Dumbing down reality

reply to post by LUXUS


A strong sense of today without a clear understanding of how we got to today leads to dumb conclusions.

reply to post by theghoster


Where I live the news often talks about the young binge drinking and those who cant afford the price of alcohol move on to drugs as its cheaper to get wasted.

The way to deal with mental spamming by the media is first to become aware that it is happening and that you are a victim. Once you realist this then you automatically mentally build an anti spam mechanism where you ignore the sea of trivial crap being directed at you by the media,internet etc.

With respect, those exams he gave you would have had a syllabus to study, so anyone taking them at that time (i.e 50 years ago) would have studied to take them. So in short, its not entirely the case that people have become "thicker" but rather what they're teaching is "easier" and attitudes to learning have changed over the years. Not many working class children are brought up with the value that education is incredibly important.

reply to post by LUXUS


I'm S+F'ing this thread OP. Well articulated thread and i could not agree with you more. I'm 34 years old. By no means am I the sharpest tool in the shed, but by god there are some really stupid unaware people nowadays. I can tell a big difference just in the past 10-15 years. I don't think I've met but very few people that are say 25 and below that could hold an intelligent conversation about anything except TV, video games, movies, entertainment topics in general. I was floored when I asked my 15 year old nephew the other day what he wanted to do after high school. He looked at me like I had a phallus growing off my chin. Like he really had not even thought of it. He told me with a straight face, "I'm just gonna live at Moms house and not worry about a job." I think its been orchestrated this way. If the children are the future, then I really hope I'm not around to see it.

reply to post by LUXUS


i agree with you.

i am a 42 year old midwestern american, graduated from a public school in 1988.

moved back to my hometown and im working at a steakhouse now just a few miles from my old high school.

so we have a LOT of local kids there as hostesses and busboys, pizza cooks, you know..

anyway a lot of these kids look at me like im some sort of a mad science genius. at first i thought that this was because of my computer background and interest in science hobbies. i assumed that these kids HAD MY BACKGROUND because they went TO MY SCHOOL.

not so.

I ask about chemistry, philosophy, ethics, and biology. The kids are almost completely ignorant. they have stopped dissections, no chemistry experiments are performed...

philosophy, ethics, sociology, and psych are reserved for "college" (if you can get in)

in a discussion about DHS, drones, cameras, and the NWO some of the kids became confused at the term ORWELLIAN. i had to explain. high school graduates had NEVER EVEN HEARD of George Orwell.

they were ignorant of the basics of LOGIC, could not define a secular basis for morals, had never built a simple electrical circuit, had never written a short story, could not define the term TAUTOLOGY or explain its importance, could not define fallacy or provide an example.

THIS IS WHY FOX NEWS ATE THESE KIDS ALIVE.

what burns my buns tho is I WENT TO THEIR SCHOOL.

we had a FEW computers, and we learned PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES (in grade school YES)

they have a TON of computers, and the kids are users only, texting and watching celebrity videos... they are masters of media, but could not tell you how TCPIP works...

we werent allowed NEAR the machine until we had passed all the stuff on paper first...


meanwhile it LOOKS like kids are being educated... look at all the money we spent on new PCs!!

oh yeah one more, when I was young the bright kids were sent into a GIFTED STREAM

whereas now if youre off the bell curve THEY DOPE YOU UP

You are Totally right.
In the slave days they never let them read or have any kind of education.
We/us /you are slaves they wont you dumb.
When I some times mix with the low working class.
“ No! I am a working class, I just don’t mix’s with them when I can”
I find they are very stupid and simple minded.
They work 40 hours and do as much over time as they can.
“two people should be doing that Work. But the Boss abuses people”
When they get home they have their dinner and sit in front of the TV.
There religion is Sport! At the weekend they join a group of mindless angry zombies.
They get drunk ever night. Have kids. Their money goes on a car, house, kids and drink.
They believe everything on TV. They just talk about TV sport and drink.

This is a side effect of population increase. As more and more kids are crammed into schools the quality of education goes down.

reply to post by LUXUS


OP I'm from the UK myself and pretty much everything you said in that thread resonates strongly with my own feelings, nice post and read

I remember when I was in school and the maths exams from only the 80's were a LOT harder than what I was taking in 1999-2000. Not to exagerate, but each year you could see the 'dumbing down' factor, exams were getting easier.

I saw this as a 16 year old and ever since I believe that exam results have improved year upon year (in fact I think this year was the first time they never improved).

Knowing a teacher in a secondary school, they've told me many times education has changed a lot since even I was in school- exams now are just literally storing lots of useless facts and data and writing them down in a 'test'. When I was in school, English was about thinking stuff for yourself, now schools just spoon feed the pupils to make sure they can repeat it all in an exam and get more funding if the grades improve.

IMHO, it is a conspiracy- to dumb people down even though the grades improve, to stop them from being thinkers, to turn them into almost robot like figures that follow what they're told to do- schools are like production lines for how the elite want society to be.

Actually, I believe the problem is not the lack of intelligence among my generation (and younger), but a matter of motivation and will. I have a real life case in point that just occurred not 20 minutes ago in my Chemistry class.

My professor brought a homework question that nearly most of the class had not bothered to answer. It was a problem that required basic conversion, mathematics and reading skills. Basically a problem solving skills question. When asked whether anyone had even attempted the problem, the class fell silent. My professor asked, rhetorically, "Why? Because it was too hard?". Again, the class was silent, most likely from guilt of my professor telling the truth. The fact is, many of those students (including, shamefully, myself) could answer that question, because when she went about explaining how to solve the problem, very few students were at a loss as to how she arrived at her answer. It wasn't that they were dumb, they just didn't care to bother with the problem. Their desire to solve the problem did not override their desire to remain ignorant, yet free of the momentary of stress of having to think through the problem to solve it. This, I think is the fundamental issue. We just have no will and discipline to solve complex task, mainly because modern life (comparatively) is so...well...pampered.

reply to post by LUXUS

Who would be behind this? Those who have infiltrated the western education system and are actively engaging in a dumbing down campaign against the general public in select country’s. See if grades were steadily dropping people would be alerted to the reality of this!

The second topic I want to talk about is related to the one just covered and that is the decrease of general awareness in humans which is now endemic among the young. What I mean by awareness is your awareness of your surroundings and people around you in everyday life.

Yes, it is intentional. I just started a Thread yesterday on that very issue of what is and has been being done in the American education system. They intentionally deceived parents and still do. Because of the increased information found via the internet, people are beginning to realize kids are being graded based on what they believe and not reading or math. In fact, they are being taught what to believe and reading and math takes a back seat to prepare them for this global education and government system. If they don't get the internet controlled fast, a lot of people are going to start to wise up.

Your second question is a tough one... I am thinking it might have something to do with the results of the training from the education system and all those messed up programs that are called entertainment on the TV. Maybe it is connected.

S & f good topic

Hate to say it OP, but I couldn't agree more. American education system is a disgrace.

I came to the USA as a refugee half a life ago, and made my transition during my high school years. I remember leaving Europe and taking only a few things with me, but for some reason I brought my Latin and Old Greek books with me, because as naive as I was, I thought I would continue studying those ancient languages in the USA. I got looked at funny when I asked about those.

Also, I brought this little blue book I had, that we used from our freshman year of high school in Croatia. It had all the logarithm tables in it, trig and calculus tables and so on -- lots of very useful info I though would help me move over to American system. I brought it to my jr year math teacher and asked him if it would be ok to use that in class. He looked it over for a while and then said, "You learn this in High School?"... and I replied, "Yeah, we buy those freshman year and we start using them shortly after." He was shocked and said that if I'm lucky I may cover some of this stuff jr or sr year of college! We were learning in freshman year of HS, what Americans cover 6-8 years later at the end of college. That's how far behind only math is compared to European countries... I was very surprised and disappointed.

Also, multiple choice questions? Are you kidding me? I can see this being used in schools for kids with special needs but for regular school students -- multiple choice?!

I haven't seen a multiple choice test until I came to America. I think giving you an answer and having you pick it out of 4 answers is about as retarded as can get, it borders on cheating -- and most still don't effing get it!

It all may have started as a plan to dumb down America, as a social experiment perhaps, but the downward spiral needs no assistance any more. The education system is sabotaging itself now, with teachers themselves realizing kids are too dumb to pass a multiple choice test and have to lower the average scores, or simply cheat to make it look like the kids know the material and make the district look better.

On the other hand you've got creationists trying adamantly to buckle the system even further by pushing it back another 100 years (at least). When you have to focus on battling that stupidity, just to preserve the minds of the young, the overall decline of intelligence doesn't seem as bad by comparison.

We're doomed... and I'd like to be able to say that it's all because of someone pulling the strings and trying to dumb us down so we're easier to control but the biggest blame should fall on Americans themselves. We're too DUMB to fight for our own survival, and that is turning out to be a fact!


Khar

reply to post by Wonderer2012


I know a couple of teachers myself, I think one thing that's very different now is that the schools themselves are now constantly graded and school heads are terrified of being given a bad grade, hence the education is completely focused on passing the exact exam that is going to be given at the end of the year and anything outside of that is ignored.
So basically pupils are being taught how to pass one exam rather then taught the subject as a whole

reply to post by davespanners


A better way of saying it than I did, but that is essentially what is happening. Spoon fed the answers- memorise the info and just paste it into the exam paper and get an A+

But in terms of actually learning, they are learning less.

i`ve always believed it is better to know a little bit about everything than to know a lot about only one thing.

A person who knows a little about everything will be more self sufficient than someone who knows a lot about only one thing.

In my area the schools no longer teach cursive writing i forsee a day in the not too distant future when even printing will no longer be required in schools.Everything will be with a keyboard on electronic devices.When our civilation falls and all the electronic devices are just rust particles buried in the dirt there will be no surviving written history of how far our civilization had advanced.
perhaps this is what happened to past great civilizations,perhaps they used a perishable record keeping material and thus there is no surviving records of how far they had actually advanced before being wiped out by a cataclysmic natural disaster.perhaps the records we have found of past civilizations are actually just part of their ancient history and they actually advanced much further than that.

an interesting ancdote to this: when i was in high school (early 80's) a friend of mine went to south africa for a year of school (i am in so. california); when she came back she could have skipped a grade if whe had wanted because the course material taught there was that much higher level.
in america i think we see a decidedly dropping level of education that is expected of us.

as for awareness; the point made further back in this thread that all of the media/external distraction that is around us is definately making us less aware. the mind can only handle so much stimulation/input at a time that we tend to drop alot of 'non-essential' information in order to process what we consider important.
with driving culture taking over the world (and so. cal. in particular) the ability to walk and chew bubble gum seems to be one of the victims.

How can the thread go on without someone mentioning reality TV shows such as Jersey Shore and Here comes Honey Boo Boo. The trash on tv that will lower your Iq by 100 points if you watch it. Gone are the good shows that taught morals and values and lessons like (Andy Griffith Show). Now any non talent trashy smuck can be put on tv and fools watch the crap.

Society is definitely being dumbed down and people are oblivious to there surroundings half the time.

Watch the film Idiocracy to get a glimpse of our future.

We are getting less and less common sense. Everyone is saying the same thing. We are losing our ability to reason. We are losing our ability to figure things out on our own. We only have so many brain cells and some are dedicated to holding knowledge while others are dedicated to figuring things out. The rest of the brain cells can be used either way. If we increase the knowledge we rob the common sense. It takes a hundred times the cells to learn to figure things out as it does to retain knowledge. Filling the brain with knowledge will eventually deplete it of reasoning ability. Is it necessary to learn all the useless stuff we are taught? Is it necessary to make remote controls so complicated that we have to use our reasoning abilities to use them? Simplicity is the smartest thing because it allows you to have more brain power available for figuring things out. Risk assessment in thinking patterns allows a slowing of thinking which most often leads to less errors. Double checking thought patterns two ways helps to totally understand what is happening and allows better comprehension of principles in things. On top of that we are making the English language so complicated by making more technical words within the sciences that the language has become unintelligible. Every science has it's own name for things as if they are in competition with each other. This requires more memorization which leads to less, not more, ability to reason. Our system of learning is getting irreversibly flawed. It is like reading the instructions when you need something together. Why do they make things so complicated.

Very interesting topic.SNF for the OP. In my mind it makes me think about the affects of flouride on the human brain. I am sure others are aware of these affects and are probably more on topic for another thread but the topic did make me wonder about flouriode. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Originally posted by rickymouse
We are getting less and less common sense. Everyone is saying the same thing. We are losing our ability to reason. We are losing our ability to figure things out on our own. We only have so many brain cells and some are dedicated to holding knowledge while others are dedicated to figuring things out. The rest of the brain cells can be used either way. If we increase the knowledge we rob the common sense. It takes a hundred times the cells to learn to figure things out as it does to retain knowledge. Filling the brain with knowledge will eventually deplete it of reasoning ability. Is it necessary to learn all the useless stuff we are taught? Is it necessary to make remote controls so complicated that we have to use our reasoning abilities to use them? Simplicity is the smartest thing because it allows you to have more brain power available for figuring things out. Risk assessment in thinking patterns allows a slowing of thinking which most often leads to less errors. Double checking thought patterns two ways helps to totally understand what is happening and allows better comprehension of principles in things. On top of that we are making the English language so complicated by making more technical words within the sciences that the language has become unintelligible. Every science has it's own name for things as if they are in competition with each other. This requires more memorization which leads to less, not more, ability to reason. Our system of learning is getting irreversibly flawed. It is like reading the instructions when you need something together. Why do they make things so complicated.

Well how else are we supposed to make distinctions between and within complex subjects? As far as I can tell science does not use separate terms for the same thing. When I talk about electrons or protons in quantum mechanics, I'm still still talking about the same electrons and protons in chemistry or biology or any other science. We make it "complicated", because the nature of our reality is highly complex. Why wouldn't the way we express this reality (using language) reflect that? I don't quite understand your argument here.

Originally posted by zero1020
This is a side effect of population increase. As more and more kids are crammed into schools the quality of education goes down.

I also agree that this is a factor. Where I live the increase of immigrants who cant even speak and write English is effecting teaching standards for the rest of the students in the class. I have a friend who is a teacher and she has told me that she would NEVER send her child to the school she works at!