dumb and dumber. americans hostile to knowledge?

[kenny weir]

I doubt 'Mericans of any age or generation are in general way more dumb than, say, Kiwis or Aussies.

As far as geography goes, 'Mericans are challenged by the insularity of their culture and country, where each state is seen as a virtual country. As well, it often seems 'Mericans tend to view the rest of the world as something that happens on TV.

I reckon this lack of curiosity about the world allows nasty nut jobs of all sorts to bypass the nuances of the world at large and typecast, say, all residents of the Middle East as rabid bomb-hurling types who "hate us because of what we are are, not what we do" and so on.

In Oz and NZ, by comparison, just about everybody gets out and travels the world. We gotta - we're stuck right up here on top of the world!

Still, it was pretty bloody funny when I saw a clip of 'Mericans being utterly flummoxed when asked in a vox pop poll: "Name a country starting with the letter U."

Edited February 18, 2008 by kenny weir

[Swinging Swede]

Was it this?

[Alexander]

At the present time, I'm teaching students who are working towards their GED (many are very far off from this goal...a large number of my students read below a sixth-grade level). In the morning, I teach kids between 16 and 19 years old. In the afternoon, I work with women in a county jail, who can be anywhere from 18 to 99 (most are in their 30s and 40s). These people have almost no prior knowledge, which can make my job a challenge. It's hard to prepare kids to answer a question that compares the Civil War to World War II when they don't know anything about either. When I asked my morning class when WWII happened, a large number guessed "the 1980s."

I don't blame these kids, of course. I know that at least one of them is homeless (his family is living in a motel on the taxpayer's dime), and almost all of them have at least one family member in prison. These kids have a LOT on their plate. The public school system failed them, and they've dropped out. I know that I'm their last, best hope of getting a start in life that doesn't include drugs, crime, or minimum-wage hell. What bothers me is not their lack of knowledge, so much as their lack of curiosity. They don't know things: That's fine. There are a great many things that I don't know. I'm always telling them that an intelligent person knows just how much he or she doesn't know. But they don't WANT to know about things. When I try to teach things to them, they complain that it's irrelivant to their lives. They want to know how math, science, history and literature are going to help them as hair stylists or while working at McDonalds. I try to explain how a great many things I'm teaching them do have a practical application, but they don't really believe it, and I'm at pains to show them how algebra is going to help them make correct change. I want them to understand that education is their ticket out of the ghetto, but I think they've lived in the ghetto too long to be able to conceive of a world outside of it (they certainly have made it abundently clear to me that they don't care who the next president is, they don't care what happens in Iraq of Afghanistan, and they don't care about Global Warming).

My students at the jail are a completely different story. They are hungry to learn and they do care very much about the world. We just watched "An Inconvienent Truth" and they are all writing letters to elected officials asking what they plan to do about Global Warming. We're also reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" at the jail, and the students are finding that they really identify with Anne and her ordeal. On Friday, we watched most of "Schindler's List" and they were shocked by what humans are capable of. These women make it worth getting out of bed in the morning, I'm telling you.

I guess what I want to know is this: What happened to "common knowledge"? Did it ever really exist?

[papsrus]

At the present time, I'm teaching students who are working towards their GED (many are very far off from this goal...a large number of my students read below a sixth-grade level). In the morning, I teach kids between 16 and 19 years old. In the afternoon, I work with women in a county jail, who can be anywhere from 18 to 99 (most are in their 30s and 40s). These people have almost no prior knowledge, which can make my job a challenge. It's hard to prepare kids to answer a question that compares the Civil War to World War II when they don't know anything about either. When I asked my morning class when WWII happened, a large number guessed "the 1980s."

I don't blame these kids, of course. I know that at least one of them is homeless (his family is living in a motel on the taxpayer's dime), and almost all of them have at least one family member in prison. These kids have a LOT on their plate. The public school system failed them, and they've dropped out. I know that I'm their last, best hope of getting a start in life that doesn't include drugs, crime, or minimum-wage hell. What bothers me is not their lack of knowledge, so much as their lack of curiosity. They don't know things: That's fine. There are a great many things that I don't know. I'm always telling them that an intelligent person knows just how much he or she doesn't know. But they don't WANT to know about things. When I try to teach things to them, they complain that it's irrelivant to their lives. They want to know how math, science, history and literature are going to help them as hair stylists or while working at McDonalds. I try to explain how a great many things I'm teaching them do have a practical application, but they don't really believe it, and I'm at pains to show them how algebra is going to help them make correct change. I want them to understand that education is their ticket out of the ghetto, but I think they've lived in the ghetto too long to be able to conceive of a world outside of it (they certainly have made it abundently clear to me that they don't care who the next president is, they don't care what happens in Iraq of Afghanistan, and they don't care about Global Warming).

My students at the jail are a completely different story. They are hungry to learn and they do care very much about the world. We just watched "An Inconvienent Truth" and they are all writing letters to elected officials asking what they plan to do about Global Warming. We're also reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" at the jail, and the students are finding that they really identify with Anne and her ordeal. On Friday, we watched most of "Schindler's List" and they were shocked by what humans are capable of. These women make it worth getting out of bed in the morning, I'm telling you.

I guess what I want to know is this: What happened to "common knowledge"? Did it ever really exist?

Don't kids respond well to role models? Perhaps digging up a few educated ones might inspire them? Or people who have risen above the ordinary despite long odds? (... I'm sure you've tried all this and more).

I think that your post also suggests something about the education system in the United States that often overlooked when comparing test results here to those in some other countries. Virtually every child in the U.S. is required to attend school (or be home-schooled) until a certain age. Something to keep in mind when comparing U.S. test results to, say, Indian or Chinese students, where, correct me if I'm wrong but, I think there are broad swaths of uneducated children who simply are not factored in to their results.

The U.S. has the most extensive higher education system in the world and some of the best universities anywhere. It's a system that attracts students and educators from around the globe, to our great benefit. The opportunities to attend them can be limited, of course. But that speaks, at least in part, to their quality as well.

Adult or continuing education programs (as you've pointed out) are also pervasive. And technical schools, where people can learn these useful skills that your students are curious about, are common.

There are a great many educational opportunities in this country. We of course have to make them more widely accessible ... again.

But the truth is, many people are happy being uneducated, holding down day jobs and going home to watch television each night instead of reading a book, or listening to music. They get by in our society just fine. In fact, we need them. Who else is going to change the oil in our cars, serve us fast food, deliver our pizza? That sounds cold, but there's some truth in it, isn't there?

[WorldB3]

I think there is portion of the population that is poor and white that are kind of looked down upon and ignored.

I grew up poor and due to the stressful conditions education was something that was never stressed as being important.

I got out and turned out ok ( I have a good job, own a house) due to hard work but I certainly would have loved to have had parents that had the money and time to take an interest in my future. Luckily I have a strong curiosity in computers, music and reading. It also helps that my wife and I have a three days a week no TV rule.

[AllenLowe]

"Knowledge is Good"

-Faber College

"Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour?"

[papsrus]

I think there is portion of the population that is poor and white that are kind of looked down upon and ignored.

I grew up poor and due to the stressful conditions education was something that was never stressed as being important.

I got out and turned out ok ( I have a good job, own a house) due to hard work but I certainly would have loved to have had parents that had the money and time to take an interest in my future. Luckily I have a strong curiosity in computers, music and reading. It also helps that my wife and I have a three days a week no TV rule.

That's a good rule. I work nights, so that alone limits my TV watching. But there's TiVo. Ours is more than half filled with unwatched -- and probably never-to-be-watched -- programs. We recently ditched the movie channels, because we rarely utilized them.

I use the TV during football and baseball season to keep one eye on the games, to monitor election results (although, the internet is better for that) and to watch a few shows I enjoy from time to time. (The various incarnations of Law and Order, I'm afraid. Luckily, I can turn the TV on at virtually any time of the day or night and catch an episode.) That's it. I think nothing of going a day or two without turning it on.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Hard subject this.

In Britain, education up to the age of 11 became compulsory in 1870. The legal school leaving age was raised to 14 in 1918, to 15 in 1945, to 16 in (I think) 1968. I dare say there is a similar timescale in America.

Now we have an effective education-leaving age of 18, because you can't get dole until you're 18. But a society that sees education as an alternative to the dole has something seriously wrong with it, I think.

All this past legislation on the age at which education ceases to be compulsory reflected the demands of industry for, initially, workers who could reeed, rite and do riffmetick. As industry became more technical, greater skills were needed, and a longer period in education required. But this was all quite popular because, although the teaching profession doesn't like to think of education as anything but a good in itself, almost everyone could see the value in education - and particularly those who lived in bad situations, because you could see that it was the way out. Here in South Wales, education was widely seen as the way you managed to avoid having to go down the mine.

But when you can see that it isn't the way out - and viewed as an alternative to the dole, that's clearly true - what are you supposed to think?

But it isn't just people in bad situations that are affected. The perception of the disconnect (except at the highest levels) between education and earning a decent living is pervasive. Partly, maybe mainly, that's simply down to the nature of the west's present economic problems. Partly it's also because, over here at least, but I think we're not unique, fads in teaching, particularly in how reading is taught, have reduced levels of literacy to the point where, though many can read, they don't delight in it, can't absorb written material well, or easily. And of course, there is now a lot of competition to books (but I think there always was).

It seems certain that TV has contributed, but not, I suspect, simply as a competitor. Almost all TV programmes, even ones on abstruse and academic matters, are constructed in three minute segments, because the producers/directors believe (and it's probably true by now) that the audience's attention wanders if a scene/shot or whatever lasts more than three minutes. So trying to hold the attention of a classroom for forty minutes is now a monumental task because everyone is used to short bursts.

MG

[Alexander]

Partly it's also because, over here at least, but I think we're not unique, fads in teaching, particularly in how reading is taught, have reduced levels of literacy to the point where, though many can read, they don't delight in it, can't absorb written material well, or easily.

MG

I have encountered so many students who don't *like* to read. Not only do they regard reading as a chore (at best it is a necessary evil), but they think that people like me who genuinely LOVE to read, whom they never see without a book in his hand, as gluttons for punishment. I really think that they see me and my enthusasim for reading as some sort of masochism. And why shouldn't they? Reading is hard for them. They derive no pleasure because they're spending all their time simply decoding. I am not fluent in French or German, although I have studied both in high school and college, respectively. If I were to sit down with a book in French, I wouldn't enjoy it because I'd be too busy just trying to figure out what it says. On the other hand, my good friend HWright IS fluent in both French and Spanish. He reads books in both languages all the time, both for pleasure and to bolster his language skills. The difference between me and my students is that I am able to look beyond my personal experience and understand why another person does what he or she does. So many of my students really can't see beyond the ends of their noses. If something is uninteresting to them, it must be uninteresting to everyone. If someone enjoys something they don't, then that person must derive some perverse pleasure from being bored or annoyed.

[Michael Weiss]

This Wednesday night:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/nyc/events...eason_feb_2008/

Edited February 19, 2008 by Michael Weiss

[Jazzmoose]

Oooh...another book for my list! I really enjoyed her Freethinkers.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The difference between me and my students is that I am able to look beyond my personal experience and understand why another person does what he or she does. So many of my students really can't see beyond the ends of their noses. If something is uninteresting to them, it must be uninteresting to everyone. If someone enjoys something they don't, then that person must derive some perverse pleasure from being bored or annoyed.

I rather suspect that's mostly because of their age. I'm pretty sure kids were like that when I was a kid. And I don't doubt it has always been the same. That's the big downfall with those ideas of education that seem to rely on the pupils to create their own learning agenda.

Kids have actually got to learn something at school and that is, to me, the only time the heavy hand of public authority really has any justfification. (Also, a heavily authoritarian school may encourage people to be rebels, which is a generally good thing for society.)

MG

[Dan Gould]

For whatever its worth, when I was growing up, every child was encouraged to read and trips to New York that included a lengthy stop at the big Barnes & Noble in mid-town on 5th Ave were looked forward to. My mother even insisted on picking out books to give as birthday presents rather than whatever toy was popular. I surely didn't enjoy giving a buddy a book but it shows that if your parents encourage it, anyone will discover that reading is as far from a "chore" as you can get.

[Niko]

Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.

nothing against Darwin and evolutionary theory but to me my existence (and the existence of the place where i am living) (where are not even speaking of my half-hungarian girlfriend) has always had a much more certain flavour... funny to think that some of your religious fundamentalists deny it

Edited February 19, 2008 by Niko

[Jim Alfredson]

It's amazing how uneducated people are when it comes to science. Overheard this weekend while in Indianpolis and watching a news short about research into the beginning of the universe:

Person who shall go un-named: "Oh, so the Big Bang is true now? I thought it was just a theory?"

[Niko]

It's amazing how uneducated people are when it comes to science. Overheard this weekend while in Indianpolis and watching a news short about research into the beginning of the universe:

Person who shall go un-named: "Oh, so the Big Bang is true now? I thought it was just a theory?"

i think miconceptions like this often arise from the way physical theories are taught in school...(as if they were facts instead of theories that fit very well) [what follows now might be utter nonsense i am very bad at physics] when we learned in school that in some respects light behaves like waves and in others like particles i didn't really care about how this goes together but we also didn't discuss it... only years later i realized that (arguably) the most fundamental lesson to be learned from this is that light is neither a wave nor particles but that it must be something third... (and that this does not diminish the usefulness of the two theories) (btw, looking back the physics class i had as an exchange student in 11th grade in the USA was a bit better in that respect having a strong focus on how theories arise from experiments...)

don't really see the problem of creationism being taught in school (long as it is not the only thing...), how long does it take, 20 minutes? god put it all here and now it's there...

[Swinging Swede]

don't really see the problem of creationism being taught in school

In science classes? Well, put the Spaghetti Monster theory there too, then.

[Noj]

If creationism has any place in a science claass, it is only as an example of pseudo-science and the pitfalls of cherry-picking facts to fit a conclusion (as opposed to letting the facts point toward a logical probability).

[A Lark Ascending]

It seems certain that TV has contributed, but not, I suspect, simply as a competitor. Almost all TV programmes, even ones on abstruse and academic matters, are constructed in three minute segments, because the producers/directors believe (and it's probably true by now) that the audience's attention wanders if a scene/shot or whatever lasts more than three minutes. So trying to hold the attention of a classroom for forty minutes is now a monumental task because everyone is used to short bursts.MG.

The idea that TV and popular culture are destroying the brains of young people goes back to the 50s (much earlier I suspect re: popular culture). In which case, most of us here are actually products of that impoverishment of culture.

Most criticism of contemporary schooling in the UK comes from those who attended privileged schools (the public schools or grammar schools) at a time when a significant proportion of the population were packed off to secondary moderns where they wouldn't get in the way until they could go out and do manual work; they then compare their experiences with contemporary schools where you'll often find the full ability range in the same classroom.

It's also worth noting that what children learn today is quite different from what they learned in a 50s privileged school. You are rarely comparing like with like. Children certainly read less books; but they have amazing skills at selecting, manipulating and using data from computers (much of which they don't learn in school in the same way that many of us developed much of our our reading or musical appreciation outside of the curriculum)

I actually think that the old have a vested interest in believing the young are less intelligent/educated/cultured/independently minded than they are. When you think about it, that's quite sad.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Bev Stapleton

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

My wife was telling me a story yesterday about her history class in school (sec mod) in the early sixties.

"Right, the Industrial Revolution." (Teacher sees Lawrence Goodway's hand wrapped in bloody bandage.) "What's wrong with your hand, lad?"

"Been bitten, sir."

"What bit your hand, then?"

"Rat, sir."

(No more Industrial Revolution that day. It was a bit like an Organissimo thread, at that school, she tells me.)

MG

[Alexander]

I actually think that the old have a vested interest in believing the young are less intelligent/educated/cultured/independently minded than they are. When you think about it, that's quite sad.

I want to make it clear that I do NOT think that my students are "unintelligent." There are a lot of different kinds of genius, and since I've been teaching, I've been exposed to several kids who undoubtedly qualify as physical genuises or mechanical genuises, etc. What bugs me is the apparent lack of curiosity about the wider world. These kids know all about the ins and outs of surviving on the streets of Schenectady, New York. But they couldn't care less about what's happening in Washington, D.C. or in Iraq or Darfur, much less things that happened over a hundred years ago. I sometimes think that their brains have learned to reject all information that it regards as unessential. In fact, it may be a survival technique.

[A Lark Ascending]

My wife was telling me a story yesterday about her history class in school (sec mod) in the early sixties.

"Right, the Industrial Revolution." (Teacher sees Lawrence Goodway's hand wrapped in bloody bandage.) "What's wrong with your hand, lad?"

"Been bitten, sir."

"What bit your hand, then?"

"Rat, sir."

(No more Industrial Revolution that day. It was a bit like an Organissimo thread, at that school, she tells me.)

MG

In my first year of teaching I had a lad escape out a first floor window and down a drainpipe. The following year he was in a colleague's class and sat for a whole lesson one day with a bird of prey perched on his shoulder (you will not be surprised to hear tht he did not get reprimanded for not doing his homework!!!).

Last thing I heard he was in Lincoln (prison). The lad. Not the bird of prey.

And that was a comp!

[A Lark Ascending]

I actually think that the old have a vested interest in believing the young are less intelligent/educated/cultured/independently minded than they are. When you think about it, that's quite sad.

I want to make it clear that I do NOT think that my students are "unintelligent." There are a lot of different kinds of genius, and since I've been teaching, I've been exposed to several kids who undoubtedly qualify as physical genuises or mechanical genuises, etc. What bugs me is the apparent lack of curiosity about the wider world. These kids know all about the ins and outs of surviving on the streets of Schenectady, New York. But they couldn't care less about what's happening in Washington, D.C. or in Iraq or Darfur, much less things that happened over a hundred years ago. I sometimes think that their brains have learned to reject all information that it regards as unessential. In fact, it may be a survival technique.

No, your concern for them rings loud.

I'm just dubious that a great deal has changed. Were their grandparents any more interested?

I was involved in a discussion about racism in sport this morning with a mixed ability (and mixed race) group. The level of understanding and sensitvity was far higher than 30 years ago when I started teaching (you'd have hardly dared raise the subject!). Whether that is down to schooling, changes in the media, society etc, I don't know. Elements of all, I suspect. When I mentioned this to them there was much nodding of heads - they were pleased to have that quality acknowledged.

****************

I don't know how many times I've heard the great and the good expressing outrage that 50% of British students do not achieve 5 GCSEs at grade C and above. I wonder what percentage gained 5 'O' Levels (the equivatent) in 1960.

Of course, then the outrage changes - GCSEs have got easier!

It's almost as if these people have some sort of an inner need to believe that young people are not as good as they were.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Bev Stapleton

[Tim McG]

My two cents:

The students we get in the classroom today are products of the video generation. They are inundated with outside visual stimuli which, as it has been stated already, gives kids the attention span of a gnat. They are used to having things fed to them. They don't have to think because it is all done for them on a TV monitor. Add to this the computer and the World Wide Web. For the only time in our history we have instant access to anything, anywhere, anytime. Video games are designed to hold and maintain a kid's attention for hours. Then there is the cellphone/iPod/Crackberry/name the hand held electronic device which diverts even more attention. Kids will prefer to "chat" with a text message rather than to actually talk to people. Ear phones replace listening, rampant consumerism and instant gratification replaces working for something and all of it is done without having to leave your house to go look for it or experience it on your own.

Now put those same kids in my HS English or Speech class and with a teacher who says they need to discover the information through careful research and classroom discussion and they sit there looking at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. Do we really wonder why they don't know who bombed Pearl Harbor or where the state of North Dakota is? Who needs dull Shakespeare or Robert Frost when you have Brittney Spears latest hospital stay and American Idol? Of course school and learning are boring to them....there is no show/video/latest song to go along with it, is there? They simply do not care about knowing such things.

Kids hate hearing from us teachers that they need to "think outside the box" because they may not know what a box is let alone what it means to think. Analysis and critical thought is something old people do...kids must be entertained. Besides, they can get that stuff off the Net.

Having said all that, kids are still reachable and not all of them refuse to think....but those types of kids are fewer and fewer in number each and every school year. We are a Nation of Vidiots. Any specious comparison to the "good old days" or the tired old "those darn kids" argument is tenuous at best and at the very least old school thinking. Times have changed and not necessarily for the better, education-wise.

Sad, but true.

Edited February 19, 2008 by GoodSpeak

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

In my first year of teaching I had a lad escape out a first floor window and down a drainpipe. The following year he was in a colleague's class and sat for a whole lesson one day with a bird of prey perched on his shoulder (you will not be surprised to hear tht he did not get reprimanded for not doing his homework!!!).

Last thing I heard he was in Lincoln (prison). The lad. Not the bird of prey.

And that was a comp!

Great story Bev.

I didn't get reprimanded (grammar school) for not doing my homework, either, and I didn't even have bird shit on my shoulder. It was, "I don't suppose YOU'VE done your homework, have you?" I just shook my head. Everyone knew I hated it.

Ten years later, when I went back to see if I'd passed any O levels, one of the teachers actually remembered me, even though I'd only been in that school 15 months.

MG