Dumb or Just Badly Educated…or Maybe Just Lazy?

Or How about just badly informed Joe.

As far as education goes, teachers are tired of tying job performance to tests that don’t really measure student progress.
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“The gap between the numbers who watch American Idol and those who watch the Lehrer News Hour will always be massive…”

Pants on the ground!
Pants on the ground!
Looking like a fool
With yo’ pants on the ground!
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–Jim Lehrer

So, does that mean you love us Swampland commenters, Joe? I’m only kind of kidding but is what you really want for everybody to scour your work and spout off about it the way we do?

The gap between the numbers who watch American Idol and those who watch the Lehrer News Hour will always be massive–but the number of people who don’t pay any attention to the news at all continues to grow….and all too many of those who do try to follow the news get their information from sources that feed their prejudices.

Ding ding ding. Face it: most people would rather be told what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

Joe Klein:
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So the institutions and systems of your profession share no culpability (beyond the hated Fox News/NY Post) whatsoever in this phenomenon?
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It’s the failure of public education, an expanding middle class, and the ineluctable forces of history at work?
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That’s it?
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The press corps has merely done a fantastic job of their constitutionally enumerated public duties?
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Can you understand why this omission of yours is so glaring, Joe Klein?

Consumers should do a little investigating of their own – IOW, don’t take something as gospel just because Fox or even CNN says it’s true. Get several sources (minus the spin) and see what they say.

The problem is that our political actors are chosen from a cross-section of idiot Americans; and usually that is even based not on any sort of merits, but on who you know or who your parents are.

Little Willy Kristol was exposed as a political hack who is wrong about everything and runs a money losing magazine, but because he had a famous name, Time Magazine decided that he would be a perfect person to hire as a political columnist.

When his ineptitude was even too glaring for Time, he was let go and hired at the New York Times because his daddy was famous.

When his ineptitude was even too glaring for the New York Times, he was let go and hired at the Washington Post.

Then there is this:

“Of course, duping people is the point. … That’s one of the reasons why it works so well,” said one Republican operative familiar with the program, who said it’s among the RNC’s most lucrative fundraising initiatives. “They will likely mail millions this year [with] incredible targeting.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31956.html

Meanwhile, the press will keep right on reporting that Scott Brown pledges to pass a trillion dollar in tax cuts AND cut the federal deficit at the same time without telling us if this makes a lick of sense or not.

Doesn’t *have* to make a lick of sense…that’s what drives the media.

“Clearly, education reform is absolutely essential”

By reform do you mean going back to basics or just throwing money at a dumbed down system that was started in the 1970s. Rather than teach critical reasoning, writing and math we changed education for diversification, political correctness and self esteem. Consequently we have the highest esteemed lowest achieving students in the developed world.

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Education as a right got to be a baby sitting service. Pushing children along without any skills became an Olympic sport. To further that farce, we had universities in the name of diversity throw admission standards out the window. More time is spent trying not to make any would feel bad while spending inordinate amounts of time pushing politically correct nonsense in the name of education. Ask any high schooler how many times they were shown “Inconvenient Truth” in high school whether it was biology, chemistry, math,English or History class.

The left now bemoans that we have uninformed disinterested people. Well you reap what you sow!

WHAT ABOUT THIRTY YEARS OF “CONSERVATIVE” DOGMA FLOODING THE MEDIA AND THE COMPLETE EMBARGO OF REAL LIBERALS FROM PUBLIC DISCOURSE!!??

There’s a thousand things going on here that is lowering national discourse. Sure, education is a problem, but when we Liberals complain about how people aren’t paying attention to the news, we aren’t talking about inner city kids where, in some cities, drop out rates are in excess of 50%. Most often, we’re complaining about the Fox News watchers who are swallowing the BS coming from there. Problem is, Fox isn’t the exception. I think my favorite political cartoon last year was Fox says “Obama is Satan”, MSNBC says “Obama is Jesus” and CNN says “tonight on Larry King, Paris Hilton”. Anyone with a passing interest in News could listen to their local station and get a bullet point understanding of what is going on. You can’t do that – and fewer people are interested in doing that when they’d rather spend their time online than watching TV.
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Which brings us to another important note: we’re no longer in the era of 3 channels, all of which have a 6pm news program. Today, you can spend your day texting your friends and Kevin Bacon would remain closer to you than a shred of news. Last month, I removed the final broadcast network show that I was still watching (House) from my list of taped shows. You have to want information to find it today, and it’s not clear that people from 30/40/50 years ago wanted information that much more than people from today.

I agree that the MSM is terrible–sensationalistic, obsessed with gotcha! instead of informing the public. But there is PLENTY of information out there–just take the health care bill (s) in Congress right now–there is a ton of very detailed information on the internet–the New York Times has a detailed, excellent analysis of all the bills’ provisions, as well as the Washington Post, and many other news outlets. The White House site also has explanations and links to the bills. There is virtually no reason for a minimally curious individual not to know at least one or two provisions in these health care bills. I agree with Joe Klein; being a citizen requires work. Citizenship, like parenthood, must be exercised–it’s not just a label to be worn. This is the essential element behind the ancient Greek concept of democracy: a citizenry that is not only informed but directly participates in decision-making. People who are zombied-out by too much technology, television and junk food and escapism make for poor citizens indeed.

Also, if one wants proof that this situation isn’t so wonderfully new, one only needs to look up McCarthy.

No, I think you had it right the first time. Stupid. And I would add to it selfish, lazy and irrational. Oh and fickle. I shouldn’t forget fickle.

Right there hasn’t been any liberal voices or media for 30 years only conservative ones. You are the shining example of the over-esteemed underachieving educational system or just completely delusional

There are numerous documented problems with the press corps’ current conventions and methods of reportage, amongst which are:

1) He Said-She Said/Regression To a Phony Mean/Reporting “the controversy”
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2) De-contextualizing
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3) Prioritizing process over substance
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4) The Ideology of Fluff
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5) Objectivity advertisement
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6) Prioritizing escape from criticism over the function of informing
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7) Over-reliance on official sources/anonymous sources
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8) Prognostication/The culture of “savviness”
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9) Maintenance of the Sphere of Legitimate Debate as a press corps function
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10) Rank tabloidism and sensationalism
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11) Press corps biases toward the culture and professional ideology of the press corps
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12) The anthropological approach to journalism, which sees all competing social and political interests as equally valid

I could go on; the ways in which the press corps fails to inform are complex and myriad.
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Maybe the biggest problem is that the news media are the biggest culprits of all in transmitting a dangerous fiction to the public: that, in order to be informed, all that is required from ordinary people is to tune in to the news media –no independent investigation of anything is necessary.
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When you exclaim “it’s out there”, you’re perhaps forgetting that normal folks are being deliberately, actively discouraged from doing anything other than passively consuming advertiser-driven “coverage”.
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How do you expect ordinary people caught up in the struggle of everyday lives to know that the news media is shamefully inadequate? There are literally campaigns waged in order to hide that fact from them!

these observations would be easier to take seriously from someone who hadn’t made a massive contribution to the trashing of political discourse by publishing “Primary Colors”

Badly informed by whom? There are so many avenues available now to find all the information one needs that, that is no longer an acceptable excuse. I mean when there are people who believe it would be possible for any American government, in this day and age, to institute “death panels” that can pull the plug on grandma or grandpa, then you have to wonder. Even if a party in power wanted to do that, if you knew anything about how our three branches of government work, you would have to know that they just couldn’t implement it. But look at what happened last year.

Klein is just stating what most people and, I believe, politicians know to be true but are afraid to publicly state. It is getting easier and easier to hoodwink the average American. Our saving grace is that, as a nation we still have a substantial number of hard-working citizens and immigrants who are keeping our nation afloat…I just don’t know how long that will last if things don’t change soon.

Forgotten–

Excellent points all, especially the cartoon you mention. I’ve been thinking a lot about your twitter argument in recent years: When I was a kid we not only had 3 networks, we also had three flavors of ice cream–vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Our school system was created in that plain vanilla world and haven’t adapted–haven’t found new strategies to compete with the various games, formats, distrations and seductions that are far more compelling than sitting in a classroom.

We’re still catching up with the implications of the information age. We need to catch up quicker.

I’m always amazed how quickly some pile onto journalism/journalists as being a big part of the problem. There are so many ways to get information (and so many opinions on what constitutes a journalist these days) that I think journalism is capable of amazing things these days. It just requires a bit of digging on the part of the individual.

I also think that when times get tough, people hunker down and look inwward toward their own household/family. I have a good number of friends who have been politically active/well-informed over the years, but they are so engrossed in trying to find jobs and stay afloat right now. It’s difficult to stay engaged in the world at large when your own piece of the world is falling apart.

Thanks so very much for responding to commentary, Joe Klein, these clarifying thoughts are always appreciated.

The Internet alone ought to make it easier to be better informed today, than at any time in history. However, if you are never taught to think properly, or drop out of school before you are, the easy availability of data won’t make that much difference. As people have argued in the past, however, the biggest problem may be the fact that ignorance is celebrated in America. Ignorance is big business. The most successful cable network in America thrives on ignorance. People like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck saturate prime time, not professors of philosophy. It is no wonder that “gut instinct” is thought to be a superior method of thinking to inductive or deductive logic and reasoning by analogy. As long as ignorance remains profitable, and is celebrated, no one should be surprised when hordes of people oppose things that are in their own best interest.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/pentagon_hired_saddam-bin_laden_theorist_mylroie.php?ref=fpblg
Another fact the traditional medias smart analysists like Joe missed about the Iraq war brought to you by those devils in the netroots.
And Joe, I despise comparing one generation to another. There were many high school drop outs in the 50s. The thing was they could get a job with a living wage.
Most people, then as now, were not devouring news. They were working, going to movies, watching wrestling and I Love Lucy on the tvs, and taking care of families. There were plenty of stupid people and always have been.
The stupidity that has increased in direct proportion to their outlets is the traditional media.
I could watch news from Vietnam on 3 network news shows and witness the carnage nightly. The war in Iraq gave us embedded reporters that were missing the entire big picture.
Reporters at home were cheering the shock and awe because it made a great picture and story.
Joe, take some responsibility instead of now blaming the schools.

Have you forgotton Father Coughlin, Senator McCarthy, HUAC, Nixon elected twice.

Rather than teach critical reasoning, writing and math we changed education for diversification, political correctness and self esteem.
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free,
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I agree on the problem, disagree as to why.
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Too many parents want their little darlings to be in the best schools and are just sure they deserve to be there, no matter what. When Ky instituted standardized testing to eval the schools, it was supposed to solve everything. So, the schools started concentrating on teaching the tests, rather than the subject, to keep the bureaucrats off of their backs.
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Whole industries devoted to preparing a student to take the ACT/SAT sprang up, including fee-based practice exam sessions. Those scores went up, as did the number of students who required remedial math/reading instruction when they entered college. They didn’t necessarily get into the college based on their grasp of the subjects matter, but rather on their ability to take a test.
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Even the military has had to deal with individuals whose main skill was test taking, but who had poor management or people skills.
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It’s the real-world aspect of the education process that bothers me. That we will be counting on future leaders and researchers whose main skills are at gaming whatever system into which they are thrown.
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Physics and chemistry laws don’t really care what your SATs were when it comes time to develop the next space program or vaccine. But your grasp of the science better be spot-on.

Good question, zananab.
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People are poorly informed by just about every journalistic source in the country.
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If you read the New York Times during the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and believed the reporting of Michael Gordon and Judy Miller, and the punditry of Bill Keller and Thomas Friedman, you’d have been under the impression that invading was a fine and necessary idea. If you were aware that the population of every other country in the rest of the planet hated the idea, you had to believe that they were all misinformed.
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Judy Miller has been disgraced; no one else anywhere in the media has suffered one iota for their horrendous reporting and opining.
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Beinarts and Kristols keep failing upwards; people who were right about anything, like digby or Atrios or Greenwald, are kept away from mass audiences, or, like Krugman, isolated as ill-informed by their more politically correct counterparts.
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People believe stupid stuff because the media is terrible at reporting the news.
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Here it is on health care: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/is-health-care-reform-popular.html
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The media reports about outrage and process on health care and the stimulus, and almost never on the substance.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20101230308
This will stop abortion. Starve people so they wont breed. This could be a Fox solution.

[...] Joe Klein posts again: To clarify my post below a little bit: I don’t think Americans are stupider than other people…though we may be stupider than we used to be. Indeed, I think the U.S. has been, historically, the repository for the smarter and more ambitious people from other countries–risk-takers, adventurers, those who felt suffocated by the absence of freedom or opportunity. That remains true today, especially among our hard-working recent immigrants. [...]

Of course Joe Blind doesn’t acknowledge the obvious, which is that this nation of dodos elected the President who he so clearly loves. He can’t have it both ways. The citizenry could not have been brilliant in November, 2008 but woefully uninformed now. It doesn’t work that way

freeinpa,

If you think the problem of “dumbing down” in schools was started by liberals in the 1970s, my father is living proof you are offbase.

My father went from being considered an average student in a country school, to be considered a “genius” in an inner city school. He had a high school math teacher who did not teach anything accept one lesson, which she used whenever her classroom was visited.

That was not in some northeast liberal state in the 1970s, but some conservative southern state in the 1940s.

Well, at least more politely expressed than your first post. Joe, do you agree with Scherer’s pt. 6 last week? I won’t link to it. As you blog here, you’re surely aware of what your colleagues are doing, as well as the response it gets from commenters.

I agree that American education is utterly failing. Aside from lack of funding, my long-standing opinion after 15 years of teaching is: our kids aren’t failing, their parents are failing them. Both in my experience in CA & FL colleges and here in Japan, those who get an education are either a) hungry for it or b) driven and disciplined, bred of their family’s culture. This is nearly universal in my present part of the world. In those largely immigrant states where I previously worked, it was my 1st and 2nd gen. immigrant students from Latin America, the Caribbean, SE Asia, E. Europe who flourised, who had the curiosity, critical thinking and drive to succeed. In part, this was due to hunger, the striving to rise, but by and large it was also due to the old-school discipline their parents inculcated at home. When their sons and daughters failed, their parents reaction, like my own in 30 years ago, was not to blame the teachers or schools, but their children.

So, agreed, education is important. However, blaming the schools or the teachers’ unions is baffling. Nothing personal, but this is unsurprising from elites whose children all go to the best schools that money can buy. By & large, most elite journalists and politicians don’t have the faintest notion of what a middle class public school or the lifestyle of its families involves. And I’d add that it’s far easier to demonize the teachers or schools as opposed than the nation’s parents. Not many politicians or journalists are interested in calling them out.

In any event, you cannot speak of ignorance without acknowledging the media, can you? Can we get your verdict on the magazine that puts Glenn Beck on the cover but fails to call him what he is. Or the media writ large that still harnesses the colossal ignorance that is Sarah on us without documenting said stoopid. Or a media that discusses school districts that teach creationism without ridiculing them?

Too late, Joe. You’ve probably made the Fox News hit-list already…

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Y’know, I’ve never quite figured out the school system issue. The problem is that I grew up in Calgary, Canada. The province of Alberta, when split from Canada in the International rankings, rates regularly in the top 5 – I graduated just….6 years ago so my experience with it is relatively recent. Alberta is considered the Texas of Canada both for its oil and for its political leanings (though it’s still left of the vast majority of America), and I can’t figure out what the differences are between Alberta and the American education system.
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Similarly, my company provides software for K-12 Education for Canadian schoolboards. My exposure is limited, but there doesn’t seem to be much in terms of what they’re doing. I guess I’m wondering, what is it that’s deficient about the American school system and what am I missing.
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On a similar note: when we talk about revolutionizing the educational system, could someone give me an idea of what people are looking at as specific methods?

Is that the same magazine that put B.O on the cover repeatedly with out telling us what a massive, lying, arrogant piece of crap he is?

Bad education, Joe? Then I expect we will see your columns regularly assailing the NEA union for the failures.

We, the idiots you disdain, support the educational system with billions of dollars that are wasted by a Dept. of Education that demonstrably has failed and teacher’s unions that annually demand more money for results that get worse and worse.

And now that I have the opportunity, let me say that there is something morally repugnant about a reporter who used an insider position of trust to write an anonymous screed about his patrons.

Have a nice day,

Wildbill2u

I googled “what’s in the stimulus package”.

I got this detailed list from the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/STIMULUS_FINAL_0217.html

This great drill down list from NYT:
http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/stimulus

This short summary from MSNBC:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/17/1748381.aspx

As well as numerous articles like this one:
http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/what-does-the-stimulus-mean-for-you/

Anybody who can type “what’s in the stimulus package” could find out in about 30 seconds. All from major media outlets.

The media can’t make the public read it, however.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/25/too-dumb-to-thrive/#comment-127097#ixzz0dfSr1KmV

If you believe everything in the NYT and WaPo posts how dumb can you be. I read them every day but i can at least think for my self not just parrot what they say mindlessly.

Have you ever disagreed with anything they say?

I know you (and by you I mean mainly Stuart) are going to hate hearing comment on from overseas on this topic but…

In comparing notes with friends in the US and the Europe with day to day experience here in Australia there does seem to be a qualiative difference in the civic knowledge in the US as compared to the much of the rest of the west. I really think this is about information and education and not intelligence. Joe is being either lazy or deliberately provocative by using the word Dumb.

That said, the current administration does seem to lack skill when it comes to communicating things like a stimulus. The Australian version was done as a single, paper cheque for $900 rather than monthly tax rebates. And the education part was done as grant to every elementary schoool in the country specifically to build or redo a building. All nice visible stuff (as well as stimulatory in right places at the right speed). Result happy electorate and no recession (we had one slightly negative quarter and that was it).

There now appears a good likelyhood that a good, intellegent, President is going to get stymied and then tossed out for doing a good job and replaced by delusional idealogues who will further bankrupt the country in material and intangible ways. Apart from the disaster this represents for the American people, in cold blooded competitive terms, the international perspective is of a former giant becoming easy meat.

We didn’t elect a Prime Minister who speaks Mandarin by accident. We gotta think of our future and if the US pollity keeps falling down this badly, then we’re very much afraid American ain’t it.

Excellent critique of the media role, Stuart. I would add, the trafficking in and basic failure to debunk “conservative” dogma and right-wing lies about Democrats and liberals.

Joe Klein exposes his own idiocy with every word he writes. I doubt the folks over at Fox even raise an eybrow towards him anymore.

The problem with the demise of newspapers and other print media is that when you looked in a newspaper for what you wanted to find , you were exposed to a lot of other topics as you searched for it. You might see a headline that got you to look at another topic, expanding your overall knowledge. You were exposed to alternative possibilities.

With electronic media, you see just the information you wanted and the rest of the screen is a blank. You must push yourself to see what other options exist or you will become the one-trick-able to do just one thing but very good. If you don’t read at all, either print or electronic media, and get your news from TV (8 stories on average per show) or radio (news is scarce except NPR but opinion is abundant and usually negative), you will become basically illiterate.

Too many people haven’t read since Mrs. Smith in school last required that they make a report on “what is happening”. It is becoming a lost skill and along with that-rational thinking.

Well of course such articles exist, sidnancy, but they’re a small proportion of the coverage.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082802613.html
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In my examination of roughly 80 A-section stories on health-care reform since July 1, all but about a dozen focused on political maneuvering or protests. The Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism had a similar finding. Its recent month-long review of Post front pages found 72 percent of health-care stories were about politics, process or protests.

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Now, if you’re the GOP, do you push for loads of substantive coverage, or a focus on the sausage-making? Of course you push for outrage over horse-trading, because you’re losing on substance (see the above Andrew Sullivan link). You hope to see a steady drumbeat of article about who’s up and who’s down, not about what’s in the bill. That is, in fact, what has happened, and that has in fact diminished support in polls for “the Democratic health care plan,” even though polls on the substance of the issues continue to show strong support for almost every aspect of the plan.
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The media is terrible at reporting the news. It is terrible at informing people about the substance of issues.

Joe Kelin:

LOL. A stunning two columns. Stunning in their political stupidity as well as their economic stupidity. I know it’s not polite to laugh at people on the verge of a nervous breakdown (that’s you, Joe) or to laugh at the feverish kool aid drinking commenters on this thread. But, it simply isn’t possible for me not to.

Joe, you are a political hack. That means you do not speak the truth: and you’ve done your job on that front in these columns. What surprises me is that you have as big a tin ear as your savior. Good thing for you all those dumb@$$es you complain about don’t read your columns. But, I already see that you are getting major press over your little tantrums today. Guess the dumb@$$es will hear about it anyway.

As regards your economic ideas, you know that von Hayek, Freidman et al are the ones who got economics right, not Keynes. Give it up, Joe. You are not pro-democracy or markets, you are a statist propagandist who is desperate to continue brainwashing the koolaid drinkers who daily are being de-programmed. You see they are get wise after making a huge mistake in Nov. ’08 and now you are in a panic and lashing out at the citizenry. Keep up the comedy classics. I enjoy a good laugh.

(With embarassing typos removed, it’s nice WordPress would let us do this without a duplicate post)

I know you (and by you I mean mainly Stuart) are going to hate hearing comment from overseas on this topic but…

In comparing notes with friends in the US and Europe with day to day experience here in Australia there does seem to be a qualiative difference in the civic knowledge in the US as compared to the much of the rest of the west. I really think this is about information and education and not intelligence. Joe is being either lazy or deliberately provocative by using the word Dumb.

That said, the current administration does seem to lack skill when it comes to communicating things like a stimulus. The Australian version was done as a single, paper cheque for $900 rather than monthly tax rebates. And the education part was done as grant to every elementary schoool in the country specifically to build or redo a building. All nice visible stuff (as well as stimulatory in right places at the right speed). Result, a happy electorate and no recession (we had one slightly negative quarter and that was it).

There now appears a good likelyhood that a good, intellegent, President is going to get stymied and then tossed out for doing a good job and replaced by delusional idealogues who will further bankrupt the country in material and intangible ways. Apart from the disaster this represents for the American people, in cold blooded competitive terms, the international perspective is of a former giant becoming easy meat.

We didn’t elect a Prime Minister who speaks Mandarin by accident. We gotta think of our future and if the US pollity keeps falling down this badly, then we’re very much afraid America ain’t it.

I agree with SZ that the media has a great deal of culpability in our current crises.
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On issue after issue, they fail utterly to go beyond horse-race political reporting and contrived narratives. All too often, they serve as the mouthpieces for those organizations that are screwing us.
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But I can’t deny a great deal of stupidity and complacency on the part of the American public.
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Part of this is through our increasingly rotten education system, and part of it, as Joe mentions, is that Americans are spoiled from five decades of TV and increasingly advanced entertainment technology.
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We can blame the media for failing to acknowledge the Pentagon using retired generals for propaganda, but can we blame the media for the fact that most people are mostly concerned with who’s about to win the Superbowl?

Thanks for your perspective, I appreciated it.

Joe, your attempted walkback is just about as bad as the original, given that it shows us the original was not a fluke. (of course, I suspected that.) You don’t even bother to consider that if Americans are as stupid as you claim, they might be missing out on the brilliant truths of conservatism.

I would have guessed you would learn from the molten lava dumped on you in the last thread, but I guess not. Fine then, semper fi. And cry in your bathtub a little more about losing Ted Kennedy’s seat to a conservative.

I agree that it’s a hunger for education that is driving foreign students, and not necessarily a better educational system. After teaching in Asia, I would argue that the Chinese system is holding many students back actually. From what I see, the students in Asia sit quietly in class and take word for word notes on whatever the teacher is saying, and then they memorize those notes. There are very few students with strong critical thinking skills, and this is not even encouraged.
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I think we should be careful about wanting to change our education system to be like an Asian/Chinese educational system. These students are scoring high on tests because they study all day everyday. IMO, the most important thing is to get parents involved in their kids’ education and stop blaming the teachers for every kid that fails.
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We should also recognize that maybe there is not the drive to succeed like in previous generations because we are already a pretty wealthy nation. Anyway, it’s not an easy thing to fix, and I know I don’t have all the answers.

I have been teaching college for almost 15 years and I have watched the quality of students go down. When I started teaching, perhaps a handful of the students had difficulty writing a research paper. Now most of them don’t know how to begin. Their grammar is bad, they are clueless about doing research, they can’t format a basic paper, and they have no ability to cite references.

Perhaps the most tragic revelation is that surveys indicate over half of college students cheat. So why bother learning the basic skills of literacy, research and composition if you can copy another person’s work? With social promotion we continue to dumb down education. And with groups like the Tea Party, I fear we are headed towards a situation not unlike the Chinese Cultural Revolution where intellectuals are viewed as unpatriotic elitists (ala Faux news).

The Education system will be no better than the students and the parents behind them.
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Ask any teacher how engaged their students parents are. They are not. Only in the best of districts, and those are the high income districts, is parent involvement high.
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Blame the system, but when the school district becomes a baby sitting service, then there isn’t much educating happening.
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Low income, two parents working long hours, means poor results. Those are facts, and yes there are exceptions, but one can not expect the exceptions to rule.

Over the last forty years individuals have steadily changed the way they interact with the rest of the planet to a small screen, whether for work, play, or whatever. How many of the commenters who regularly post here actually talk through their views in a physical face – to – face environment with someone else on a regular basis for example?

Maybe this is what made the Teabagger movement so newsworthy. These people were actually meeting with each other for God’s sake.

Having to think on one’s feet and being able to look someone else in the eye and form an opinion are skills which are rapidly disappearing, yet they are far more educational. Hell we even have special shows on TV dealing with “reality”, as though reality has become the new escapism.

Hell, we can even kill people by playing a computer game at some AFB in Kansas, or wherever.

If you remember your Machiavelli (The Discourses not The Prince) you’ll know that he believed that republics are inherently unstable. The citizens become lazy and complacent and let their liberties evaporate, usually when they’re busy doing something else.

I’m enormously amused when I see that the last “regime” set up a GULAG, murdered prisoners, started a war without justification, bugged citizens, placed unqualified cronies in key positions and massively redirected wealth to a small “elite”, but it is the current one that’s being accused of “totalitiarianism” and “elitism”. Perhaps some of your teabagger compatriots should Wikipedia the term “Banana Republic” and see which recent administration best fits the description therein.

As far as I can see that for large sections of the public in the US today to be smart, knowledgeable and well organised is to be “elitist” and unfit to lead. Your global competitors in, for example, China do not have the same problem with that kind of person. It may explain the current difference in the apparent prospects for the two countries.

afguy:

I would agree that the requirements of testing may not be the best approach, however it is at least a beginning to holding teachers to some standard. Coincidently, those folks who think they all have above average children were the same folks who pushed for curriculum changes and althernative teaching methods. As I said we have over-esteemed underachieving students brought on by “progressive” curriculum changes.

==

These same parents are the soccer moms and dads who don’t keep score at games and everybody gets a trophy for showing up. We would not want anyone to feel bad.

==
fhmadvocat: Thanks for your overwhelming evidence of one.

What makes you think Brown is a conservative? By who’s standards? Perhaps you should check you facts. He is middle of the road…moderate. Check the record. He hangs out with Dems as much as Repubs. He’s an independent at heart and something of a narcissist looking for his 15 minutes of fame and he just got it. It had nothing to do with the so-called conservative agenda. Perhaps you are an example of what Joe was saying? Is it lack of intelligence or lack of ability to do research, or laziness? You decide.

I agree with your point about a lack of student preparation, but It’s not all about low income parents working two jobs, etc. I teach college, so I see that lack of preparation and it doesn’t seem to be tied to income for my students. Some days I want to blame it on K-12 teachers, but when you talk to them you learn that a lot of it is the parents. Sure, there are parents not paying attention, who haven’t taught ther children to appreciate the value of an education or to respect adults or to act with civility. But if that wasn’t enough, there are also “helicopter” parents who threaten teachers if they don’t give their students the grades the parents want for them. These type of parents will threaten a teacher’s livelihood and frankly take all the fun out of teaching. And there is the “entitlement” generation of students who think they earn a grade for showing up. I try to point out to them, it doesn’t work in church and it doesn’t work in school. The proof is in the pudding. Bottom line, in a culture where many of us are challenged at games like “who is smarter than a 5th grader” there is little value placed on a good education. That is why I worry about a Chinese style Cultural Revolution where the illiterates and the poorly educated seize our government. Perhaps it has already begun with the help of Faux News.

[...] had a follow-up post (1/25/10) in which he said that Americans, i.e. Time's main customers, are not actually stupider than the [...]

[...] had a follow-up post (1/25/10) in which he said that Americans, i.e. Time’s main customers, are not actually stupider than [...]

People don’t watch the news anymore because of morons like you who ignore facts and simply report how you “feel.” Clearly you feel something in your groining when Obama speaks because you have not said one negative thing about him since he came to power, not one. You claim that taxes will not raise because states got $270B for state aid, why did my property taxes GO UP? Why is NYS and CA on the verge of bankruptcy? Clearly you don’t understand the stimulus or cannot do math, probably both. Americans may not watch the news, but maybe if the news was not so activist, see MSNBC for a great example, perhaps that would change. Perhaps if people like you were not so stupid it would help, but guess what…

Joe,

According to your article you must be listening to MSNBC because something has been feeding both your prejudices and your ignorance. No other network quite qualifies for the job!

And by the way, I am fairly sure that my education surpasses yours (even in your inferior judgment). I am absolutely positive that my ability to judge the failures of this current President is vastly superior to yours. But that isn’t saying much.

He’s fiscally conservative and will kill the bill. That’s what we need in these times. You can cry too; it’s okay.

That sounds like it is a problem with the teachers, doesn’t it? By all means call your students stupid, but don’t blame the ones teaching them… That makes sense. Clearly you need to retire or find a new job because based on your comments you do not belong in teaching.

Well, Mr. Klein, your arrogance and lack of intelligent common sense comes thru on this blog. 1st thing, we do not live in a democracy, we live in a constitutional republic. Someone that claims to be smarter than most people should know that. 2nd, since when is America a socialist state ? We are capitalist. Socialism doesn’t work and has killed more people than anything else in human history. Let’s see. Stalin killed 30-50 million of his own people and Mao killed up to 70 million. Those are cold killer butchers in my book. Also, the progressive movement supported eugenics. That philosphy has cost the lives of millions of people as well. I refuse to debate issues with someone that has a lack of knowledge of history as you do. So until you understand history and civics, I refuse to waste my time with arrogant morons such as you.

Rather than talk down to your readers on a weekly basis Joe, try informing them. That is the job of journalists. Journalists are government watchdogs, not government lapdogs which you seem to be one of.

[...]and all too many of those who do try to follow the news get their information from sources that feed their prejudices.

That’s a double-edged sword. Biases don’t just run rampant in Republican or Conservative circles, nor is it missing on CNN or MSNBC, it’s prevalent in all parts of the media culture. You, yourself with your attacks on Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Party Protestors and FOX News have just outted yourself as biased against anyone to your ideological right.

When you start talking down to the consumer of your product there is a good chance they’re going to turn you off for something like American Idol. That’s the beauty of having freedoms and rights in this country.

Yeah, let’s look at the rotten education system and just who runs it in this country. You’ll find a sizable number of liberals run the Teachers Unions, the NEA and the classrooms and colleges in this country.

There are plenty of online sites cataloging the wasteful spending of the stimulus bill, and it’s not found in the pages of TIME for a reason. TIME is written by and for progressives and liberals. TIME is increasingly becoming a government lapdog for the left, rather than an unbiased government watchdog.

[...] stands: it is impossible to run a democracy without active, interested citizens." Read more: Dumb or Just Badly Educated…or Maybe Just Lazy? – Swampland – TIME.com Dumb or Just Badly Educated…or Maybe Just Lazy? – Swampland – [...]

[...] most recent and egregious example of this is Bollywood film, 3 Idiots, which encourages student laziness with delusions of genius. Based on a book written by Chetan Anand, it is supremely facile and baseless story, without [...]