AMAIRIKUHN EDGYKAYSHUN’S ENSTUPIDATION CONTINUES
By now, if you're a regular reader here, you know I have to occasionally rant about the state of Amairikuhn Edgykayshun. But today I'm not going to rant, because the article that V.T. sent along (and my thanks!) is more properly greeted with tears than anger. The statistics it cites are sobering reading:
Amairikuhn edgykayshun is a microcosm of the country as a (w)hole: nothing works; the system is not designed to reflect the vast majority of people, or for that matter, any sort of traditional culture as might have thus far survived. The progressive movement that began first in education in the nineteenth century, and then later captured large swaths of both political parties, is triumphant. It has completed its march through the institutions, and captured the academy. And the result, in the latter, is abject failure, and Amairikuh is completely "enstupidated"; consider just these entries from the article:
#1 One recent survey found that 74 percent of Americans don’t even know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights.
#2 An earlier survey discovered that 37 percent of Americans cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment.
#3 Shockingly, only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government.
#4 During the 2016 election, more than 40 percent of Americans did not know who was running for vice-president from either of the major parties.
#5 North Carolina is considering passing a law which would “mean only scores lower than 39 percent would qualify for an F grade” in North Carolina public schools.
#6 30 years ago, the United States awarded more high school diplomas than anyone in the world. Today, we have fallen to 36th place.
#7 According to the Pentagon, 71 percent of our young adults are ineligible to serve in the U.S. military because they are either too dumb, too fat or have a criminal background.
...
#18 Today, the average college freshman in the United States reads at a 7th grade level.
I can attest to similar experiences. And forgive me if I've mentioned these personal experiences before in my "edykayshunal rants," but they bear repeating. Back when I was teaching college in the late 1990s, I once began a Modern European History examination with a question that ran something like this: "Name five provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and discuss their implications." One student - an "edgykayshun" student incidentally - answered that question by beginning "The treaty of Versigh..." Yes. It's that bad, and students are that stupid and oblivious. And that was the 1990s, so I can readily believe the points in this article. And it's worth mentioning that during my time teaching in college, I learned many things from my students, namely, that Ulysses Grant commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, that Germany won World War One (in 1914, no less!), and that, as one snowflake put it on her examination, "Hitler had some personal issues," and with that bit of pop psychology, all the crimes of the Nazi regime were "explained."
Perhaps I was simply a bad professor, but I don't think so.
One reason I don't think so is that as an adjunct, I was not allowed to pick my own textbooks in some cases. This was done by the tenured faculty at the main campuses of the institutions I taught for. In one case, the textbook I was required to use for Russian History actually referred to Stalin as a "great statesman," with but passing glosses on the Stalinist purges, and an almost total mangling of the effects of collectivization. More recently, Diana West, in her important book The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, noted that Nellie Ohr, when reviewing a book about Stalin, wrote the following:
The opening of Ohr's review of the ... book, written while she was teaching Russian history at Vassar in 1995, is worth quoting, not for what it tells us about the book, but what it tells us about the reviewer. Ohr writes:
"To introduce students to the Stalin era can be a frustrating task. To convey the terror and excitement of the period, one can assign a memoir of a prison camp victim or an observer such as John Scott or Maurice Hindus." (West, op. cit., p. 9)
There it is... it was exciting, a ride on the Stalinroller coaster at Six Flags Over Novosibirsk.
So what's to be done? If you're a parent, and have children being victimized by this abominable system - and there are no other words for it than those - one place to start would be to research your local colleges of education, read their texts, find out how much time future teachers spend in education classes versus learning the actual subjects they want to teach. Attend a few of those teacher "continuing education" seminars, or a few education classes, and find out for yourself just how looney and loopy those classes really are. Talk with teachers who think that all that claptrap is... well, claptrap, and have brainstorming and strategy sessions in what to do about it.
And if you're a teacher who is fed up with the childish games being played in methodology or pedagogy courses, or have an anecdote on the latest silliness you had to undergo at your last "continuing education" seminars, please share them in the comments, or if you have a mind, write a guest blog about it.
See you on the flip side...
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In my opinion, it seems there was a DELIBERATE dumbing down of society!! Where one is required to simply regurgitate what one has been taught in order to get a passing grade……one has NOT been taught to “think”!!
I would say we are seeing the results of this “education system” playing out before our very eyes, in this present flow of events!!! THIS is what America has come down to??!!! And now, all we will have to do is plug into the “cloud”….no need to do one’s thinking ever again!!!
A local article shows Florida is even worse than NC.
The proposed grading scale for North Carolina public schools
• A: 100 to 85 percent
• B: 84 to 70 percent
• C: 69 to 55 percent
• D: 54 to 40 percent
• F: Anything below 40 percent
Florida’s school grading scale
• A = 62% of points or greater
• B = 54% to 61% of points
• C = 41% to 53% of points
• D = 32% to 40% of points
• F = 31% of points or less
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/verify/verify-no-nc-isnt-making-40-a-passing-grade-for-students/67-eef220a7-8877-413b-869c-cc57a89acc28
LyndaG:
If you think the state of education in Florida and North Carolina is bad, consider the marks required to pass A-Levels here in England. (These examinations are sat in the last year of Secondary School, and three passes will get you a place in one of our so-called “universities”.)
French 37%
Music 34%
English Language 33%
English Literature 29%
Media Studies 27%
Spanish 27%
German 25%
Physics 25%
History 24%
Chemistry 22%
Religious Studies 22%
Biology 20%
Computer Science 20%
Philosophy 18%
Mathematics 17%
Source: https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/over/stat_pdf/AQA-A-LEVEL-RL-GDE-BDY-JUN-2019.PDF
(I’ve converted the marks into percentages – partly using a lost arcane art that used to be known as “mental arithmetic”.)
See also: https://www.aqa.org.uk/about-us
(AQA is England’s most popular examination authority.)
Bear in mind that the examinations in England have been getting easier and easier since at least the 1970s. We now live in a world where everybody has academic qualifications, but nobody knows anything or how to do anything.
My father left school in 1938, aged 14, with no qualifications. He built ships at the Liverpool docks until he was old enough to join the Royal Navy, spent 20 years in the Merchant Navy, studied in his spare time for a National Certificate in Mathematics, and retired at 65 as an internationally acknowledged expert in refrigeration engineering. I fear that if he’d been subjected instead to our wonderful modern educational system, he’d have been a bum.
Most of the people can not apply what they have learned anyway. They tend to believe autorithies and media, even if their conclusions defy the very basic physics or simple logic.
Do we need educated society to be able to produce a lot of staff, which we in fact do not need anyway ? When I look around, most of people work for automotive industry one way or another. It suppose to transport passengers in effective way. Does it, really ? When you do some computations from physical standpoint, then you will find out that it is the greatest bullshit story ever told.
But the industry keep people occupied. Thats why we need all the co2 crap, I guess. We will have even less effective “ecological” electric vehicles.
So thanks god for dumb people. If we would produce more things in a more effective way, we would need some big war again, so we could destroy it. This keeps society with powerfull and powerless people…
I read the other day some colleges are making “social justice” classes mandatory. What utter bullshit.
Most of the Student Support Services staff on campus are passive aggressive, glassy eyed, education graduates. I”m not sure how they spend their time at work. I think they are either working on the new student assessment management platform or trying to figure out the learning needs and habits of the post-millenial generation.
Feminism is reactionary, not progressive, seeking to worship an image to copy. It is plain idolatry in the dollhouse.
Feminists are hyenas with war paint, and by using the vain mirror as an altar, they worship the lying devil.
It is brutal necessity, to expose the camouflaged ugliness, by slaying the dragon, and curing Medusa’s headache.
Excalibur!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8nfh4oawhkm2hb3/sherlock26.jpg
The Chinese have been doing the “meritocracy” thing since 600 AD when a smart emperor opened up the exams for gov jobs to everyone. One brief pause when the European drug cartel destroyed the culture then a brief 20 year “Mao induced” stupid era and back to it they went. The west values warriors, sports stars and celebrity while the east values academics. 100% of the ruling politburo in China have at least a degree in engineering (real eng not “societal eng BS) and the USA congress? One or two.
By the way the best book I ever read about the Stalin era was “Special Tasks”. People can nit pick about some details but it is a real view from the other side of 1925-55. Highly recommended.
I think she meant Stalin’s time was not so much exciting as exiting, as in exile to the gulags.
Reading a bit on Australian history, with many pictures, I sometimes wonder how much time the artists had on their hands to learn to draw and paint.
Then again, not many then, and not many now, spent most of their days looking up on the NWO mob as I do.
How interesting it was in the public school system in NYC I learned to enjoy reading and using the school library. Also when I was growing up the boob tube better known as television had programs on history, science and other subjects including books and this not PBS. I was born in 1949 by the way.
As I was reading; I automatically framed this stupidfied educative infrastructure, as being purposely designed and implemented.
Of course, the last thing “they” want an educated public in governance and the peoples’ inherent civic duties therein.
Civic minded citizens are a BIG NO NO!
Certain party members want the State official bureaucracies themselves to elect their own representatives, as opposed to current system of citizens electing their own representatives of that state. In other words, the good old colonial days.
There after the children’s minds.
After that’s accomplished?
What then is their method/purpose to this ongoing educational madness?
Cui Bono?
Oops
They’re after.
Speed kills.
A young person, child of elites, once lived in my home to assist with child care. Her family can be found in America’s Sixty Families ( amzn.to/36qScOi). We frequently chatted evenings. To entertain herself she sat at a table on my deck, stacks of books at her side, typing out a work of historical fiction set in WW2. Also on the table were books and tapes for learning Hebrew. One day she joined a friend in his physics class at UC Berkeley. She was surprised to find them studying at a level she had achieved in high school.
Discussing the obvious superiority of her education she attributed it to her life in boarding schools.. She said, her boarding school was in the middle of nowhere in England, noting ‘there was nothing to do but study.’
De-fund these garbage institutions both in terms of not wasting your money by sending your kids to them, and by raising objections to state and federal tax money funding of them.
.
And people should de-fund cable/sat TV, the NY Times, WAPO, etc. social and political propaganda sources. If you subscribe to these things, you’re supporting them.
Teaching at a two year college in the SF East Bay area in California, c. 1979, I was dismayed to find my African-American students failing. Note, ‘African-American was the descriptor of the day. They elected to sit together in the last two rows in the classroom. They all flunked my blue book exams. I discussed this with the Dean of Social Sciences, noting this had the appearance of racism. The Dean replied (paraphrasing), ‘yes it does, just give them C’s.’ I did.
Later, c. 1982, teaching at a four year state college I found I had to lecture from the textbook. Students either couldn’t or wouldn’t read it. I certainly didn’t supplement with related literature. I’ll never forget finding this sentence in a blue book in response to a question about psych theory, (not paraphrasing) ‘that Freud guy was alright.’
In one class, I required review of supplemental materials on reserve in the library. Much to my surprise I learned many students had never set foot in the library. I directed the class to meet me in the library during the next class hour for a field trip. I got called out for it, ‘it wasn’t my job and students had the opportunity to explore the library during orientation upon admission.’
I could continue…
Dare I say this? Could it be that this sort of thing is at the heart of the “Tower of Babel” moment in ancient history? Could it be that the differentiation of learning and information contributed to the development of language divergences across centuries of non-interaction between castes? Is it possible that the Tower of Babel moment spans not just years–but longer spans of time? An empire of ignorance is much easier to rule than an empire of intellectuals.
Yes, that is true. Plain words reach far. Simplicity is self-evident.
Popery is cloaking, to avoid transparency. Country simple is close to ground.
Potato heads have only one thought, and that is to grow.
Simple life is a blessing.
Now I like that concept.
From my perspective I read that in terms of the individual; as opposed to the group.
Loved it!
OC, concerning hypotheses around the “Tower of Babel” moment, two books suggest what may have happened if it was not done-unto-us:
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain noted that every time a culture embraced reading/writing (words), it got more violent and anti-female. Shlain thought that there was a biological basis to this, by repurposing the brain. Images invoked more right-brain stimulus, and words invoked more left-brain stimulus. As words replaced images, the left-side became dominant.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes reasoned that the left and right brain hemispheres were once ‘unified’ to the point that there was no barrier between intellectual thought and intuitive/holistic thought. They both appeared simultaneously, with no ‘processing’ between them. Over time, they became ‘disengaged’, with the intellectual side becoming dominant. First, intuitive/holistic thought became more like hallucinations to the intellectual side. Then, it all but disappeared except in breakthrough “Eureka” moments.
Merging the two books together, the “Tower of Babel” moment could be a condensed remembrance of the separation of the two brain halves. Holistic thinking was minimized, with the resulting ‘estrangement’ driving the species into individualistic thinking. Hence, war and all the other ‘goodies’. (Deep meditation and thus access to psychic realms are linked to left/right brain hemispheres becoming synchronized. This area would also be penalized by left brain domination.)
On the other hand, if you wanted to cripple a species, you might want to teach them reading & writing (words). Perhaps, words are indeed weapons…
The Runic faculty is about disowning the popery of the founding fathers, and becoming happy orphans.
“Judgment Day” is the day before judgment. Day, as Runic phenomenon, is the great clarifyer, that casts light upon the world, and a light shed world becomes common sense in perception, providing common ground.
Judgment must be just and fair. Fairness is achieved by deduction from cause to effect, and induction from established fact to general principle. When all matters are clear, judgment can be passed, in spirit of fairness.
The office of Goði (Druid) was – like general property – inherited from father to son, and if a Goði had no son, the office could be sold. Originally, British priests owned their churches, as family property, and had dispute with the land grabbing papacy.
Original kingship is constituted by Druidic Runes, not by popery in the royal house of horror.
Keep those kids away from sacred geometry or we’ll have a riot onour hands. If they understand or appreciate Pythagoras we’re doomed…..
(Moderated. It was the ‘h0mo’ within “soph0more.” Exasperating. Feel safer now?)
Some years ago, I ran across an internet cache of high school math textbooks from the turn of the last century (19th-20th). Gad! They were expecting what is now probably soph0more/junior college-level math skills. Impressive…
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) seems to be the model used within our educational system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_State_in_Brave_New_World
“Society is controlled by Alphas and their subordinates, Betas. Below them, in descending order of intellectual and physical capacity, are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. … People in different castes are conditioned to be happy in their own way, within their caste and with the caste system.” (my italics)
In my opinion, the state of Amairikuhn Edgykayshun is not an accident. It is the Alphas and Betas knowingly preparing a future for the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons…
Tidbit. In 1980 while attending technical college and working full time as a night watchman after 6 years in the Navy I graded some papers for my High School Driver’s ED teacher neighbor. It was for a final exam, over 120 tests, only one student passed. Spelling was atrocious, words like pass, hospital, curve, even stop were misspelled. I returned the exams to her the next morning and asked why was she so hard on these students? Her replay: “We reviewed the test and I left the answers on the blackboard” Our American downward spiral has been for quite awhile.
Some years ago, I ran across an internet cache of high-school math textbooks from the turn of the last century (19th-20th). Gad! They were expecting what is now probably sophomore/junior college-level math skills. Impressive…
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) seems to be the model used within our educational system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_State_in_Brave_New_World
“Society is controlled by Alphas and their subordinates, Betas. Below them, in descending order of intellectual and physical capacity, are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. … People in different castes are conditioned to be happy in their own way, within their caste and with the caste system.” (my italics)
In my opinion, the state of Amairikuhn Edgykayshun is not an accident. It is the Alphas and Betas knowingly preparing a future for the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons…