America’s Students Are Morons Who Can’t Distinguish Real News From ‘Fake News’

“When it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels,” the researchers behind the study wrote, these kids today are “easily duped.”

For example, the researchers asked participating high school students to look at an Imgur.com photo of some mutant-looking daisies with the caption “this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects.” Almost 40 percent of the high schoolers decided that the photo was powerful evidence of nuclear radiation near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in spite of the fact that the photo actually contained zero evidence suggesting that the daisies were anywhere near the nuclear plant. There was also no indication concerning the photo’s origin.

LINK

The bright side concerning the above is the fact that they knew about the dangers of the Fukushima disaster. I'm with the "always a silver lining" crowd this time.

Seriously, this is a terrible sign for the future. I wonder now about how my posts on this forum could be misconstrued.

How have things devolved this much? When I was in high school things were nothing like what's described in the article above.

I suppose the next questions are obvious...

What caused this change?

What can be done about it?

Because they cant separate reality from teacher induced fantasy ?

Rule number one, if it on national news you should consider it fake unless you research to make sure it is real. They blow a little incident up sometimes and make it look like a whole town is flooding when it is only a tiny area. They are good at supersizing a story.

Critical thinking & the scientific method have gone completely out the window in America's public schools.

originally posted by: Profusion

How have things devolved this much? When I was in high school things were nothing like what's described in the article above.

I have 2 comments:
1) Never underestimate the stupidity of others, they will always surprise you.

and 2) There have always been idiots (yes, even back then) I think it's just that now they have a louder voice that can travel the world on the Internet....

Don't sweat it, the smart ones will still figure it out...lol

a reply to: ColdWisdom

You took the words out of my mouth.

The curriculum is taught authoritatively, critical thinking and questioning the narrative gets you in trouble.

And God knows those text books are way to cut and dry and don't give the full story on almost anything.

I don't see how what's happened in this high school is any different than all the garbage that has been bought and spewed all over the internet during this election season.

Well, 15 years ago or so there wasn't the sheer volume of information available so easily and quickly.

When people are bombarded with so much garbage on a daily basis, people's attention spans shrink. Sound bites and snippets are all people think they have time for, as they move on to the next "status update" or tweet.

It's partly a case of information overload. Being bombarded with so much, so often, continuously ... people don't spend the brain power or time sorting real from fake.

I think another difference versus years ago is how people go about research. Back in my day we had to go to the library and open up real, actual books. We had to use things like encyclopedias which were bland, dry, and didn't contain much beyond just the dates and places.

As students, we were required to provide the narrative. We had to digest the raw information, process it and spit it back out in our own words. We had to add the glue to hold multiple sources together into a coherent research project.

We had to go straight the actual source material. The actual speeches, the diaries, the memoirs ect -- those sources of information as close to the subject matter as possible is what we had to scour.

Kids today?

"Hey Google, what caused the Civil War?"

And then a gazillion different articles pop up, most of them heavily opinionated in one way or another, most not actual "source" material either. Kids today simply reuse someone else's extrapolated interpretation of something instead of forming their own.

This, right there is causing kids to grow up without something very, very important:

Critical thinking.

Being able to meld, blend, and formulate answers from various sources using critical thinking skills to bridge and fill in gaps is something kids today aren't doing.

If you ask a kid a question, they'll Google the entire question word for word (I've seen this) ... and when Google doesn't give them a definitive answer, they'll blankly stare at you and say, "I don't know? There's nothing online about it?"

I want to scream when I see people type in long, complex sentences into Google. That's NOT how to search! Keywords, KEYWORDS PEOPLE! Less is more!

/rant off

a reply to: Profusion


Social promotion and effort awards. If everyone is special, no need to try to become special.

originally posted by: loam
a reply to: Profusion


Social promotion and effort awards. If everyone is special, no need to try to become special.

We got participation awards 25 years ago as kids. We didn't want them. They just gave them to us anyway.

This isn't anything new....?

I probably have a few of those field day "participation" ribbons from the mid 80's in a box somewhere.

a reply to: Kettu

Case and point.

I guess to some extent, I expose my age, but those didn't exist when I went to school.

These things don't happen over night. But let there be no doubt, in my day 'sink or swim' was a mantra used with everyone's children. Long gone are those days.

Hey another "Americans are stupid" study. Keep 'em coming!

pffffft

You can find immense stupidity in every person on the planet if you know what to test for.

a reply to: Profusion

that isnt a very fair test, considering its already well known radiation can cause such mutations in vegetation, even if the particular flower in the photo isnt one of those such results, its nonetheless still a true statement to say that that happens.

I'm pretty sure this problem isn't limited to students.

People of all ages are swallowing fake news like there's no tomorrow. At this rate, there won't be. Or if there is, it will look like this:

originally posted by: Greggers

People of all ages are swallowing fake news like there's no tomorrow.

You know how I learned to tell the difference between actuality and parody/ satire? By reading lots of Mad Magazine and watching SNL.

True story.

I blame the Xbox

a reply to: Profusion

Why might this study be a useful source about whether or not American students are morons?

Your Answer


Why might this study not be a useful source about whether or not American students are morons?

Your Answer

originally posted by: Profusion

“When it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels,” the researchers behind the study wrote, these kids today are “easily duped.”

For example, the researchers asked participating high school students to look at an Imgur.com photo of some mutant-looking daisies with the caption “this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects.” Almost 40 percent of the high schoolers decided that the photo was powerful evidence of nuclear radiation near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in spite of the fact that the photo actually contained zero evidence suggesting that the daisies were anywhere near the nuclear plant. There was also no indication concerning the photo’s origin.

LINK

The bright side concerning the above is the fact that they knew about the dangers of the Fukushima disaster. I'm with the "always a silver lining" crowd this time.

Seriously, this is a terrible sign for the future. I wonder now about how my posts on this forum could be misconstrued.

How have things devolved this much? When I was in high school things were nothing like what's described in the article above.

I suppose the next questions are obvious...

What caused this change?

What can be done about it?

And America's adults are any different? Average IQ is about 80, below 60 is considered to be mentally handicapped. More than 50% of the adults in this country cannot detect fake headlines, should be the title of this thread.

a reply to: Bone75

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the notion this test is not a great one. Moreover, I happen to know many very bright Millennials.

But it does seem their education, particularly in history and the lessons it teaches, gets poorer with each passing year.

Just sayin'

So they wanted people dumb enough to believe the main-streams lies without questioning. But now there is more and more "alternate" news site, they are panicking.

"We deliberately make you dumb and gullible, but it was only meant to be for the lies WE tell!"

a reply to: loam

I remember when the Encarta Encyclopedia was first available on CD-ROM. We freaked out. An entire bookshelf on a few CDs?! And it had...*gasp* short video clips too?!

We had computers in school...Apple Classics. We even had IBM's in the library for looking up books. We still had to learn how to track the book down in the library though.

It always sucked when someone else checked out the book you needed :-P

I guess the TL DR is that back 15-25 years ago kids had to reach conclusions and interpret things...these days there's so much readily available, already researched stuff out there.

And in a fast-paced world, we want everything pre-digested and ready to consume.

And that, seriously inhibits the formation of critical thinking.

You don't develop critical thinking if you are just consume information. To develop critical thinking, you have to actually mull information over and digest it, turn it around and figure out where it fits in the larger puzzle.