The Secrets Of Dumbing-Down Revealed

Improve-Education.org ^ | April 30, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Our Education Establishment is dumbing us down. How sad, sick, and pathetic. People calling themselves “educators” devote their careers to making sure no one is educated.

Everyone has heard the complaints. But the fascinating question still remains: HOW DO THEY DO IT? Is it all just bumbling incompetence or do these people have secret techniques?

One familiar technique is to remove content whenever possible from the schools. All right, that technique we can see. But for many years I’ve had the sense that deeper and weirder shenanigans were going on, but I couldn’t pinpoint them.

Now I think I can. The Education Establishment chooses whatever approach will get the worst result! I know it sounds bizarre but l believe that’s a factual description. Here’s how it works:

In all of human experience there is only one way to learn or teach anything. You start at the very beginning and then you work your way through steps A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., no matter whether it’s chess, Latin accounting, biology, or surfing. We crawl, walk, run, and finally dance. The evil genius of our Education Establishment is to pervert this natural sequence, either by jumping way ahead or by remaining forever at the start.

In the two most fundamental situations --learning to read and do arithmetic--the educators invented sophistries to justify jumping way ahead. The excuse goes like this. Far in the future, these kids will be doing X. So let’s start them off doing X today. This was basically the trick used in New Math and Reform Math. These approaches demand that children learn set theory, algebra, statistics, geometry and boolean logic. But arithmetic? Who needs that?

The Education Establishment used the identical gimmick in reading. They fabricated a sophistry which claimed that experienced readers recognize whole words THEREFORE children should skip the alphabet and start off recognizing whole words on day one. I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there. So the sophistry--kids must ignore the baby steps and pretend to be experts on the first day--keeps readers perpetually babyish.

In two other major situations that permeate every aspect of k-12 education--acquiring knowledge and mastering subjects---the Education Establishment went to the opposite extreme. They invented lies and alibis for keeping children at steps A and B. This is so counterintuitive that you don’t realize it’s happening in front of you.

The first tactic here is to demonize memorization and acquisition of knowledge. Children never learn anything in any permanent sense. So even though they might spend a year studying history, science and geography, at the end they don’t know much history, science and geography. (What separates experts from the beginner is the beginner knows nothing but the expert knows lots of things. Our schools ensure that children always remain beginners in every subject.)

Another variation is seen in the very popular method called Constructivism. Children are supposed to create their own knowledge or, to put that cynically, to reinvent the wheel over and over again. This process takes so long that kids don’t finish many wheels. They’re always trying to construct simple pieces of knowledge: for example, 3 + 3 = 6 or Paris is the capital of France. There are thousands of things that should be studied. The gimmick is to make the whole process so prohibitive in terms of time that very little is accomplished.

There you have it: in all situations the universal device is to pervert the natural sequence of learning. They jump the kids way ahead so that the kids get bewildered and revert back to their first days. Or they keep them perpetually in the first days, spinning their wheels. Either way children remain as ignorant as when they showed up.

Note that the children themselves are not dumbed down. They are never allowed to learn. What happens is that when they reach the 10th grade, for example, they are not as well-educated as 10th graders from years before. And so we say that society is being dumbed down.

Here’s the good news. Our Education Establishment, by always pushing the worst methods, emerges as an infallible guide to educational excellence! Avoid the nonsense they are so fond of. Embrace the sensible practices they condemn.

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[This is a short version of “49: How Do We Learn? How Should We Teach? Why Do The Experts Get Everything Wrong?”--the newest article on Improve-Education.org.]

http://www.improve-education.org/id74.html

[martin_fierro]

tl;dr

< |:)~

[GeronL]

bump

[an amused spectator]

I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.

Phonics guy & SRA Reader student from many decades ago. I can blow the Reading Doors off pretty much anyone I know.

[Mr. K]

We need to look for a CONSPIRACY

I am deadly serious.

How is it that MOST EDUCATORS ARE MARXIST/SOCIALISTS???

Do they require a litmus test when they hire you?

And do they discuss/plan purposely failing to educate? and/or indoctrination of marxism?

This can not all be coincidence.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The state run education is all about taxing, spending money and providing jobs. Teaching and learning anything of value is secondary. I am starting to think that there is a new and somewhat malignant idea growing. There is not the same need for literacy that there was fifty years ago. Think of the computer touch screen where one presses little symbols. Most people in the future will be pressing little symbols thus do not need to be able to read, write and cipher.

In addition, if people are educated they think too much and that can be unsettling to some. Combine mass illiteracy with the encouragement of the philosophy of extreme hedonism to keep the troops happy and one has nearly endless control. Huxley may have been right.

[Noumenon]

Saxon Math series. Get it...

[Vinnie]

I agree. It’s been going on for years.

One problem is professional ‘educators’ justifying their jobs by dreaming up new ways to teach.

Another is school systems making useless administrative jobs in order to promote teachers. Often friends.

[Little Pig]

So if I were to look, this guy would probably have a vested interest in one or more of the “phonics” gimmicks.

“...I don’t believe experienced readers do what is claimed but even if this were true, it would still take many years to get there.”

Although anecdotal, I am proof this guy is wrong. I read “whole word”, and that’s how I learned too, at the age of 18 months. Suck it, Bruce.

It’s always the same; whenever you get someone making absolute statements like that, it becomes all too easy to refute them, because all you need is one example. Does “whole word” work for everyone? Of course not, and neither does “phonics”. To claim one special method is the silver bullet for education is nonsense. Eventually you get lumped in with the mythical guy who invented the 100mpg carburetor.

[Canedawg]

I’m all in for the pathetic regression we are reaping as a result of dumbing down the last two or three generations, and I’m down for a vast left wing conspiracy, but I just can’t wrap my brain around the reasoning for this:

“In the two most fundamental situations —learning to read and do arithmetic—the educators invented sophistries to justify jumping way ahead...These approaches demand that children learn set theory, algebra, statistics, geometry and boolean logic. But arithmetic? Who needs that?”

?

[Sherman Logan]

Does “whole word” work for everyone? Of course not, and neither does “phonics”.

Quite true. However, stats are important.

If "whole word" works well for 10% of students, and phonics works well for 75% of students, that differential is significant.

Anywho, as a whole word learner and early reader myself, it's my belief that those who learn well by the whole word method can't be stopped from learning to read.

The advantage of phonics is that we have a several thousand year history of it being remarkably effective for almost all children exposed to it.

[texgal]

Parents who completely turn over their children's education to the government get what they deserve. I made sure my daughter and my nephews who lived with me part of their childhoods, did the Saxon Math series and numerous other educational activities during the week after school and during the summers.

While I could not homeschool during the day - daddy ran off with a co-worker so I had to work, I made sure there was a recommended reading list of my choosing and a discussion of of those readings at the dinner table.

The kids were required to be home for family meals every evening unless there was a real good reason. While they thought it was mean of me at the time, all of them have said they are glad I made them do it because they graduated way ahead of their classmates and had a great foundation for college.

[an amused spectator]

Think of the computer touch screen where one presses little symbols. Most people in the future will be pressing little symbols thus do not need to be able to read, write and cipher.

I just installed a new printer. The instructions were entirely pictographic. I desperately needed words, also - just for my own peace of mind.

BTW - makes lawsuits harder, too. It's your fault you misinterpreted the picture!

[an amused spectator]

Although anecdotal, I am proof this guy is wrong. I read “whole word”, and that’s how I learned too, at the age of 18 months. Suck it, Bruce.

Ah! But how did the REST of your peers turn out? Your graduation year (& decade) are kind of indicative, too.

I was cream of a cream crop. All my peers were VERY well educated. I took an alternate path through college, and graduated 10 years after I should have. The children I graduated with were NOTICEABLY less literate.

I picked a discarded quiz paper in the hall one time that looked like it was written by a 4th grader. The former owner had NO business being anywhere near the doors of that college.

Finally, I'd be willing to bet you have a semi-photographic memory, and can remember large chunks of information at will. Am I correct?

[Peanut Gallery]

ping

[Peanut Gallery]

ping

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

You were trained under the soon to be “Old System,” i.e. use of words.

[Phlyer]

The state run education is all about taxing, spending money and providing jobs.

A generation ago (or two, basically until about 1960) before the GI Bill started getting results, only about 20% of the population had a college degree. The lower half of that 20% - and teachers always come from the lower half, more like lower third, of college graduates - was still pretty far toward the intellectual end of society as a whole. They could think with logic and reason because all college graduates were required to do that, and they knew how to learn better than the majority of the population. In a cocktail party conversation, they were the recognized 'brightest people in the room' most of the time.

But when the majority of the population can get a college degree ("equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity", and no longer limited to those of demonstrated wisdom, like veterans smart enough to survive), the standards to graduate must be lowered. Now, the lower third of graduates are not even of average intellectual ability - and the vast majority of teachers come from that lower third.

They've never learned how to learn, so they can't help anyone else learn. To obscure their own failings and attempt to reclaim the mantle of intellectuals, they invent all sorts of pseudo-intellectual self-justification - none of which would stand up to honest, objective inquiry based on results.

So, the 'dumbing down' of education is caused by a dumbing down of the average college graduate through expansion to a much larger segment of the population, and teachers are the lower end of the college graduate spectrum, so their "dumbward acceleration" is greater than even the median of college graduates. And since they are no longer inherently selected for ability to learn (since anyone can get a college degree), they have nothing to pass along to the next generation.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

You Said: "....So, the 'dumbing down' of education is caused by a dumbing down of the average college graduate through expansion to a much larger segment of the population......"

Response: Boy I would agree with that statement. I have heard that SAT scores have been declining for years. In fact, the test had to be "Dumbed Down!" The truth of the aforementioned statement should be verifiable.

[Mr. K]

Communists have a need for power and control to implement their good for all

Just ask William Ayers- in o0rder to achieve their utopia they planned to kill those who disagree.

It is a sick sick mind