Originally posted by abelievingskeptic
I had a kid tell me the teacher told them we were in Iraq to fight terrorism!

These kids lack the foundation to think for themselves and it is quite sad.

There are still adults who say we are fighting terrorism in Iraq. Alot of them. They're even on ATS believe it or not.

And yes, they were once kids too, and they went through the same choices, should I think for myself, use critical thinking etc, or should I accept what I'm told and never go beyond that? To this day you can tell which people have made what decision.

There are some good points raised, but many people are still missing a big part of the solution. It is so simple that I think people don't actually see it as part of the solution.

-Yes, it's important to read.
-Yes, people aren't paying attention sometimes because they don't know what in the heck the teacher is talking about. And they end up being problematic students.

But, just saying to a child, "read" does not make them necessarily make them much more literate. And it's not necessarily enough to just get the problematic child to "focus" and read more.

If you want to solve illiteracy, then for one thing, you must, must, must put dictionaries in the hands of people. Tell your kids, tell your students, if you don't understand a word, then look that word up and get it defined in a dictionary. It's not geeky, nerdy, or a sign of being stupid; it's simply a good thing to practice.

And it is not, I repeat, not, necessarily an automatic occurance that someone will understand what a word means just because the you verbalize it to them, or it is written in a book. It is unfair to assume it. This does not make the person stupid if they don't understand it, they simply don't know what the word means.

I'm not saying, though, that my own literacy level is superb, but I would say I am in much better shape than many. I'm still finding myself cleaning up the mess left by our education system. It's aweful that I have to do such a thing, and I was an A/B student through much of my schooling. You should come out of high school and college all ready, fresh, and full of useful knowlege. But it doesn't allways happen like that. I'll bet a lot of you spent your time in some of your classes daydreaming, snoozing, and zoned out. I sure did. Talking to that pretty girl in the back of the class room was sure more interesting than Pre-Calculus.

You teach a child to use a dictionary, then the windows to learning will start to open up. You can conquer the messed up system, and actually come out of school with a real education.

Troy

Hi There,

Actually, I think it is quite a disturbing prospect this seeming entropy within the education system. One can see a pattern in the lessening of the breadth and comprehensive learning that is taught from the late seventies onwards. The main issue today when it comes to education is to 'teach' oneself. By all means go through the system, but it is better to seek a self-educationary process by accepting the responsibility to augument what one is taught.

When I went to secondary school here in the UK (year 1 - 11 years old), a certain teacher of history gave the class a valuable piece of advice upon first meeting him. He said that we were to take nothing of what he told us as 'truth', but to seek out for ourselves the truth of what he taught (a brilliant piece of secular advice). Infant and Junior schooling is all about becoming equipped with the necessary skills such as reading and writing in order to take one's education further. It is about awakening the mind of the child to its own curiosity and to instil self-interest with its own learning at a pace its intelligence can handle.

Today, teachers are tutoring children simply so that they can meet the national curricula targets, and that means giving them just enough to learn so that they can achieve grades by passing certain exams. Schools are simply factories pumping out automatons to the idustries, but of course, a certain percentage that come out of schooling do so as innate 'free-thinking' individuals, whom pursue further learning under their own steam. If these 'free-thinkers' were parts manufactured in a factory, in today's educationary climate, they would be rejected. Contemporary education seems to inhibit free thinking, by by-passing the stimulation of curiosity. Free thinkers are too much of a variable, and seem to be discouraged.

At the same time, many western countries are signed up to the globalisation process, and that means their equalisation with each other, by adopting characteristics of the main economy (in this case America), whilst subverting their own historical way of doing things. The change has been subtle, and most certainly undermining of national character. It's got a long way to go yet, but is achieving a global uniformity as we speak. Remember, if countries remained individually nationalistic to their own identity, globalisation could not be truly effected. It is all about control, it is about getting you to become a citizen dependent upon the system for your survival, but by giving you too much education and turning you into a free thinker, you would become a non-complying critic of the system...you could not have the wool pulled over your eyes...you would question things...and that is something the system cannot have...can it?

I agree with the dude above me, but just want to add one thing. The environment that surrounds you (including your parents) is so influential that more than likely you will become part of that environment. Of course there are exceptions. But generally speaking if a kid has crackhead parents and crackhead friends and grew up in the ghetto, that kid is gunna be a crackhead. If that kid is surrounded by free thinkers and mostly wealthier people (unless you live in the oc..god have you seen that show?...sad, very sad...like wuteeeever),as sad as it is to say, he MIGHT grow up to be a free thinker if he/she doesn't get involved in drugs ,which in my opinion is another way to control people. Anyway, point being is environment plays the biggest role in my opinion.

Just watched some cartoons(I´m 27... Okay!! ) this morning and in one of the episodes the only point with the whole plot was to tell the viewer that being a nerd was the worst and degenerate thing you could be.
I can´t recall any of the shows I watched as a kid being anything else than open minded, maybe with a bit of a hippie attitude. And specifically the good guys/girls did not have "faulty" moral, they may do bad/ill considered things but they always realised they error in the end(very standard stuff but still basic social training). I think that can leave some distinct empression on young kids(especially with the amount of hours being spent in front of the telly).

Maybe we have another way of making tv for children in DK(or maybe it has changed here as well, I don´t know) compared to US, UK , Japan and whoever´s producing these mainstream and I assume massively watched cartoons/shows, but if what I watched this morning and with what appears to be going on with tv in general(realityshows, celebrity news etc) is anything to go by it´s no wonder children seem derailed these days(DK kids appears to have embraced this trend as well, but have´nt taken that hard a look).

Edit: Clarification and stuff

[edit on 24-12-2007 by FedtStensDyr]

I go to school in the United States, and believe me, the education isn't that great. I don't know if other countries governments try and put lies and stupid cover-ups in their students heads, but here it's crazy. I'm sure some if it is just public safety issues, but you're basically not allowed to think for yourself. I have to keep my thoughts in my head because the teachers are educated to just stick to the book, and outrule every other possibility. I'm probably over-reacting, but it sucks that the government is trying to control my generations thought process and it's working.

I have long thought that our education system is deficient. When I was in grade schooll there was a repeat of the same old stuff almost every year from about 6th grade on. High school was not much better. The only thing was that the type in the books was smaller.

I asked my grandaughter who will graduate from High School in June if she thought that she could have done the same amount of work in 10 years, she said "yes". Then I asked her if she thought she could have done it in 8 years. She thought a minute and replied, "yes".

Further to this, we as a culture have kept out children playing with games and toys for too long. I hear people talk of letting them be children because they will be "grown up soon enough". We talk about letting them be children as opposed to giving them responsibility. In the early days of this country children worked on their farms from the time they could walk.

We have pre-school and kindergarden, but what exactly is accomplished with the time spent there? Couldn't these children be given some type of "game" that would be a productive learning tool for the future? As they got older, instead of afterschool roaming the streets or watching TV, they could spend a few hours doing real work. This could be a part of the school/school system itself. Two hours or so of simple assembly line stuff or whatever.

Excellent topic OP. This is a real problem of our current civilization. We are declining from a cultural and intellectual level at an alarming rate.

We can blame the educational system, our parents, etc. In the end you can only blame yourself. But does an ignorant person ask why our world is in total decline as a culture and society? No, he does not ask. He will never blame himself for being ignorant, he's too ignorant to see it.

When 80 million people are born each year, you have to imagine that you need to educate these people, but I wonder how many of these 80 million end up with at least a decent education (read & write and maybe think for themselves).

I do believe there is a global conspiracy, if you will, to dumb down people in general. This can be seen each day by watching tv. But it's not like some elite planned this, it is because the media realized that to get high ratings you need to provide very basic needs and instincts. Like violence, sex, humor, etc. These things are not cultural in any way. Anything cultural on tv is boring. No one wants to watch informative and constructive documentaries, they want action, sex and amusement.

Together with money and lust, these basic instincts and needs dominate our lives. It is a sad reality which can be seen on your tv daily. If these things govern our lives then these things are representative for our civilization.

I never heard people say that sex made them smarter. It certainly amused them and made them feel good. Pleasure should be preceded by hard work and study. If you skip the first stage, then even pleasure will ultimately become useless.

I do believe that our world will face a huge shock soon into the future. A cultural and social one. We are too many acting too stupid. Things always tend to balance themselves, so you see, this cannot continue forever.

I have hope in my heart, I know that any man can change, if he desires that, changing from an ignorant person to a person involved and interested in basic questions when it comes to life. That is the first sign that a person thinks for itself. When you start asking the basic questions of life, you just began a new adventure. And if you keep yourself on that track, life will offer you great wisdom and truth.

You think this ill-education, unawareness is reflected in the music that these generations produce ? , the US used to produce a lot of political motivated groups, so did the uk with the likes of the Clash. Nowadays the music is as dumbed down as the people , theres no ingenuity, no inspiration, no rebellion.

Now it would seem to me that this dumbing down is in direct correlation with the fluoride in our water. Not only does fluoride not clean help your teeth, it completely passes them on the way down your throat. It is poison. The nazis knew this and used fluoride to make their inmates lackadaisicle and easy to manage.

-Dev

This tendency towards idiocy is something I've been witnessing for a long time now. It seems it hasn't been mentioned yet but I believe that a major contributing factor in intellectual decline is the qualities in which society places such value.

I have always felt it quite odd that an athlete who does little more than play a game as a child would is revered so strongly yet someone who can compose a song, paint a picture or write a book is thought to be relatively useless to society. There is such value and emphasis put on what logically would seem quite useless that it's easy to understand why people grow into adulthood placing no value on intellectual ability. Most of what we see in our daily lives, most of what we come in contact with was created by some intelligent productive person. Take for instance art and design, everything you see and use has been designed by someone, every ad, cellphone, t-shirt and car has been designed by a creative intelligent person. However, very little value is placed on artistic ability in relation to athletic ability even though athletes in essence produce nothing of value to society as a whole.

There is some sort of weird dichotomy in society these days where the creators and producers are shunned and the worthless leeching celebrities are venerated yet the world relies quite heavily on the product of the creators and producers. There is very little incentive to become an intelligent creative person and a great deal of motivation to be an unthinking, anti-intellectual imbecile who is incredibly attractive. Society's values are completely illogical and verging on the out right insane.

I am really an average person .However, I like to learn and i have an unstopped curiosity . This is how I got my Master in Science, going for the second degree next year. My little secret- passion to know. I guess if I can do it, at least 50% of the Earth population could do it. The only problem is the passion for science - it looks like the governments are not interested to stimulate it. When I was a young, most of the children wanted to be Pilots (i ended up an aviation engineer) or doctors . Now they want to be singers and Paris Hilton! This would explain it.
However, I have to admit that I am bit concerned with the "self-adjustment" of the brain to the lack of mental activity . Normaly the brain uses 40% of the energy of the body . It seems logical that the body would reduce this "waste" of energy used by the brain if this would not be essential for survival..

[edit on 27-12-2007 by sty]

There's a lot of possibilities for what could cause the dumbing down of society, but I think a lot of it is a persons will to learn too. If you don't have the mentality to want to progress, you won't. Obviously their are some factors limiting that for some people. I'm in 12th grade, and I honestly don't think I've learned anything new through school since probably 5th or 6th grade. It's whatever though.

esecallum,

Excellent point on how intellegent people are portrayed by mediums like TV shows and movies.

Truthfully, why can't an intellegent person be "cool." The sad ignorance of some folks sure isn't "cool." Some of the high school graduates that are coming out now from the USA are pitiful. I have a relative coming through school, and she was clueless when it came to some some things she is being taught. She'll probably get through the system some how though. No offense to her, she just isn't being truly educated.

Some of the most intellegent people I have known are some reall butt-kickers when it comes to tackling the game of life.

What does a high school diploma mean anymore? Is a college diploma any better? It depends on the person who receives it. Did they take the time to study correctly and learn? Companies look for those diplomas many times. They need to look for individuals who demonstrate competence in skills related the positions they are trying to fill. Some companies, however, do check for competence. If they don't check, they may have just hired themselves a nice "piece of paper" who isn't going to be effective at their job.

Troy