Posted on 05/23/2013 5:19:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
LOL. That movie gets closer to reality every day...
At my local bakery, the customer in front of me in line orders two items, and by the time the clerk brings them and packs them, I know how much is owed. The clerk, who looks like a college graduate, but a high school graduate should know what he’s doing, uses a calculator to figure out the amount, and often enough makes a mistake and has to repeat the calculation.
I'm not firm on the math quite yet.
I'm not using a pencil. I'm using Perl code and a spreadsheet to try to come to grips with the fundamental core of it.
Doing arithmetic with a pencil would NOT help in my quest.
/johnny
I.Q. and heredity are known to be factual.
What we should be concerned with is the lack of moral clarity and personal responsibility.
Education back then was not polluted with leftist thought and had a lot more religion in it. The focus was also strictly on the family, that being the basic unit of society.
So I rather doubt that people today are less intelligent. What IS true is that they know less, certainly about things that matter.
Agreed. A lot of it is, at its root, an excuse for laziness.
Huh? I didn’t realize Western Civilization still existed. I was pretty sure it had finally committed suicide by dilution with cretins.
I fully believe we are devolving.
Just look at the music people listen to now, and what they listened to a hundred years ago, and then what they listened to two hundred years ago. Look at the modern attention span. If it doesn’t flutter by the screen, it’s “boring”. Look at old movies. People were expected to follow a plot, to pay attention to a script. Now everything is visual stimulation.
Kids were expected to learn Latin and Greek in school. They would learn famous quotes and memorize poetry. They are continually dumbing down tests, such as SATs.
I watch a lot of old movies. They often reference history and events, and expect the audience to get the references. Heck, I remember a line from “Beach Blanket Bingo” where someone says, “He probably doesn’t even know who President Wilson was!”, and they expected young kids watching the movie to understand the joke. Nowadays kids don’t even know the current vice president.
That's because wyatt people have all the advantages!
” Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.”
That’s nothing - the White House is dumber than ever in recorded history.
I think they were more thoughtful, and paid closer attention to the things around them.
I’ve been in a local production of the musical, “Annie.” Many cast members thought President Roosevelt was fictional, they had no idea who Herbert Hoover was, and some didn’t even know who Harpo Marx was.
“I would dispute that.”
Which part?
100 years ago, the parents were in charge of their children’s education. No the schools are run by bureaucrats, unions, and government certified teachers.
If course we appear dumber than our ancestors of even 100 years ago. We aren’t, really - but we are surely no smarter either. Why we appear so dense is easy to explain: political correctness, and the infusion of modern liberal ideals that favor some idealistic fantasy over cold hard reality. This of us at this other end of the political spectrum just shake our heads at the antics of the left. We are not surprised by all the “unexpected” consequences of their actions.
I teach science in a suburban high school, and my husband and I have two sons aged 17 and 20. What I see makes me very concerned about our future. If the average IQ has dropped, I would love to see the distribution. Perhaps the shape of the curve is changing.
The intelligent, intrinsically motivated young people are still among us. If they have decent parents and good schools, they are doing very well. If anything, some of them are being pushed too hard in pursuit of AP courses and things that look good on a transcript at the expense of a well-rounded life. Our sons have been exposed to books, technology, Scouting, travel, and high-quality classrooms. They have many peers.
In contrast with the intelligent and high-performing youngsters, I am seeing far too many who seem dull and dumbed down. Some of them are truly unintelligent. There have always been very low-IQ people among us, but today we insist on mainstreaming them into regular schools and pretending that they can do all the same things that brighter kids do. Many can't and it can cause frustration and disruption.
Finally, there is the great middle - the typical kids who grow up to hold most of the jobs and raise most of the next generation. Our society and our educational system are failing these kids in huge numbers. I am seeing low levels of literacy and numeracy. Many of them can't read well enough to extract meaning from their textbooks or understand what I think of as 4th grade math. They may be able to add or subtract, but don't know when to use which function. If I hand back a test with 40/80 on it, many of these kids can't figure out the percentage and ask what it means. Much of the problem is lack of work ethic. They've been raised with massive social promotion, 'group work' with little individual accountability, and schools where they are not permitted to fail. I am not permitted to give quarter grades below 60% - and this is in a parochial school. Most of these kids are smart enough to do much better, but by the time they're in high school, they have lived with institutionalized laziness, falling standards, and muddled leadership for most of their lives. It's hard to hold them to a high standard, but some of us try. These are the kids who go on to fill the lower-tier colleges and universities. It's easy to see why colleges are finding it necessary to place more and more incoming freshmen into remedial classes before they can handle college-level work.
Holding these average kids to a higher standard is something we used to do better. We can do it again, but it requires schools and parents to acquire some backbone and collectively act like adults. The early elementary grades are absolutely critical. We are failing to develop in these kids a strong academic foundation and failing to instill a proper work ethic (let alone basic courtesy and decorum). Small wonder they can't keep up with higher-level work, act up in class, and come across as know-nothings. Many know little and lack basic tools for living.
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