3 ms·

American kids, dumber than dirt

12 points by nickb 19y ago

gibsonf1 19y ago
Don't blame the kids, blame the horrible public schools. The source for this article is a public school teacher in Oakland, a school district infamous for attempting to consider "Ebonics" as a language.
- curi 19y ago
  let's blame the parents. if the schools suck, and they choose to send their kids there, how are they not responsible?
  - gibsonf1 19y ago
    Unfortunately, parents don't get to choose which public school their child goes to. (In San Francisco, there is a bizarre lottery with all sorts of conditions attempting to give preference to minorities that puts kids all over the city even if there is a school a block from their home.) The only choice is public or private, and private is very expensive and for many is not an option.
    - curi 19y ago
      Besides private school, they could live somewhere else, or homeschool. Or if none of those will work, not have kids in the first place. None of these are easy options, but if you think the public schools are awful places, it's not reasonable to send kids to them.
      - rms 19y ago
        Why don't the kids have a responsibility to educate themselves?
        curi 19y ago
        young kids have very little control over their lives. for example, they don't get to choose if they want to go to school or not. as they get older and become able to (and gain the legal right to), they certainly should take responsibility for their own life and education.
      - jimbokun 19y ago
        "Besides private school, they could live somewhere else, or homeschool." What if both parents work? What if everywhere else they can afford to live has public schools just as bad?
    - stuki 19y ago
      It's worse than that. Simply by operating shitty public schools 'for free', the ruling riff-raff is crowding out investment in private alternatives for the less than well off. With no public schools available and minimal to no regulation of private ones, every neighborhood would have private alternatives with plenty of eligible kids to fill them. I suspect well off neighborhoods would still in general have 'better' schools, simply due to having more resources, but even the poorest of parents would have at least some competitively exposed, hence at least decent, options. If nothing else, charity, churches and such would help out the neediest of kids. As it stands now, a poor parent in an inner city (even more so in one as much at war with religious anything at all as Oakland), is pretty much left without viable alternatives to the local public indoctrination institutions.
  - gommm 19y ago
    Plus frankly if one count the number of hours a kid spends at school and the number of hours a kid spends at home, parents should have a rather big influence on the kid's education ;-)
theorique 19y ago
Blame Canada!
david927 19y ago
I don't blame the educational system and I don't blame the parents or kids. I blame human nature. America is ending one the most successful runs of any nation in recorded history. Cheap raw materials, incredibly cheap energy, vastly expanded markets: it's a recipe for a cake walk -- and it was a cake walk. The problem is, when you give successive generations great wealth without having to work very hard for it, what happens? We don't have to look far for case studies. It's so common in wealthy families that the expression is: the first generation creates the wealth, the second builds upon it, and the third spends it. Unfortunately, we've borrowed our way well into a fourth generation. If these kids were even slightly interested in learning, they could do so easily. Libraries and any internet-capable computer are tremendous resources. The teachers and books these kids are given are also quite good. But the culture they live in discourages learning. It values fiscal superiority over hard work. In fact, it glorifies those who get wealthy fast over those who work their lifetimes for it. It gives feel-good advice, such as, "Go your own way; break the rules; don't listen to others," which is only good advice once you already know all the rules. Getting to know those rules, however, takes a lot of hard work and time. In other words, we're a culture that values results, not effort. It's the curse of success. It's the third/fourth generation effect. It will all correct itself naturally and there's not much we can do about it -- except put our fingers in our ears and wait.
- pg 19y ago
  Cheap raw materials, incredibly cheap energy, vastly expanded markets: it's a recipe for a cake walk -- and it was a cake walk. Didn't work out that way in Russia, though, did it? Whereas Japan, which has severely limited sources of energy and raw materials, has done very well. Conclusion: culture matters more.
  - Alex3917 19y ago
    There is a model from organizational behavior saying that performance = ability x motivation x opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar plays out across societies.
    - 19y ago
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Is it just me, or did none of the reasons for this decline have anything directly to do with being an American? All over the world, people want to do exactly what the guy complains about: tune in, turn on, and drop out. You can either view this as the beginning of the singularity or a sign that we're all going to turn into mostly immobile blobs of flesh wired into a continuously self-pleasuring electronic grid. Or perhaps both of those things are the same thing. As far as me, I'm optimistic that changes in society and technology will lead to great advances in human knowledge and science. I think as some generations plug into the grid other generations in other cultures will do all the heavy lifting. On the other hand, when it comes to difficult things, like space exploration or politics, I'm not so optimistic. It's hard to have a democracy when people don't know what "agriculture" is.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  hard to have a democracy when people don't know what "agriculture" is. According to the journalist's source, when posed the stumper about definining agriculture, "Not a single student could do it". I sometimes feel like I'm the only adult who actually remembers being young, or remembers going to school. Remember school: Often enough, a teacher (or professor) would stand up, clear his throat, and grandiloquently ask, Now, could somebody define the word "agriculture"?. Of course, everyone rolls his eyes, and nobody answers the stupid question. NOBODY answers those questions--because you automatically become an idiot when you do so: I believe I know the answer, sir. Agriculture is the process of raising edible plantlife on a large scale for purposes of trade and direct consumption[1] Obviously, the journalist's methodology suggests that he himself is a functional illiterate. NO--you don't ask your friend the cranky high school teacher his opinion and then extrapolate it out to the world. Bad science. Bad reporting. People don't change that much, really. Evolution is slow. A stupid generation (evidenced by IM-engendered spelling skills) can easily be followed by a smart one. Genuine declines in intelligence are possible, but that has to do with dysgenics, a subject which most San Francisco newspapers generally won't touch on. [1] I got this off the top of my head--I hope it's right.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
mdemare 19y ago
The next generation can't even form a sentence? Why does that strike me as hyperbole?
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  What's hyperbole? You no comment good.
cellis 19y ago
There are a lot of dumb people that are millionaires. Perhaps measuring intelligence is the wrong way to go about it: perhaps we measure intelligence the wrong way.
- jimbokun 19y ago
  "There are a lot of dumb people that are millionaires." But are there a lot of dumb people who BECOME millionaires, without winning the lottery?
  - dfranke 19y ago
    Maybe not dumb, but plenty of below-average intelligence. Quoth PG: > One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn't pay well, for reasons of supply and demand. The most extreme case is developing programming languages, which doesn't pay at all, because people like it so much they do it for free. There are more reliable ways to get rich than the way that we go about it on this forum. It's just that they're unpleasant enough that most people would prefer to stay poor. Construction contracting is a good example.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
mnemonicsloth 19y ago
Summary: American high schools are less effective than they could be because they employ bitter old cranks that the students wisely ignore. Also: "any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life"
brenda90210 19y ago
They're measuring the wrong thing. These kids would totally kick previous generations' collective asses at GTA and completing raid instances. Ever watch your parents try to use MS Word or even a web browser? It's painful. Kids today may not know how to use a ruler but they can use 3DS Max. Let's see the Greatest Generation do that. Nonlinear video editing--? What's that?!? Kids today do it all the time and post to YouTube. This month's Scientific American Mind says: "A generation ago TV programs such as I Love Lucy, Dragnet and Starsky and Hutch required virtually no concentration to follow. Beginning in 1981 with Hill Street Blues, single-episode dramas began to weave together as many as 10 threads into their plotlines. The hit drama 24 connects the lives of 20 or more characters, each with a distinct story." The subject of the article is massive IQ gains during the 20th century. "If asked what dogs and rabbits have in common, a boy in 1900 would have said, "You use dogs to hunt rabbits." A boy in 2007 would say, "They are both mammals." It would never have occurred to someone a century ago to offer something so trivial. Who cares that dogs and rabbits are both mammals? What is important is what things are useful and under one's control." The context is working on abstractions with no concrete referents. (Although the article badly botches the proffered explanation of what a mammal is.)
- jamesbritt 19y ago
  > Beginning in 1981 with Hill Street Blues, single-episode dramas began to weave together as many as 10 threads into their plotlines. I've no references to quote, but I'm pretty sure soap operas have been doing that many years earlier, perhaps even when on the radio. It's also true of serialized novels published in magazines even before that.

12 points by nickb 19y ago

Don't blame the kids, blame the horrible public schools. The source for this article is a public school teacher in Oakland, a school district infamous for attempting to consider "Ebonics" as a language.

curi 19y ago
let's blame the parents. if the schools suck, and they choose to send their kids there, how are they not responsible?
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  Unfortunately, parents don't get to choose which public school their child goes to. (In San Francisco, there is a bizarre lottery with all sorts of conditions attempting to give preference to minorities that puts kids all over the city even if there is a school a block from their home.) The only choice is public or private, and private is very expensive and for many is not an option.
  - curi 19y ago
    Besides private school, they could live somewhere else, or homeschool. Or if none of those will work, not have kids in the first place. None of these are easy options, but if you think the public schools are awful places, it's not reasonable to send kids to them.
    - rms 19y ago
      Why don't the kids have a responsibility to educate themselves?
      - curi 19y ago
        young kids have very little control over their lives. for example, they don't get to choose if they want to go to school or not. as they get older and become able to (and gain the legal right to), they certainly should take responsibility for their own life and education.
    - jimbokun 19y ago
      "Besides private school, they could live somewhere else, or homeschool." What if both parents work? What if everywhere else they can afford to live has public schools just as bad?
  - stuki 19y ago
    It's worse than that. Simply by operating shitty public schools 'for free', the ruling riff-raff is crowding out investment in private alternatives for the less than well off. With no public schools available and minimal to no regulation of private ones, every neighborhood would have private alternatives with plenty of eligible kids to fill them. I suspect well off neighborhoods would still in general have 'better' schools, simply due to having more resources, but even the poorest of parents would have at least some competitively exposed, hence at least decent, options. If nothing else, charity, churches and such would help out the neediest of kids. As it stands now, a poor parent in an inner city (even more so in one as much at war with religious anything at all as Oakland), is pretty much left without viable alternatives to the local public indoctrination institutions.
- gommm 19y ago
  Plus frankly if one count the number of hours a kid spends at school and the number of hours a kid spends at home, parents should have a rather big influence on the kid's education ;-)

theorique 19y ago

Blame Canada!

david927 19y ago

I don't blame the educational system and I don't blame the parents or kids. I blame human nature. America is ending one the most successful runs of any nation in recorded history. Cheap raw materials, incredibly cheap energy, vastly expanded markets: it's a recipe for a cake walk -- and it was a cake walk. The problem is, when you give successive generations great wealth without having to work very hard for it, what happens? We don't have to look far for case studies. It's so common in wealthy families that the expression is: the first generation creates the wealth, the second builds upon it, and the third spends it. Unfortunately, we've borrowed our way well into a fourth generation. If these kids were even slightly interested in learning, they could do so easily. Libraries and any internet-capable computer are tremendous resources. The teachers and books these kids are given are also quite good. But the culture they live in discourages learning. It values fiscal superiority over hard work. In fact, it glorifies those who get wealthy fast over those who work their lifetimes for it. It gives feel-good advice, such as, "Go your own way; break the rules; don't listen to others," which is only good advice once you already know all the rules. Getting to know those rules, however, takes a lot of hard work and time. In other words, we're a culture that values results, not effort. It's the curse of success. It's the third/fourth generation effect. It will all correct itself naturally and there's not much we can do about it -- except put our fingers in our ears and wait.

pg 19y ago
Cheap raw materials, incredibly cheap energy, vastly expanded markets: it's a recipe for a cake walk -- and it was a cake walk. Didn't work out that way in Russia, though, did it? Whereas Japan, which has severely limited sources of energy and raw materials, has done very well. Conclusion: culture matters more.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  There is a model from organizational behavior saying that performance = ability x motivation x opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar plays out across societies.
  - 19y ago

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

Is it just me, or did none of the reasons for this decline have anything directly to do with being an American? All over the world, people want to do exactly what the guy complains about: tune in, turn on, and drop out. You can either view this as the beginning of the singularity or a sign that we're all going to turn into mostly immobile blobs of flesh wired into a continuously self-pleasuring electronic grid. Or perhaps both of those things are the same thing. As far as me, I'm optimistic that changes in society and technology will lead to great advances in human knowledge and science. I think as some generations plug into the grid other generations in other cultures will do all the heavy lifting. On the other hand, when it comes to difficult things, like space exploration or politics, I'm not so optimistic. It's hard to have a democracy when people don't know what "agriculture" is.

mynameishere 19y ago
hard to have a democracy when people don't know what "agriculture" is. According to the journalist's source, when posed the stumper about definining agriculture, "Not a single student could do it". I sometimes feel like I'm the only adult who actually remembers being young, or remembers going to school. Remember school: Often enough, a teacher (or professor) would stand up, clear his throat, and grandiloquently ask, Now, could somebody define the word "agriculture"?. Of course, everyone rolls his eyes, and nobody answers the stupid question. NOBODY answers those questions--because you automatically become an idiot when you do so: I believe I know the answer, sir. Agriculture is the process of raising edible plantlife on a large scale for purposes of trade and direct consumption[1] Obviously, the journalist's methodology suggests that he himself is a functional illiterate. NO--you don't ask your friend the cranky high school teacher his opinion and then extrapolate it out to the world. Bad science. Bad reporting. People don't change that much, really. Evolution is slow. A stupid generation (evidenced by IM-engendered spelling skills) can easily be followed by a smart one. Genuine declines in intelligence are possible, but that has to do with dysgenics, a subject which most San Francisco newspapers generally won't touch on. [1] I got this off the top of my head--I hope it's right.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago

mdemare 19y ago

The next generation can't even form a sentence? Why does that strike me as hyperbole?

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
What's hyperbole? You no comment good.

cellis 19y ago

There are a lot of dumb people that are millionaires. Perhaps measuring intelligence is the wrong way to go about it: perhaps we measure intelligence the wrong way.

jimbokun 19y ago
"There are a lot of dumb people that are millionaires." But are there a lot of dumb people who BECOME millionaires, without winning the lottery?
- dfranke 19y ago
  Maybe not dumb, but plenty of below-average intelligence. Quoth PG: > One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn't pay well, for reasons of supply and demand. The most extreme case is developing programming languages, which doesn't pay at all, because people like it so much they do it for free. There are more reliable ways to get rich than the way that we go about it on this forum. It's just that they're unpleasant enough that most people would prefer to stay poor. Construction contracting is a good example.

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

mnemonicsloth 19y ago

Summary: American high schools are less effective than they could be because they employ bitter old cranks that the students wisely ignore. Also: "any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life"

brenda90210 19y ago

They're measuring the wrong thing. These kids would totally kick previous generations' collective asses at GTA and completing raid instances. Ever watch your parents try to use MS Word or even a web browser? It's painful. Kids today may not know how to use a ruler but they can use 3DS Max. Let's see the Greatest Generation do that. Nonlinear video editing--? What's that?!? Kids today do it all the time and post to YouTube. This month's Scientific American Mind says: "A generation ago TV programs such as I Love Lucy, Dragnet and Starsky and Hutch required virtually no concentration to follow. Beginning in 1981 with Hill Street Blues, single-episode dramas began to weave together as many as 10 threads into their plotlines. The hit drama 24 connects the lives of 20 or more characters, each with a distinct story." The subject of the article is massive IQ gains during the 20th century. "If asked what dogs and rabbits have in common, a boy in 1900 would have said, "You use dogs to hunt rabbits." A boy in 2007 would say, "They are both mammals." It would never have occurred to someone a century ago to offer something so trivial. Who cares that dogs and rabbits are both mammals? What is important is what things are useful and under one's control." The context is working on abstractions with no concrete referents. (Although the article badly botches the proffered explanation of what a mammal is.)

jamesbritt 19y ago
> Beginning in 1981 with Hill Street Blues, single-episode dramas began to weave together as many as 10 threads into their plotlines. I've no references to quote, but I'm pretty sure soap operas have been doing that many years earlier, perhaps even when on the radio. It's also true of serialized novels published in magazines even before that.