The dumbing of America

I think one of the big problems with education is the failure of liberal education and the fact that liberals refuse to acknowledge it and have to resort to blaming conservatives who have the least voice in education in America.

 

If one went on to High School, a Business College or a College you would more likely develop such skills but for many 8th Grade was it and how much critical problem solving did an apprentice in some trade or a factory worker of miner or farmer or fisherman need to know they couldn't learn by working under someone who did that work learning from them? High School was effectively college back then and you would learn to do skilled blue collar and white collar work or prepare for more education and well in college one would expect the best minds and the ones with the means to go to lead the nation in their fields so there such skills were developed most likely.

 

Where did anyone say it was a post modern skill? It is an intrinsic human quality; they are skills children need to be taught how to develop and use, skills that need to be reinforced. However, it was not something focused on in early education. Early education was ‘reading, writing and arithmetic.’ No one is saying that core facts are not essential and not being taught. They are just not exclusively taught.

BTW, defensively jumping to a conclusion because you don’t understand something is an indication of weak critical thinking skills.

 

There is no such thing as a 'liberal eduation.' There is modern education for a modern world. I have taught in 4 different countries around the world in international schools. The education American children are receiving is the same in all other modern first world countries. It isn't a 'liberal education.' It is a modern education.

If you want a religion based conservative education for your kids, send them to religious school or home school them, but don't expect the state to pay for it: this is a secular government.

 

That is because lawyers rule the country.
From the lawyer perspective it does not matter what is the shape of the earth, as long as judges are convinced.

 

a fitting description of treasonous Wall Street Republicans:


https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf

 

The "Rising Tide of Mediocrity" and The "Dumbing Down of America" are REAL Phemonenons (that have been going on for, at least, the last 35 years).

How else could one rationally explain Trump's Election?

 

Trump was elected because progressive party was trying to dumb down population with nonsense like gay marriage, special privileges for women, blacks, Latinos and Muslims etc even though U.S. Constitution is pretty clear about equal protection.

 

In education nowadays, in the modern, first world, critical thinking skills are part of every lesson, or at least attempted. Like using Bloom's Taxonomy. Teacher's don't just focus on acquiring facts but comprehending them, applying them, analyzing them, and so on.


Another major problem with education in America nowadays is the social problems the country has. Schools and teachers spend about 50% of their time and effort on dealing with social problems, not on academics. Parents, families, the culture expects the schools to 'fix' everything. Can't be done. And the overall education of American children falls beneath what you think it should be.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the curriculum or the focus of the curriculum. I have taught with teachers from all over the world: the curriculum is the same, the approaches are the same, the ability of the teachers is the same.....what is different is the society. American society is drowning in its social problems, and they are not caused by schools and teachers.

 

Politically liberal leaning education? It permeates at all levels. And you can call it what you may it is failing our children. And where have I said I want a religion based education? I am an atheist. I want a good core education for my grandkids and their kids one that will get them through life as well educated adults not indoctrinated liberals who haven't a clue about history or civics or how do complete basic intellectual task.

 

Critical thinking skills have to do with every single part of life. No matter who you are or what you do for a living. Critical thinking skills are taught from day one. Parents may teach their kids not to put their hands of a stove burner, but they also teach them the why and wherefore of it and, hopefully, teach them to use such reasoning and application skills in other areas of life too. Critical thinking skills don't just apply to a trade or profession but to all of life.

 

They need a core education before we can even start to discuss higher level skills and we focus far too much on "early education" which by the governments own studies has proven to be a waste of money. This entire idea that we don't need to teach math and how to accomplish basic math but rather how to think about is folly.

 

One critical thinking skill is using listening skills, paying attention, and you are not doing that.

 

Link please.

 

It's impossible to know what the overall effect on premiums and medical cost inflation would have been under the ACA since Repubs have not only refused to make needed adjustments to the bill, they have actively sabotaged it. We do know, by ample example, that the system most Dems prefer would lower the % of GDP spent on medical care will providing better medical outcomes. And then there's this..........https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bu...are-has-lowered-healthcare-costs-10865019.php

 

If one were to look at the longer term picture- to realize that what is going on today is the product of what we have allowed in the past-
some things seem pretty obvious.

For example, the problems with drugs continue to grow, despite extensive laws and a war on them. We used to understand that drugs were bad, period- and you didn't start.
Of course, a lot of today's adults were raised on drugs- drugs prescribed for not paying attention, for tantrums, for most every kind of misbehavior. Once we began blaming bad conduct on medical syndromes, we stopped prescribing discipline and responsibility and started promoting avoidance of maturity and responsibility. We controlled misbehavior not by training the child- but by medicating them into a sort of dependency. This started around the 60's, so we have about 3 generations of it among us today.

With the best of intentions, we started giving children less more freedom, less responsibility, lower expectations, higher tolerance, fewer chores, more toys, and taught them that everything that happens is somebody else's fault. We blamed the teachers for them not learning, the schools for not passing them, and society for expecting respect and productivity from them. Colleges began to tell students what to think, to teach political ideology rather than teach people how to think properly, and that shows dramatically. They don't think as well, write or comprehend as well- they mirror images rather than analyze information and gather facts. They have what they think is knowledge... but are severely lacking in understanding of it, and that is crippling.

We forgot that our job as parents was not to be best friends, but to build responsible adults who could stand on their own by the time they came of age. We have failed to do that. As a result, those we failed to raise as adults grew up physically, and gave birth to kids raised with even less in the way of mature role modeling... and lacking the ability to develop true self-respect, they also lack the ability to take power over their own lives. That means they must hold others responsible for their own problems. They believe honest work is slavery, the wealthy and successful all cheated them and exploit them, that the ubiquitous "somebody else" should pay all the bills and owes them happiness.... because they are "entitled". They see nothing of value in America that they should protect, so they see no problem with giving it away.
The cycle continues.

 

A large segment of our population believes that Trump is qualified to be president. They also think that even though all other modern countries in the world that provide universal heath insurance for a much lower cost the the USA pays, it can't be done. If they don't understand basic facts and logic, how do you expect them to know the shape of the Earth?

 

Just because people don't know the shape of the Earth doesn't stop them from lecturing to the rest of us in very long, tedious posts that no one has the patience to read.

 

Spell check does wonders (especially when you are on the subject of "dumbing down education). There are no grade inflations and the SAT tests have not been dumbed down. If that is the case, please explain why kids are not doing well on these tests??

 

Talk about people with dumb, uninformed racist opinions. Some people will invent any sort of nonsense to push their racist ideology. Anyone who has made it through the tenth grade knows that these racist opinions about certain ethnic groups having a lower IQ were disproved decades ago.

 

It's interesting to see Maxwell's equations turn up in a political debate forum, although I do not think they are a fair test of whether someone has gone to college, since only physics- or closely-allied majors are likely to have come across them. Your typical degree in Feminist Anthropology or Racial Grievance Studies (or Business or Media Studies) is unlikely to include them (or anything else of substance).

I was interested in the assertion that going to college raises your IQ. If this is so, it's something that has only recently been discovered, and I strongly suspect it's not true. The conventional wisdom is that intensive coaching for IQ tests can sometimes improve your score by about five points, but that genuine, durable increases in IQ are not achievable by training. Here's the Wiki summary of the conventional wisdom:
"Interventions
In general, educational interventions, as those described below, have shown short-term effects on IQ, but long-term follow-up is often missing. For example, in the US very large intervention programs such as the Head Start Program have not produced lasting gains in IQ scores. More intensive, but much smaller projects such as the Abecedarian Project have reported lasting effects, often on socioeconomic status variables, rather than IQ.


Recent studies have shown that training in using one's working memory may increase IQ. A study on young adults published in April 2008 by a team from the Universities of Michigan and Bern supports the possibility of the transfer of fluid intelligence from specifically designed working memory training.[96] Further research will be needed to determine nature, extent and duration of the proposed transfer. Among other questions, it remains to be seen whether the results extend to other kinds of fluid intelligence tests than the matrix test used in the study, and if so, whether, after training, fluid intelligence measures retain their correlation with educational and occupational achievement or if the value of fluid intelligence for predicting performance on other tasks changes. It is also unclear whether the training is durable of extended periods of time." Full article here.

Anyway, within a few generations, provided we do not destroy ourselves, IQ will fade from relevance, as our descendants will all be kitted out artificially with the best genes for IQ (and many other things), assuming that biological factors, ie. genes, play a major role in determining IQ.

The claim that current teaching in the US includes critical thinking is debatable, in my opinion. I'm sure that lip-service is paid to it, but I am very doubtful that the young people coming out of our public education system today are any more likely to be able to critically evaluate truth-claims than any previous generation. And to the extent that factual knowledge teaching has been discarded -- if it has -- they will be even more handicapped, although whether they are more ignorant than their ancestors is open to question. (That wonderful test from 1911 is an eye-opener, but ... how many children took it, and how many could pass it. I'm skeptical about it.)

 

Why is it that people who do poorly on IQ test claim that their ethnic group does better. Does anyone who has read a few of Brewskier's post believe that his IQ is even half as high as Barack Obama's?

 

CBS says otherwise. SMH..........

 

Instead of taunting Brewskier, why don't you answer his question?

 

Racist ideology is coming from the party of "Progressives", I have never heard conservative party ever mention a race, other then responding to alternatively gifted democrats.