There is no bottom to the ignorance of supposedly educated Americans

American Thinker ^ | 14 Jun, 2021 | Andrea Widburg

[MtnClimber]

Even if you acknowledge that the video culled out the people who could answer these questions, the ones who are left should terrify us all.

A basic premise of the American system, going all the way back to the Founding Fathers, was an educated population. People weren’t expected to be scholars. However, the Founders required a literate and moral population to make their great government experiment work. And that is what they got: Most Americans were literate before public schooling. Colonial Americans could also read at a very sophisticated level. The colonists would not have known what to make of the abysmally educated people a scary, funny video shows.

The unthinking American assumption is that, thanks to universally available public education, every American has at least a minimal fund of knowledge about the world and how it works. However, as Jay Leno used to show with his man (and woman) on the street interviews, and as the video below shows, many members of the American public know very little:

Hilarious and sad video at link

Perhaps it’s unfair to say that they know very little. While our schools churn out young people who cannot read, write, or reason, they are extremely well versed in pop culture (they know the lyrics to Megan Thee Stallion songs), and the most recent generations of school graduates will bore you to tears talking about gender, racism, class victimization, America’s wrongdoing over the centuries, etc.

[MuttTheHoople]

Germany has always been a literate and intelligent population. In my experiences, I've never met a dumb German.

However, it didn't keep them from following some very bad people....and I'm not just talking Hitler. Remember, East and West Germany had some pieces of work running their countries as well and Angela Merckel isn't particularily appealing.

What's happened is that the German people turned away from God centuries ago. At one time, the Germans were sending missionaries into the world. Now, it's a mission field.

The same thing is happening in America.

[tflabo]

Used to be taught to think with logic, reason and creativity. Now it’s swallow the Wokeness propaganda topics with emotional conformity or risk being ostracized if an independent thinker.

[tflabo]

The USA spends multiple billions on public education with pitifully poor results. Expensive garbage is not improved by paying even more for it.

[Chauncey Gardiner]

What we see is lack of Wisdom, and wisdom comes from The Lord.

[Aevery_Freeman]

As a high school science teacher, YES.

I cringed when I heard the "How many minutes in a kilometer?" question.

Students now dictate what they will learn because, "You can't flunk us all."

[Aevery_Freeman]

Thinking is RACIST!

[Flick Lives]

2. Who was the first person to land on the Sun?

—

I think his name was Extra Crispy.

[SMARTY]

Long answer: Yes

Short answer: Yes

[bert]

A question was asked to black kids in a mall.

Who is the president of Africa

In reply, 83% did not know

[Ron H.]

....... and level of stupidity as well.

[FamiliarFace]

They got it wrong because it was a *trick* question. ;-)

[Mr.Unique]

Can they?

The video seems staged.

[Nea Wood]

Those McGuffy readers, in one-room prairie schoolhouses with teachers who were not much older than the students, seemed to turn out smarter people than today, with our computers, calculators, field trips, libraries, etc. Back then many kids brought a Bible or almanac from home, which was the only book they had, to learn to read.

[oldtech]

I got my last formal education in the 50s & think it was a pretty good education, but then I saw some of the schooling that was required several years prior to that. What a change in those years! Now, everything seems really dumbed-down as far as formal education.

[myerson]

Telling my age, but when I was in grade school students had to pass Latin in public junior high school to pass on to high school. There were many who couldn’t pass and did not go on to high school. Thankfully, that requirement was eliminated the year before I would have had to pass Latin.

[upchuck]

Watching that video makes me very glad I’m old. If I was 40 and saw that I’d be very, very depressed.

[Jim Noble]

However, the Founders required a literate and moral population to make their great government experiment work.

They also required severe limits on who was allowed to vote.

[GOPJ]

We have ‘teachers’ who can’t teach because they’re stupid.

That’s a problem.

These same ‘teachers’ view their jobs as “owed to them” sinecures... on our dime. Their commie unions assist them with looking down on parents, their communities and their country.

[Kickass Conservative]

As my dear Mother used to say, some people are so smart, they’re stupid.

For the first time in History, we have every bit of Human Knowledge at our fingertips, yet the level of ignorance, the lack of common sense and epidemic levels of sheer stupidity throughout the Population is simply astounding.

Remember, half the Population of the United States thinks Joementia Xiden received the most Votes for POTUS ever.

Either that is true which really proves my point, or it is false which means those same people can be convinced of anything, even if they have access to mounds of information that proves otherwise.

A Republic if you can keep it. Well, we obviously couldn’t.

[Hiddigeigei]

'A Republic if you can keep it. Well, we obviously couldn’t."
The Constitution of the United States is like those exquisite productions of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their inventors, but which are profitless in any other hands. This truth is exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time. The Mexicans were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the Federal Constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model, and copied it with considerable accuracy. But although they had borrowed the letter of the law, they were unable to create or to introduce the spirit and the sense which give it life. They were involved in ceaseless embarrassments between the mechanism of their double government; the sovereignty of the States and that of the Union perpetually exceeded their respective privileges, and entered into collision; and to the present day Mexico is alternately the victim of anarchy and the slave of military despotism. — Alexis De Tocqueville (Democracy In America).