The Stupiding
Mark Morofrd, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle has written a spot-on column today about the state of education in America. While his column is limited to public schools, there's no evidence that the situation is any different in private schools. This phenomenon is something I've witnessed as well, both while at Florida State and currently. For the record, I should note that I received my primary and secondary education in public schools as well. I was fortunate enough, one way or another, to have gotten a pretty good one as far as I can tell. The things Morford's correspondent points out about the illiteracy, both linguistic and mathematical, of those coming out of the system today are absolutely things that I've noticed about the majority of at least first-year university students as well.
American kids, dumber than dirtThere is one more thing that I think should be added to the list of causes that I don't hear being discussed much. I'll likely have a few folks grumbling at me for saying it, too, but what the heck. This is my own "cute little blog" and I never post dirty pictures on it. I post dirty thoughts instead.
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go...
My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.
Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are overprotected and wussified and don't spend enough time outdoors and don't get any real exercise and therefore can't, say, identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all...
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...
Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it...
...he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.
It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence...
Then our discussion often turns to the meat of it, the bigger picture, the ugly and unavoidable truism about the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system, one that actually generates intelligent, thoughtful, articulate citizens...
Then our discussion often turns to the meat of it, the bigger picture... the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system...
Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don't arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog...
The other culprit is a philosophy that largely came out of the 1960's and was promulgated by children's television shows like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street. It's a touchy-feely, wimpifying, unchallenging idea that tells young children that they are inherently special, different, unique. That their feelings about the world matter as much as the way the world really is apart from their judgments which we all create in some degree of ignorance. See, nobody is inherently special, unique or different. That's a thing that we have to impress upon children, I think. We all start off of equal value, part of a swarming, seething, undifferentiated mass of humanity who, as individuals, will largely go unnoticed by the rest of that seething mass. We can choose to remain part of that anonymous crowd if we like in which case whatever talents we do have (and yes, everybody has one or two) will be exploited for the benefit of others. To become truly unique, to make a mark on the world and take command of our own destiny, we absolutely must find a way to distinguish ourselves. We do this by dedication to something greater than our own selfish interests. We do it by not merely being content with the gratification of essentially infantile needs so that we can feel good in this moment and the next but by realizing that we must forge ahead and deny ourselves momentary pleasures in order to contribute to something greater than ourselves. To do that, we must first have knowledge of where things are at present. If we are to stand upon the shoulders of giants, as it were, we must first locate the giants and then clamber up there. That process is called education.
Education isn't supposed to be a pleasant and gratifying stroking of the ego, nor is it supposed to be merely the regurgitation of facts without intellectual context. Our childish beliefs must be challenged. Students, children, must be made to rebel at some point but in a way that is bounded by intellect, and this is done by giving them the tools for critical thought. It seems that nature has already instilled in us the rebellious streak; it's probably as basic as when a pack animal strikes out on its own. We function in a broader human context, though, and the understanding of that context is also a part of the duties of a good education. That is a major end toward which the naturally rebellious intellect must be direct. Children should be given the means by which to dissect the current ideas of society and assemble them again (gradually, of course) so that they can discover how it all fits together and find for themselves what they can, as individuals, bring to the table. Then, and only then, do they become special and uniquely valuable. Then they become individuals, not just a part of that faceless mass of humanity, and not just a resource for somebody else to exploit.
We have to get rid of the touchy-feely part. It isn't enough to have some idealized, fattened Athens as our role model. We need just a little bit of intellectual Sparta in our democracy as well, and we need this factor to be introduced during the formative years. Waiting until university age is already too late and it means that most children never get this training. Those are the very children, as Morford's column notes, that turn into passive, indiscriminate consumers who are willing to take all their cues from some God or government. What we have now isn't fit for producing citizens so much as cattle, and the product of it has been the mess we're in now with ignorance, violence, and America's fading from a vibrant center of intellectual achievement into little more than a market for what is produced by others. We should, I think, be erecting walls not along our national borders to keep out "aliens" with whom we cannot compete, nor with isolationist policies that amount to the same thing. We should be building walls in students' minds, fortifications built of intellect and mental strength, of critical thought and analysis, and of a confidence not born of some fairytale notions of being chosen by some deity for which we find no evidence in the world, of surrogate parental praises for the beautiful child, but a confidence born of achievement, accomplishment, and the genuine knowledge of their abilities.
I am not holding my breath in anticipation of the day when this happens, of course. This isn't an easy thing. It's a tremendously difficult undertaking, and so it is extremely unlikely to happen, whether within my lifetime or beyond it. Our increasing intellectual softness, our unwillingness to take on the pain of acknowledging our own ignorance (and we are all ignorant of most things, whether we are a seamstress or a scientist), and the already-ingrained priority placed upon feeling good about ourselves at all costs very nearly preclude our society's taking on such a daunting endeavor. Perhaps we've already proceeded too far down a road paved with marshmallow to turn back.
Having witnessed these past forty years, having watched where America has gone and what has happened to my culture, I often think it is a good thing that none of us get to live forever. For all the fake patriotism and bumper sticker Americanism, we have managed to produce a society in which we confront
...teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.When you don't know what "democracy" means anymore, you don't miss it when it's gone.
