6 ms·

American Kids Aren't Getting Dumber; They Were Just Never That Smart

72 points by wybo 16y ago

rriepe 16y ago
"It's a myth that we've fallen from our glory days." This one seems to pop up a lot. Not just in education, but in everything. Is it just a sort of cultural nostalgia, a collective-but-selective memory? I'd be interested in seeing studies on it.
- yan 16y ago
  I find that that statement personifies the difference between conservatism and liberalism at its core: contrasting the glory of better days through more idealist eyes to the glorified potential utopia of the future.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    Although more about social values than education, the book "The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap" just came up in conversation recently, and it deals specifically with the way we view the past through rose colored glasses. http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/0465090974 http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/0465090...
    - rriepe 16y ago
      Thanks, I'll add it to my reading list. ...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up.
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        ...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up. I was about to argue with you, and then... touché. :)
  - Semiapies 16y ago
    Until you hear liberals saying the same things, of course. Listen to them talk about the salad days of FDR or Jack Kennedy. Watch them go on about how every undictated social change is a Problem to be Addressed - or slurp up material like Idiocracy. There's no overall difference between the two groups when it comes to forward-looking or nostalgic, just how old or cynical the individuals are.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    While liberals do often hark back to idealized good old days of big manufacturing, high taxes, unionization and everyone having health insurance, I think it's a little unfair to portray conservatives as idealists looking toward some future utopia. For the most part (libertarian fringe excluded), they seem to simply lack vision of any sort, forward or backward.
- frossie 16y ago
  I think the angst is not so much because of a perceived temporal decline; rather because of an unstated expectation that the U.S. should be first. This is possibly aggravated by the fact that nobody knows for sure why the test scores are low, but everyone can have a theory.
  - Qz 16y ago
    Unstated? Maybe you don't watch the news enough to see how much time politicians devote to proclaiming America the greatest nation on earth in every possible respect...
    - Semiapies 16y ago
      Unstated by the people saying it in this context.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  I've read that studies suggest that the golden age is typically located 10 years before you were born.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    I am pretty sure that the 1970s sucked.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      I was going to post the same thing, but then I thought: what would it have been like to actually attend the Homebrew Computer Club and witness the birth of the PC industry?
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        It'd be cool, no doubt; but if I was born in Australia (as I was), it'd have sucked.
    - qntm 16y ago
      Other than the Moon landings?
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  I think most of the myth is about the 1950s Eisenhower era, when Germany, Japan, China, and S. America weren't competing at all with our own economy. It was significantly less competitive then and for a brief period of time we were a powerhouse, but over time that has faded.
  - cmoylan 16y ago
    This was a period when you could support a family and live a comfortable middle-class existence while working on an assembly line. It wasn't a question of the education, just much less global competition.
- gamble 16y ago
  America was a genuinely high-growth 'emerging economy' until ~1950, and then by sheer coincidence experienced another few decades of economic dominance thanks to the destruction of WW2 and the rise of communism in eastern Europe and Asia. The 'glory days' were quite real, at least economically. As for other claims, it's easy to feel optimistic when a rising tide is floating all boats.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    The USA was blessed with some great geography too. Two giant mountain ranges capture enormous amount of snowfall and the snowmelt drains into the interior of the country, rendering massive areas amenable to agriculture. In turn this created a large population suitable for industrialisation.
anon098 16y ago
For those still unware, here is the politically incorrect truth about PISA and America's subpar performance on it: http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587 http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587 "True, East Asians - Chinese, Koreans, Japanese - are turning in the top scores in all three categories, followed by the Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. "But, looking down the New York Times list of the top 30 nations, one finds not a single Latin American nation, not a single African nation, not a single Muslim nation, not a single South or Southeast Asian nation (save Singapore) [which is Han Chinese], not a single nation of the old Soviet Union except Latvia and Estonia." ... "Steve Sailer of VDARE.com got the full list of 65 nations, broke down U.S. reading scores by race, then measured Americans with the countries and continents whence their families originated. What he found was surprising. "Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests. "African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate, Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points." Here is the chart: http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  VDARE is a hate group, which often republishes white supremacists. With such a clear, ideological bias, I would hope that people here would know better than to accept their conclusions without some serious corroboration or fact-checking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDARE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDARE
  - coderdude 16y ago
    So says the Southern Poverty Law Center. Surely there's no connection between being criticized and criticizing back. If that's all you've got on them then I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the label wagon. It sounds more like their research and findings are just a little controversial and the people on the business end of those findings aren't too happy about it. I agree with you on your argument about fact checking though.
solipsist 16y ago
"We should stop talking about some golden age of schooling that never existed, and instead look for ways to create one." As I posted on another thread, everyone should watch this video if they have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...
nhangen 16y ago
I could care less about test scores and baseline performance in measured tests. What I care about is drive, inspiration, motivation, and innovation. Sure, the US doesn't have a monopoly on any of that, but I'm not ashamed of what our best and brightest are doing.
- auxbuss 16y ago
  It's "couldn't care less". When you say "could care less" you are endorsing the claim of American Kids Getting Dumber. If you still don't get it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
  - nhangen 16y ago
    Eh, you get the point, but thanks for the catch. Fixed...or not. Can't edit because of the reply. Darn.
- zwieback 16y ago
  Exactly. And at any one point there are only a handful of high performers. The rest of us get by just fine with basic math and skills borderline literacy. This is true in all fields, even the hard sciences, if there even is such a thing. The vast majority of research organisations are desparately copying what a few standouts discover. The few truly innovative and driven students will self-select as long as they are given a chance. I'm not endorsing the dumbing-down of education but it doesn't really scare me either as long as a reasonable baseline is maintained. Looking at my 10 yr. old daughter's public school curriculum for math and sciences I have to say that it's not so different from mine, which was German public schools of the 70s and 80s. By the way, "could care less" is ok in common usage now - heard it on NPR so it must be true.
mkramlich 16y ago
i've often thought that many Americans were not necessarily more talented or innately intelligent than folks in worse off areas of the world. they were just lucky to be born in a nation and time when they had a silver spoon in their mouth, in relative terms. With increasing globalization of the economy, that is coming to end, which sucks, but probably inevitable.

72 points by wybo 16y ago

"It's a myth that we've fallen from our glory days." This one seems to pop up a lot. Not just in education, but in everything. Is it just a sort of cultural nostalgia, a collective-but-selective memory? I'd be interested in seeing studies on it.

yan 16y ago
I find that that statement personifies the difference between conservatism and liberalism at its core: contrasting the glory of better days through more idealist eyes to the glorified potential utopia of the future.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Although more about social values than education, the book "The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap" just came up in conversation recently, and it deals specifically with the way we view the past through rose colored glasses. http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/0465090974 http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/0465090...
  - rriepe 16y ago
    Thanks, I'll add it to my reading list. ...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      ...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up. I was about to argue with you, and then... touché. :)
- Semiapies 16y ago
  Until you hear liberals saying the same things, of course. Listen to them talk about the salad days of FDR or Jack Kennedy. Watch them go on about how every undictated social change is a Problem to be Addressed - or slurp up material like Idiocracy. There's no overall difference between the two groups when it comes to forward-looking or nostalgic, just how old or cynical the individuals are.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  While liberals do often hark back to idealized good old days of big manufacturing, high taxes, unionization and everyone having health insurance, I think it's a little unfair to portray conservatives as idealists looking toward some future utopia. For the most part (libertarian fringe excluded), they seem to simply lack vision of any sort, forward or backward.
frossie 16y ago
I think the angst is not so much because of a perceived temporal decline; rather because of an unstated expectation that the U.S. should be first. This is possibly aggravated by the fact that nobody knows for sure why the test scores are low, but everyone can have a theory.
- Qz 16y ago
  Unstated? Maybe you don't watch the news enough to see how much time politicians devote to proclaiming America the greatest nation on earth in every possible respect...
  - Semiapies 16y ago
    Unstated by the people saying it in this context.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
I've read that studies suggest that the golden age is typically located 10 years before you were born.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  I am pretty sure that the 1970s sucked.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    I was going to post the same thing, but then I thought: what would it have been like to actually attend the Homebrew Computer Club and witness the birth of the PC industry?
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      It'd be cool, no doubt; but if I was born in Australia (as I was), it'd have sucked.
  - qntm 16y ago
    Other than the Moon landings?
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
I think most of the myth is about the 1950s Eisenhower era, when Germany, Japan, China, and S. America weren't competing at all with our own economy. It was significantly less competitive then and for a brief period of time we were a powerhouse, but over time that has faded.
- cmoylan 16y ago
  This was a period when you could support a family and live a comfortable middle-class existence while working on an assembly line. It wasn't a question of the education, just much less global competition.
gamble 16y ago
America was a genuinely high-growth 'emerging economy' until ~1950, and then by sheer coincidence experienced another few decades of economic dominance thanks to the destruction of WW2 and the rise of communism in eastern Europe and Asia. The 'glory days' were quite real, at least economically. As for other claims, it's easy to feel optimistic when a rising tide is floating all boats.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  The USA was blessed with some great geography too. Two giant mountain ranges capture enormous amount of snowfall and the snowmelt drains into the interior of the country, rendering massive areas amenable to agriculture. In turn this created a large population suitable for industrialisation.

anon098 16y ago

For those still unware, here is the politically incorrect truth about PISA and America's subpar performance on it: http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587 http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587 "True, East Asians - Chinese, Koreans, Japanese - are turning in the top scores in all three categories, followed by the Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. "But, looking down the New York Times list of the top 30 nations, one finds not a single Latin American nation, not a single African nation, not a single Muslim nation, not a single South or Southeast Asian nation (save Singapore) [which is Han Chinese], not a single nation of the old Soviet Union except Latvia and Estonia." ... "Steve Sailer of VDARE.com got the full list of 65 nations, broke down U.S. reading scores by race, then measured Americans with the countries and continents whence their families originated. What he found was surprising. "Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests. "African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate, Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points." Here is the chart: http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm

michaelchisari 16y ago
VDARE is a hate group, which often republishes white supremacists. With such a clear, ideological bias, I would hope that people here would know better than to accept their conclusions without some serious corroboration or fact-checking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDARE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDARE
- coderdude 16y ago
  So says the Southern Poverty Law Center. Surely there's no connection between being criticized and criticizing back. If that's all you've got on them then I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the label wagon. It sounds more like their research and findings are just a little controversial and the people on the business end of those findings aren't too happy about it. I agree with you on your argument about fact checking though.

solipsist 16y ago

"We should stop talking about some golden age of schooling that never existed, and instead look for ways to create one." As I posted on another thread, everyone should watch this video if they have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...

nhangen 16y ago

I could care less about test scores and baseline performance in measured tests. What I care about is drive, inspiration, motivation, and innovation. Sure, the US doesn't have a monopoly on any of that, but I'm not ashamed of what our best and brightest are doing.

auxbuss 16y ago
It's "couldn't care less". When you say "could care less" you are endorsing the claim of American Kids Getting Dumber. If you still don't get it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
- nhangen 16y ago
  Eh, you get the point, but thanks for the catch. Fixed...or not. Can't edit because of the reply. Darn.
zwieback 16y ago
Exactly. And at any one point there are only a handful of high performers. The rest of us get by just fine with basic math and skills borderline literacy. This is true in all fields, even the hard sciences, if there even is such a thing. The vast majority of research organisations are desparately copying what a few standouts discover. The few truly innovative and driven students will self-select as long as they are given a chance. I'm not endorsing the dumbing-down of education but it doesn't really scare me either as long as a reasonable baseline is maintained. Looking at my 10 yr. old daughter's public school curriculum for math and sciences I have to say that it's not so different from mine, which was German public schools of the 70s and 80s. By the way, "could care less" is ok in common usage now - heard it on NPR so it must be true.

mkramlich 16y ago

i've often thought that many Americans were not necessarily more talented or innately intelligent than folks in worse off areas of the world. they were just lucky to be born in a nation and time when they had a silver spoon in their mouth, in relative terms. With increasing globalization of the economy, that is coming to end, which sucks, but probably inevitable.