This article is from last fall, which probably means things are even worse today. Read the whole thing to get one teacher’s view of how we’d be going to hell in a handbasket if there were anyone younger than 50 with the skills left to make one. Are any candidates talking about this, Presidential level or lower?
We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
It’s gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.
[…]
Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.
[…]
[T]he dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better.
Too far? Ask yourself how many of the average high school graduates this spring could read that excerpt and define every word. Could GWB?
Thanks to Brother Uncle Don
#32 –
Proof that the 20-somethings of today are idiots –
They continue to live in the US.
They barely use what their predecessors invented. If the iPOD or the iPhone is the best they can do, it’s a sad day in lala land.
And Hip Hop sucks. Why is it the music industry is going belly up. Hint – it’s not because of file sharing, it’s because there is nothing worth listening to.
And regarding gay – I think the gentleman doth protest too much.
Here’s a tip, buy a lawnmower and get a real job. It’s clearly what you are best qualified for.
#14 “#12: A lot do and most of that is useless knowledge anyway.”
Which is exactly what a lot of the kids reading this article would say and is exactly my point.
School choice would help solve these problems. Then shut down the teachers unions, or at least tie pay to performance instead of seniority. Before that, shut down the schools of education, and the requirements of a degree there to start teaching.
You know the local schools aren’t all that great but a lot of the local kids they graduate can clean your plows on just about any kind of norm based test. If you don’t think so go right down the career center and try passing those tests meant for kids who are going directly into the work force and that includes you college grads.
By the way most of what used to be freshmen classes are now being taught in the 8th or even seventh grades.
People have been preaching this crap about every new generation since the dawn of time. We will muddle through, trust me on this one. Once these idiotic skulls of mush get incharge, they will wise up…. a bit.
Don
They have the same problem in New Jersey. The teacher’s union is literally bankrupting the State and all the teachers keep on saying is, “If we had more money and more benefits, we would be better teachers.” While I don’t see a connection between money and teaching ability what I do see is something called extortion by the Teacher’s union. Teachers in New jersey earn over $100,000 a year, taxpayers pay the highest taxes in the country and STILL the kids are turning out dumb as mud. Several years back there was a study performed comparing the teaching skills of catholic school sisters/nuns (who earn little or no money for teaching) with those of public school teachers. Hands down, the catholic school sisters/nuns outperformed the public school teachers in teaching skills and it showed in the fact that catholic school students did MUCH better than their public school peers. More money for teachers is not the issue and while they should be paid a living wage, the extortion that these teachers’ unions are playing on the taxpaying public is criminal and should be dealt with as such.
Hey Jägermeister, what’s the name of that movie? I want to see how it ends!
#40. Idiocracy.
Without bashing the shit out of anyone… Here is my take.
I’m 28 and I agree with maybe half of what the article is saying. I wouldn’t say that the youth of today is any dumber than the youth of yester-year. All that has changed is that today, with the internet, we see all of the stupidity that is out there the moment it happens. And there is more of it, not because people are generally dumber. The stupid to average to smart ratio may very well be the same as in the past, but now there are more people on the planet, so the stupid average is up.
There will always be those on this planet who will strive to be the best they can be. Those who will go through 8 years of college just to become arrogant. These people are smart, just not socially smart. That is what the dumb people are for.
Since we continue to over populate the planet, the numbers will go up in all categories… Stupid, average and smart people will rise. Okay, the smart people will come from overseas… Nothing we can do about that.
# 11 Hmeyers said,
“My main reason for voting for Obama is flush the toilet on the Baby Boomers (Hillary, McCain, etc.).”
I think I found an example for the article.
Okay, Obama IS a boomer. McCain was born in ’36 and ISN’T a boomer. You wrote this post as a joke
based on the subject, right?
…and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
Just can’t control your Atheist-Fascist tendencies to bash Christians at every non-related opportunity, can you? Keep it up Oh Self-enlightened One, we Christians have endured far worse than you will ever imagine and we will survive, whereas you won’t…without the Lord, that is.
#39, Miss,
Another bullshit piece.
Please show or reference this study you refer to.
Years ago a similar study was conducted between Catholic schools and Public Schools in Ontario. The Catholic Schools were found to have higher marks than did the Public schools. Until someone noticed that under-performing students were expelled from the Catholic Schools to the public schools and their test scores had been skewed. In the end it was found that similar public schooled children were better prepared to enter post secondary schools than were Catholic schooled children.
I haven’t found that study but here is another, similar American report.
Your comment that New Jersey teachers earn $100,000 is more bull. The median salary is less than $47,000. As for Catholic Nuns being paid little is apples and oranges with public school teachers. I am unaware of any Nun supporting a family.
This rant (and that’s what it is) is so demeaning to the children. They didnt know how to use a ruler to draw a line. Big deal. Do you know how to use an abacus? Can you properly bisect an angle with a compass? Are your sextant and compass skills up to snuff?
Being ignorant of the proper use of a tool is not “stupid”, it’s uneducated. The instant these children enter the real world and find that “knowing stuff” is the only real currency, they’ll learn…and fast.
#47
Yes, that seems logical. All I can add is that my kids who attended private school were about 2 grade levels ahead of their friends, in most subjects. This was in an area with very good public schools.
Your mileage may vary.
zzzz…Every generation thinks the next generation will fail, and then they don’t. I wouldn’t use Oakland as a proxy for the rest of America.
Btw I read that study re: private vs. public schools, and despite the acknowledgement that private schools score higher on average PERIOD, they were able to concoct a socioeconomic normalization variable that made it appear that rich students in the study did statistically insignificantly-better than rich students at private schools. This variable used highly subjective criteria like ‘extent to which schoolwork is discussed at home’. A tour-de-force in torturing the data until it confesses.
I don’t care if the 5 richest students at Compton High did better than the 5 richest students at Our Lady of Crackhead, when the overall level achivement is higher at the private school.
#48–Mike==good on you. At least you tried to get to something relevant. “Kiddies” are the same today as they were last generation, as they were 1000 years ago, as they have always been==empty vessels waiting to be filled. If you don’t put anything into these vessels, they remain empty. Simple.
The kiddies are the measure of the performance of the educational system. Any criticism of the kiddies is a criticism of the educational system (yes, parents and society too) that is educating them.
Mikey==will this pool of largely untrained and unchallenged be able to learn when the world thrusts that challenge upon them? I doubt that seriously. There is a “time frame” where the mind is hungry to learn and it shuts down relatively early.
The articles telling sentence: “They cannot write an intelligible paragraph.”
As the Buddhists teach: Life is hard. A society that leaves no child behind in fact tends to leave all children behind. I don’t see the kiddies behing challenged to excel, rewarded for excelling. When you spend more time mainstreaming handicapped kiddies than you do catering to the exceptional child, you get a death spiral to the bottom.
The article is a bit deeper than the comments here, proving its very point.
I totally was in the wrong teacher’s union when I taught high school. All the teacher’s union did for me was take money out of my paycheck every month. How do you get into this mysterious all powerful teacher’s union? I’ve never seen any evidence that it exists but people love to talk about it so I’m sure it does.
First, this is not new. Over 30 years ago, my parents took my sister out public Junior High school because the principal told her that she would not see anything new for two years thanks to her private elementary education. In particular, California’s public education system is a grease fire. Purely based on anecdotal evidence, I think NY’s is probably one of the best.
Second, I was waiting for the Idiocracy reference. Thanks #6.
#47
Actually, what that proves is that schools that have the authority to expel problem children are better able to help the rest of the students. The biggest improvement in the schools, IMO, would come when parents have a choice over the school their child attends *and* when the schools have the authority to expel whom they wish. In that way, the schools are competing for students and the students must work to stay in the school.
Teacher’s union is to incompetent teachers, as
Catholic Church is to child molesters.
What else can you expect from a country which votes idiots as their president. Not once but twice……….
#43 “You wrote this post as a joke
based on the subject, right?”
Yes 😉
And no.
I find it hypocritical for mass of 50-60 year-old incompetent nincompoops from the “me generation” who can’t turn on a computer without formatting their hard drive to whine about young people.
There are plenty of rocks to go around if one wants to throw stones.
Pedro, please re-read my comment: I specifically said: “Spanish clearly being an example.” So, please, if you blindly subscribe to a certain political current at least (really) read the whole thing you’re gonna criticize first, try to put your talking points in context and spare us the ones that are pre-refuted, ok? 😉 I don’t care what your political inclinations are, but if you don’t really read and understand the issues yourself, or just blindly subscribes to some partisan line, just spare everyone else your uninformed vote and skip the polls, ok? Have a good day.
#55 “I find it hypocritical for mass of 50-60 year-old incompetent nincompoops from the “me generation” who can’t turn on a computer”
As far as I know there is only one candidate from the me generation that is running, Omama.
So, as per your original post you will be voting for McCain so no more boomers get elected?
Hmmmmn, maybe using lead laced gasoline wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe times are getting so hard that there’s no time for family. Maybe the lack of discipline and respect in the schools make teaching a difficult and undesireable profession. Maybe all of the above and more, maybe that social experiment called capitalism is starting to show it’s negative consequences. Maybe I’m so stupid as to not have any contact with reality. Maybe you shouldn’t be reading this…
#53, Thomas,
Anecdotes? Shit, I can spare one.
A seven yr old kid has a brain growth. Not cancerous but it causes up to 1000 epileptic seizures per day. The operation is quite successful. Only the child will never be as smart as his siblings. He won’t even be average. But he isn’t retarded.
After he recovered and returned to school, the parents tried to enroll him in the Catholic school as his older brother had done. Can’t be done. The school doesn’t have special ed. Well he doesn’t need special ed. Well the school can’t accommodate physically handicapped children. He isn’t physically handicapped. He might get hurt. How, he doesn’t play sports, is the school dangerous?
Did I mention the school is subsidized by the government? Did you know the school, by law, had to take him?
But because he couldn’t ever achieve great tests scores he would never be accepted in the Catholic school system. The local Catholic church not only lost some parishioners, the Separate School Board also ended paying for the kid’s home schooling for a year. He is now in the public school system and doing quite well although he is still a year behind due to his illness.
Now, the tone of your post suggests he should be expelled so the other students can excel. Are you willing to support his ass for the rest of his life so the other kids can do well?
#60
On the contrary, such a child deserves all the opportunities in the world including a good education. If *all* parents really had a choice as to where they could send their child, then they would be able to find another top notch school for this child instead of being stuck sending them to the local public school.
No, the kind of child of which I referring is the gang banging loser whose parents refuse to do anything about their behavior and cannot be expelled from the public school system. I’m referring to the children that are real disruptions to the other children and yet the teacher’s hands are tied with respect to disciplining them.
Throw in religion and you have a perfect storm.
If everyone homeschooled their kids, the results would probably be better than what you can get in these urban public schools.
re No. 7
Q.E.D.
In a growing number of American locales, it’s no big deal, either to the kids, or their parents/guardians/whatever how crappy they do in school. If they don’t exceed academically then, oh well, it’s the Government’s job to pay their way. That’s what Government is s’posed to do.
In Japan and other nations which, ironically, seem to do much much better in academics on a National scale, it’s a matter of family honor that a kid do well in school. A kid damn well better not bring home bad grades. And in school, the kids are not coddled when they don’t do well. They understand their responsibilities and do their best to live up to them. There’s a lot more pressure, but it seems the Japanese kids seem to excel at a lot higher rate. Wonder why that is? Demanding a student’s best, well, it often gets the student’s best.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an American. I don’t wanna live in Japan. I want some things to return to how they used to be here. Like American pride, and that goes ESPECIALLY in education!
It’s all in the National Attitude. Look at nations where the kids excel at a higher rate than in America. What’s so different? The National Attitude towards education and what we’re willing to do in order to achieve excellence.
In America, a kids’ self esteem and feeling good about oneself is held in seemingly higher regard than his/her academic achievement. As a result both stupidity and ignorance runs rampant. Hell, just watch (if you can stomach it) the audition rounds in American Idol (or any other so-called “reality” programming for that matter). First off, that this shit is so huge is indicative of the troubling times we live in. And seeing so many of these no talent morons up there, all indignant cause they didn’t get picked, when, of course, they’ve just delivered the musical equivalent of a fecal impactment (SP?). It blows the mind that people really CAN be that stupid!
Idocracy – seems the main thing they got wrong is that, at this rate, it won’t take nearly as long as the movie predicted……
It all starts at home…..
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end at home. And in a climate where shitty academic performance is allowed to be explained by “disparate cultural abilities” or some other such poppycock, well, is it any surprise that this Country’s education system is the joke that it is?
It’s not a Republican problem, and it’s not a Democrat problem. Both parties are to blame. The Dems wanna continuously throw more money at the issue, the Repubs are too lazy and out of touch and wouldn’t recognize a real solution if it bit ’em on the face. And if someone in one party, magically, does come up with a decent idea, because of the “team sports” nature of today’s political climate, it’s derided and trashed by EVERYONE on the other “side” until it’s forgotten, or until the other side “devises” it, at which point it’s then derided and trashed by it’s original proponents. Both parties are fucked and the parties are standing in the way.
The answer’s not to just throw more money at it. We’ve tried that for decades, it doesn’t work.
What good is there in throwing money in willy-nilly, at anything and, if it doesn’t work, oh well – more money?
The answer is throwing whatever funds are, indeed, necessary into a system where performance is mandated and funds are rightfully targeted. Yeah, money’s needed, only a moron doesn’t know that. But it needs to be spent in a much better, more focused manner, and someone has to be accountable. Stop accepting bullshit excuses why excellence isn’t being obtained. Fuck the “reasons” why it cannot be done. Make it happen. “Reasons” and excuses are why we’re in this position in the first place.
Give the teachers the tools they need, including taking the shackles off of them, allow them to demand excellence of their students, and the majority will do a good job.
If I fail to do my job up to it’s mandated standard, guess what? I don’t get to keep my job. So, if those involved in education cannot get the job done, why the hell should these people stay employed? If the tools are there, you’ve got what’s needed and your students aren’t achieving? Then you’re not doing your job, so get the fuck out of the way and make room for someone who CAN get results. A teaching position is not a right, it’s a responsibility.
Sadly, Obama cannot fix this, not alone. McCain can’t fix it, not alone (insert obligatory “old as dirt” joke here, it’s late here, I couldn’t think if an appropriate one). With the bulk of the members of Congress who seem to hold their positions with impunity, who have proven they’re interested in doing absolutely nothing of value, well, then, nothing of value will ever get done. Until we recognize the problems we face, stand up, and clean house, we’re all, collectively, fucked.
But we’re lazy, we don’t stand up…..
And for the love of whatever you hold dear, quit blaming GWB, “the Liberals”, or any other one person, entity or group (with the exception of the National education system) for this problem. It’s been growing for decades. It’s been mishandled, completely, all the way around. One party didn’t break it, one party sure as hell won’t clean it up.
Just my $0.26 (Adjusted for inflation)