The Dumbing down of America

When I was in graduate school (SDSM&T for Bone's sake), I received an "F" in a three unit calculus class for missing three homework assignments. At the time I had two jobs and was carrying a field-based thesis. I didn't have any frat buddies to do my homework if I did not understand the math assignment. I got about five hours of sleep per night and had a perpetual cold.

What's the point? I was forced to repeat my calculus and differential equations classes at SDSM&T because the faculty didn't like my undergraduate math grades (19 semester units of undergraduate math no less). In those days, when you received a bad grade, it counted forever! You had to get an "A" in the same course to average a "C" for the course. Now days, students get to drop bad grades, or bail out of the class at the last second, just before a suspect grade is issued. There are dozens of little gimme things that students can do now that we could not do. They may have higher GPAs, but I doubt it means much.

I may have gotten some horrible grades in college, but I suspect I know more math than my IV League-graduate daughter who has two science degrees and a lifetime GPA of 3.5.

And furthermore, my parents never even attended high school, yet they seemed to be more articulate and well-read than most of the people that I have met under the age of 30. I am not sure that either of my parents ever saw a computer, but they could do complex things and always understood what was happening around them.

 

Before you ask, yes, both the wife and I both have Bachelors Degrees. Her's is in Mass Communication and Marketing from BHSU and mine is in Forestry from SFASU, down in Texas, Go Stros!!!

I'll bet I WAS quicker than you during my day, LOL

Bone

 

I would primarily blame it on a total lack of discipline among a lot of parents. Some have no control over their kids behaviour, I see it quite often. Television is mostly trash, and some of the violent video games are SICK.!!!Some kids actually think it's o.k. to steal if you dont get caught, and some can't tell you where food comes from before it gets to the store. A lot of kids need to have chores to teach them responsebility. I used to give tests for certain types of work and the dumbness was alarming, few kids know how to grab the bull by the horns and throw the s.o.b.! During an examine one kid asked me " do female mean boy?" Jeez where do you start? One of my renters, a real nice kid, always wanted to be a cop, he took the civil exam, came in second out of over 200 applicants but did not get the job, he's the wrong color. He said the 1 st. pick was 156th. on the list. What ever happened to the best man for the job? Dan, maybe this all ties in with your leftist elite post. Really I think you like to get people stirred up.Hah! you got me thinking and worked up.

 

Excuse me? I am in college right now getting what is considered to be an "easy degree" in political science. Communication and art are EXTREMELY USEFUL DEGREES and just because you are a math major with microbiology and chemistry and the only art you could probably draw is the inside of a cell and a graph of x squared, I completely resent the remarks that people without hard sciences degrees are less intelligent than you are. I call that IGNORANCE and INTELLECTUAL RACISM.

~AJ, the guy with the "worthless" degree.

 

You can drop grades? I need to look into that

 

So do some adults from "wiser" and "more intelligent" generations.

Why on earth is THAT important? Does it make one dumber if he or she doesn't know what veal is or where it comes from? Or all the steps in the process for pasteurizing milk? Of course not. This is a poor argument.

Again, many "more intelligent" generations also can't do that. I know just as many of my peers who are excellent and dedicated workers as I do adults. Honestly, when making arguments, don't be stereotypical in characterizing everybody as the same.

And what does race in the workplace have to do with EDUCATION?

~AJ

 

I think every responsible citizen should know where food comes from, what nuclear power is all about, what goes into making steel, how is a house constructed, etc, etc. Far too many important decisions are being made these days by people who are only interested in the "process" of government and the Law. There is a lot of idle jaw-flapping. We need leaders and key decision-makers who actually know how to do things. We need people who understand why things happen. We have too many citizens who do not understand the consequences of their actions. (eg, California Legislature)

It's like watching chimps with cell phones.

 

Throwing money at the problem will NOT help. In the past decade to end gangs and street crimes, the government has pumped over $3 TRILLION into the inter cities and today the gangs have formed cartels. The violence is worse and the police are losing the battle. Our jails are packed and our kids all idolize the the scum of society. Look at late night TV - Snoope dog and Girls gone wild.
Stop our legislators from allowing the jobs to be sent out of our country, and close those boarders to the illegals. Rebuild that ladder we use to have. The one with rungs that people could climb - to a better job if they worked hard, and to a better life. Our young people have no hero's and no goals. AND NO OPPERTUNITIES!
Where is The Lone Ranger and Hoppie - Gone with the Ideals we grew up with???
Most kids today are raised by the Child Care Facility they go to. Dad is seldom home, and Mom has a cell phone plugged into her head. The kids are being raised by strangers and TV. With all the books and computers in school - My 6th grade grand daughter didn't know the South lost the Civil War. My grand daughter knows more about Denzel Washington than George Washington. What are they teaching our kids? Here in California we pay over $7500.00 per year per student school taxs, and our teachers are paid average over $60,000.00 wages for 9 months work.

 

Actually, I can draw quite well. I have even sold my artwork. Communication majors work at starbucks usually when they are done, I don't see how a degree is extremely useful when it serves no real purpose, and makes a nominal amount of money.

 

AJM, My opinions and ideas were formed from what I've observed through the years as were yours. I 've violated my number 1 rule, dont enter discussions involving politics, religion or race. It's a no win situation, nobody can alter my opinions and I can not alter yours. There are a lot of things going on that are just not right, much more now than yrs. ago. These posts are interesting reading, but I think I'll go back to being an observer, I like coins much better than hot topics. I'm going fishing now, Have a good day.

 

Well, its obvious that you have little or no real world experience, preferring to work in the confines of your cubicle of a world.

 

Sorry, ajm but this web site kind of knocks your beliefs into a tail spin. Basically it shows that your generation is about as smart as dirt, compared with ALL the other nation's students. Take a look for your self.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/education-c.htm

 

What makes you think I have no "real world" experience? I haven't lived with my parents for over 5 years, pay over 5k a year in taxes, I have worked at 2 pharmaceutical companies, two food companies (i.e. Hershey), so I think it's quite ignorant to say I have no "real world" experience without knowing me.

 

first off bone my hats off to you.
to some others here my degree cost more and makes me more money than yours so na nanan naa. just kidding

and one last thing. history show that americans (past 150 years) will invent everything first and anyone else in the world will make it work better/cheaper/faster.

so maybe what we need to do is get people form countrys making all of these little geniuses to come here and show us what we could do better.

 

Well, thanks for the assessment, Dan. But I still disagree. Learning hard sciences and taking advanced examinations does not intelligence make. In fact, it is the belief of many, not just myself, that exams are only good for showing how well students can take exams, not how intelligent they are. Look at any standardized test from the last 50 years. For the most part, those type of tests have been multiple choice, where even if you don't know the material, on most questions you have a 50-50 chance of guessing the correct answer out of the blue, if you can eliminate some of the questions.

Perhaps when you were in school, mathematics and hard science (chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) were very important. But that's because of the time period. In the 1940s-1950s, when I assume you were in high school and/or college, America was in the prime of the industrial age and was making necessary strides in those fields. Then it was very important to have those kinds of backgrounds so that one could succeed.

Now, however, children are living in the technological age, where they can focus on arts and other degrees that involve little or no mathematics past Algebra 2 and no sciences beyond high school physics. I attribute that to a broader reliance on computer technology, where the US is the number one in the world. We have computers that can calculate problems more rapidly than ever before, and can calculate chemical equations and physics problems.

Children, myself included, in this Information/Technology age are intelligent, but not in the way that you and others of the past generations would like to see them. When you were younger, I would speculate that a decent job involved manual labor or the ability to be fluent in the languages of math and science. But with the advent of IT (Info. Technology) like the computer or the internet, if you cannot use it, you can barely get a job in a grocery store, let alone as a physicist, statistician, political scientist, or otherwise.

Simply because one does not have the same desire to study number-crunching their whole life and make that their career does not at all mean that they are, as you put it, "as smart as dirt." If anything, we are equally intelligent with a much more diverse range of knowledge.

And Zaneman,

Whoop-dee-do for you. I don't care how much you pay in taxes, how long you've been away from home, or your work past. People who flaunt their resumes don't have the type of real world experience that matters. By this I mean the ability to appreciate the diversity that makes this world so great, where people do not all have to be math majors or biology majors, but CAN be in arts and communications, or women's studies, or social work, or any number of other "worthless", as you catagorize them, jobs. All it seems that you care about is the size of your paycheck, which is not an indication of self-worth.

~AJ

 

Bonedigger one also can not discount the education you got out there in the real world. It amazes me how people defend points that they know nothing about. But you have life experience. I read about your Saudi days and it was right on target with my own experiences. You views are based upon real experience and not a sound bite from the nightly news or some polluted text book.

 

"Perhaps when you were in school, mathematics and hard science (chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) were very important. But that's because of the time period. In the 1940s-1950s, when I assume you were in high school and/or college, America was in the prime of the industrial age and was making necessary strides in those fields. Then it was very important to have those kinds of backgrounds so that one could succeed"
ajam.

AJ, I was once a political science major myself so I know of the importance of knowing how the beast works. However if you look all around you and really look you might noticed that the entire solar system is all about chemistry and math. There is a mathamatic pattern to everything and everything is based upon chemistry. Did you ever wonder why the human body is composed with the same amount of water in ratio to the amount of water that covers the surface of the earth. Think about that and how we are all just thinking stardust.

Summary: Everything when you get down to it is math and chemistry.

 

Yes, everything is composed of math and sciences, but that doesn't mean I have to major in them in order to be intelligent. That's my point.

 

It's already happening bozo, as any large company can tell you. They are more and more making their selection of top flight management from "imports" who have been more or less loaned to us from foreign countries.

The universities and colleges are starting to worry now because foreign students aren't coming over here to attend school. They are getting such a better education "over there" that they stay at home until they can be lured away from "over there" for large sums of U.S. money. These are people who end up in the chain of production. They have an idea that they are able to put into practice and come up with a product that will sell to the American public.
Do you suppose that is the reason for this deficite of trade problem we are having.

Yep, China has the engineers that make a new car that will use H2o for fuel and every American wants one. We have a Political scientist who does who knows what, and ends up with nothing tangable. We have to buy the car because the Politician didn't make any thing we could trade. Is that how it works?

 

It sounds like someone is upset knowing they will not make much money with the degree that cost them 10's of thousands of dollars. Social work is not a useless major, as it helps people. You are a reactionary person who most likely thinks I am a bigot, and that's fine. If anything it shows your hypocrisy. Another not worthless major, would be english. Children need to be taught how to speak and write properly, none of this boost mobile crap where the slogan is "Where you at". And actually I don't think of my paycheck as an indication of my self worth. My self worth comes from the fact that I work hard, I have good morals, I'm in good health, I donate money to help others whenever I can, I volunteer 15 hours a week at the local health clinic, I spend every single holiday feeding the homeless, and do a variety of other things that are worthwhile. This is twice that I have been stereotyped by you, the person complaining about me stereotyping certain majors as being worthless.