Not to far back, here or at the TS Forum, you put up an article on lower test scores and intelligence of British students compared to 5 years ago; correct? I suppose John Cleese didn’t have those facts at hand when he penned this essay.

To tell the truth, I’ve had it with the mockery of the intelligence of U.S. citizens. In fact, I’m fed up with finger pointing, and criticism of any kind where one never offers any enlightenment or solution to the problem at hand….articles whose only objective is “good copy.”

The very real truth behind the lower mental powers of many Americans is due to a systematic, long-range social engineering of students through the public school system. This social engineering has entered our universities also.

At one time, I too was discussed with many of my fellow citizens, and perhaps was not very kind in my admonishments. However, once I began to look into what has been going on within our school systems over the past 100 years, particularly after W.W.II, I began to feel compassion for those less endowed with the ability to reason; they are victims of a system designed to produce dependable consumers and dependent citizens.

Rather than continue to poke fun at U.S. citizens, wouldn’t the planet be better served by bringing attention to the hidden agenda of our educational institutions, those places of behavioral training and laboratory experimentation on young minds? This should be of real concern to all global citizens for what they’ve learned in the U.S. can be easily incorporated in other countries and it will happen faster there, particularly in developing countries with increasing consumerism. It appears to me that many want what was held out to Americans…purchasing power, goods and increasing home technology all which strengthen dependence on such items. Many times this dependence interferes with one’s ability to think and reason, not to mention making one more vulnerable to controlling powers.

I challenge all reading here who continue to investigate what’s going on in their own countries. I’ve read statements at some of your readers’ blogs in Pakistan about the decline in education offered at universities. I’ve recently posted an article, a video, and commentary about this. I invite all interested to read it and comment if you wish. After some thought on this matter, I would ask all concerned individuals to decide how they can help to diminish the effects of such control over the human mind. I do this by bringing attention to it. I also work very closely with my son in his education. Taking this further out into the world, I help my librarian friend lead book discussions with a group of 13 and 14 year olds. This week we are discussing two of Washington Irving’s works from The Sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon. I would ask some adults here to crack open a few of these pages and see how well you can follow Irving’s text full of complex sentences and eloquent language.

Recently I spoke with a neighbor of my parent’s, an English Literature teacher and one time principal. She asked what I read and I mentioned Hardy, Conrad, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, and others. This educator who parents turn their children over to for the enrichment of their minds, replied to me, “Oh, that stuff is really hard.” A friend of mine told me that their English teacher made the decision for her highschool students to not read The Last of the Mohicans because it was “too hard” and instead offered them the movie to watch. In 1882, fifth graders read these authors in their Appleton School Reader: William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others like them. In 1995, a student teacher of fifth graders in Minneapolis wrote to the local newspaper, “I was told children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, have, he, home, if, in, is, it, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?”

Need I say more?

To read more on this, please see:
Re: Educating a Democracy and How Not To
« Reply #22 on Nov 10, 2007, 3:33pm »

American kids, dumber than dirt
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
http://tinyurl.com/36ll42