Dumb As A Rock: You Will Be Absolutely Amazed At The Things That U.S. High School Students Do Not Kn

reply to post by Believer101


To be fair, high school students will always care more about trends and being popular than what's being taught in the classrooms.

This is not a new phenomenon. I was a high school student in the mid-90s and the same kind of behavior existed. Few people that I know had cell phones and the internet was still new in our minds.

Originally posted by Garfee
reply to post by k1k1to

 

Um... because the abolition of slavery is relevant to the american civil war, that's why.

Which you obviously don't think is an important milestone in the history of the country which is the subject of this thread.

edit on 8-2-2012 by Garfee because: (no reason given)

Considering that the Union side white-washed itself with the 'emancipation' to the masses AFTER the war was over yes it has taken on that effect.
History is written by the victors, that civil war was more about control over other states and the rise of the federal system in my eyes...

Yes, the students are being dumbed down, and an empty vessel, is easy to teach and fill with what the school system and colleges want your head filled with.

Originally posted by tomten
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

History is one of the most important subjects.
Without it, you're much higher risk to repeat previous mistakes.

Yes, it is important, but for some reason they keep changing the stories.

Originally posted by Xtrozero

Originally posted by Starchild23

Originally posted by Xtrozero
If you don't know history your Dumb? I agree History is a weak subject in school and only those interested in it go any farther, but society is always changing as to what it feels is important to know or not know.
You go anywhere and you find very ignorant people, high school students are no different.

This is part of what I was trying to say. No one agrees on what's important to know...so they decide everything is important to know, then proceed to cram twelve text books down a 14 year old's protesting throat and expect them to regurgitate every answer the teacher wishes to hear onto a piece of paper, after which they will never again use that information.

Unreasonable expectations, indeed.

Well with all the basic subjects lets add computer classes such as internet, Word, Power Point, spreadsheets etc...

One thing to remember is we do not need to know things like we did in the past when kids read encyclopedias and a few books on each subject, we can search anything in seconds and be an expert in minutes.

Now let's take a kid from 1950 and give him 30 mins to learn and tell us everything about WW1, and do the same with a 2012 kid....get my point?

edit on 8-2-2012 by Xtrozero because: (no reason given)

So what, today's young people say. The iphone will tell you more about Ulan Bator in sixty seconds than I could possibly remember. That's true, but by relying on the computer, we stop training out minds, and we stop filling our memory banks. By doing so, I believe we diminish our ability to solve life's problems unaided, and we become more and more dependent on machines. When the machines give us answers, we seem superficially smarter, but we really are dumber, because we're not building the networks in our brains to solve a whole host of problems.

Want another example of this? Think navigation. I went my whole life looking at maps and finding my way. I have a long, long history of reaching my destinations, whether on foot, by boat, or by car. I looked at a map, related it to the world around me, and found my way. All too often, navigation today is handed off to a machine. Many motorists can't make sense of a basic road map, or estimate the distance between two points on a printed page. They are lost if their machine loses touch with the satellites.

www.psychologytoday.com...

Originally posted by Zaanny
reply to post by YouAreLiedTo

 

I can tell you what happened....

Lawyers

Unions?

reply to post by joyride0187


I'd be a bit more concerned if our college kids showed similar things, but the majority of high school students are rebellious and more than half don't really care about the education at that point in their lives. It's not that they aren't necessary smart or that our school system is bad, its moreso that they don't really care. I wouldn't be surprised if half the students that took the survey filled out funny answers on purpose. That's just the way kids are before they meet the real world.

I'd just like to say, teachers and students are equaly to blame. Throwing money at it solves nothing. It's about getting student and teacher actually INTRESTED to learn/teach and feel they can apply what they learn in real life. The most important thing a student needs to learn is how to think for themselves. People highly underestimate the relationship between crucial thinking and learning. And no, a lame ass guy at the audtitorium trying to rap how cool school is won't do that.

I graduated in 2006 and wanted to chime in on this thread for my 1st post. 41% of americans now have post-secondary education according to an article on yahoo. The curriculum has changed quite a lot since my parents generation has been in HS leaning much more to TRUE sciences and away from liberal arts. In my small town ks high school you had to get through at least algebra 2 and geometry. Neither one of my parents needed this to graduate. It's not that this generation is dumber it's just that we're trained to learn different things. Saying that this generation is dumber is ridiculous. I don't think my parents and grandparents generation is less intelligent because of their ineptness at computers.

reply to post by joyride0187


this post supports what i've thought for a while. the purpose of public schools has gone from education to indoctronation.

reply to post by The Sword


In high school trends and boys and gossip was the social aspect of navigating school.....some kids really thrive in that environment, others care less about it.

I did care about all those social things but I balanced them with academics and knew the purpose of school wasn't a popularity contest. Many kids seem to focus on the social part of school and let the academics take a back seat.

There needs to be a balance of both, and if kids do not have parents helping them strike a balance and guiding them from the begining, then the kids often feel overwhelmed....and by the time kids go to high school it can be too late to guide them, as many teens will take any form of guidance as control and rebel out of anger.....what those kids are really saying is " where were you when I was little and it really mattered to me?"

When kids no longer care about learning in general, trying to get them stoked over the civil war or the house of representatives is gonna be 10x harder.

reply to post by joyride0187


i am in 9 grade and some of the pepole i see and talk to on a daily basis blow my mind.
they are so concernd with fighting and how's dating who for example theres a girl in my math class that acts like a third grader and evryone else in the class ats like there in 6 grade it blows my mmind

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Kids today have instant access to oodles of information, but without the critical thinking skills to process that information in a practical way and apply the information in real world settings then they become nothing more than knowledge filled people who have little common sense. Information is useless unless you know how to apply it, and knowing a lot of information does not make a person smart, it does not necessarily mean they are knowledgeable either....knowledge is having a strong grasp of a subject, the ability to acquire information fast, is not a sign of knowledge in my view.

Originally posted by Mcupobob
I just got out of highschool about a year ago, knew all those things. Course my history teacher was the best.

Well I couldn't quite remember, how long a senator is in office, 6 years I think. I do remember it being covered in history. Also, not sure if I entirely trust you're source it looks dare I say sensationalist? However, I don't doubt its to far off the mark.


EDIT: Oh also, I noticed nearly all this questions pertain to dates. Now, while the 'when' in history is important. Its not nearly as important as the why in history. Sure the kids could know that the attack on Pearl harbor happened 12/7/49 and thats all dandy, but not know why it happened and the implications it had on the world would be more troubling.

Is this a joke? The attack on Pearl Harbor happened on Dec 7th, 1941. The date you gave is only eight years off.

Originally posted by The Sword
reply to post by joyride0187

 

That's because I didn't mention all the other things that I've accomplished in life. A job is a job in this crappy economy.

What do YOU do for a job? Do you even have one?

Don't worry about what I do for a living. When you brag about your college education and nit pick spelling errors in the posts of those who disagree with you, it makes you look very arrogant. I just find it ironic that a janitor spends his free time trolling message boards and checking for spelling errors.

Not to mention, you are well known on ATS for being a troll yet the last thread you created "Increase in trolls/trolling?" was basically a thread about you whining because others don't agree with your view point. How pathetic....

You are obviously a very passionate person. My suggestion would be to put your time and energy in to finding a better career. You will be much happier and I won't have to listen to all of your negativity.

reply to post by AuranVector


Woops, sorry about that. The war was over after 1949. Not so much a joke, but rather a brain fart on my part. To late to edit though.

None of that is necessary to succeed. Also, dont blame it on the education system, blame it on the kids, and the way they were raised, more than the teacher.

reply to post by isaac7777


I would say the blame lies equally on the teachers, the parents and the kids.

Originally posted by Mijamija
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Kids today have instant access to oodles of information, but without the critical thinking skills to process that information in a practical way and apply the information in real world settings then they become nothing more than knowledge filled people who have little common sense. Information is useless unless you know how to apply it, and knowing a lot of information does not make a person smart, it does not necessarily mean they are knowledgeable either....knowledge is having a strong grasp of a subject, the ability to acquire information fast, is not a sign of knowledge in my view.

Your post reminds me of the conversation Montag had with his Capitan in Fahrenheit 451. How the schools don't teach just filled the kids up with facts and trivia. Making them feel full.

Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

Couldn't find the full speech, shame.

Originally posted by poet1b

If you think the next generation is dumb, that is what you were programmed to believe.

Further quotes from this site.

johntaylorgatto.com...

"According to official reports, only a small fraction of the population is capable of what you and I call mental life: creative thought, analytical thought, judgmental thought, a trio occupying the three highest positions on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Just how small a fraction would shock you. According to experts, the bulk of the mob is hopelessly dumb, even dangerously so. Perhaps you’re a willing accomplice to this social coup which revived the English class system. Certainly you are if your own child has been rewarded with a 'gifted and talented' label by your local school. This is what Dewey means by 'proper' social order."

"If you believe nothing can be done for the dumb except kindness, because it’s biology (the bell-curve model); if you believe capitalist oppressors have ruined the dumb because they are bad people (the neo-Marxist model);....
if you believe any of the various explanations given for the position of the dumb in the social order we have, then you will be forced to concur that a vast bureaucracy is indeed necessary to address the dumb. Otherwise they would murder us in our beds."

"The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the careers devoted to tending to them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my proposition: Mass dumbness first had to be imagined; it isn’t real."

"Once the dumb are wished into existence, they serve valuable functions: as a danger to themselves and others they have to be watched, classified, disciplined, trained, medicated, sterilized, ghettoized, cajoled, coerced, jailed. To idealists they represent a challenge, reprobates to be made socially useful. Either way you want it, hundreds of millions of perpetual children require paid attention from millions of adult custodians. An ignorant horde to be schooled one way or another."
......

I found the excerpt above (from the John Taylor Gatto site) hilarious. I'll have to check out the site later. It's interesting to look at a fresh viewpoint -- even if I don't agree with it.