.

 

(Maybe I should have put this in that US election thread.)

to be fair there are other better things to do on campus than keep up with trivia  

edit>> making all a's is actually sacrificing time that could be spent on other campus life activities,

like the one i am attending tonight off campus. i bet if psychology related questions were asked to those students saying they were psychology majors, they may have answered glowingly,

hopefully the pre-nurse anyways. a lot of valuable networking going on at any rate.

Edited February 18, 2016 by zerostao

[Brian]

Don't think I'd call "who won the Civil War?" or "who did America win its independence from?" trivial details a student at a major US university shouldn't be expected to know but perhaps my expectations are too high...

Edited February 18, 2016 by Brian

[Karl]

Don't think I'd call "who won the Civil War?" or "who did America win its independence from?" trivial details a student at a major US university shouldn't be expected to know but perhaps my expectations are too high...

 

Pragmatism my dear Brian, Pragmatism.

 

It doesn't matter what happened in the past, or that we plan for the future. It's only necessary to consider this moment, to live in the now. Tear up the past it tells us nothing about the future. Don't worry about the future we can make it however we wish.

 

John Dewey: let's start out wherever we are and try something new.

Hegel: let society create what it wants. It may have been true yesterday, but not today.

"Act first, think later"

 

[Brian]

How true -- if one has no knowledge of the past, one cannot tell when the present is entirely fabricated. Can't tell whether you are repeating the mistakes of previous generations when you have no clue what those mistakes were.

 

Gosh! I wonder what the Kardashian family is up to today?

[Karl]

How true -- if one has no knowledge of the past, one cannot tell when the present is entirely fabricated. Can't tell whether you are repeating the mistakes of previous generations when you have no clue what those mistakes were.

Gosh! I wonder what the Kardashian family is up to today?

 

This is the over riding philosophy of today. It has been the goal of educators to ensure reality is malleable-a process of turning education into a laboratory for rats. They are being trained to be little altruists, to rely on feelings and to perform multiple testing to ensure the programme sticks. They are taught to take their place in a hierarchical society which no longer has explicit caste/class system, but is a multi compartmentalised without obvious dividing lines. It is further concealed by an emphasis on the ideological differences in sex, race, colour, religion, sexuality. They are being prised from their history and taught that the Government will provide the future.

 

 

[Apech]

This is the over riding philosophy of today. It has been the goal of educators to ensure reality is malleable-a process of turning education into a laboratory for rats. They are being trained to be little altruists, to rely on feelings and to perform multiple testing to ensure the programme sticks. They are taught to take their place in a hierarchical society which no longer has explicit caste/class system, but is a multi compartmentalised without obvious dividing lines. It is further concealed by an emphasis on the ideological differences in sex, race, colour, religion, sexuality. They are being prised from their history and taught that the Government will provide the future.

 

..and being turned into idiots by victim culture training ...

 

[Karl]

That's the 'explore your feelings' 'feelings are what you should use to determine what is right'. The victim culture is part of Fabian structured social manipulation which also plays into the hands of wealthy groups who don't want their lives put under a microscope, or Governments that can then be seen to provide 'solutions' to problems that don't exist, but are useful to push.

[Apech]

This is even worse:

 

[zerostao]

mizzou has had several problems recently. click lost her job?

my school has a new micro brewery program,

cheers!

[Karl]

Thats what you get when you deny existence, identity, reason and logic. You end up with a bunch of dysfunctional kids making up their own laws and adults who are the product of the same system.

 

Any wonder kids are running around schools firing at their class mates ?

 

It's Lord of the Flies.