The Smallest Minority

My daughter and son were in the eighth grade before they had any American history classes. They'd had Ancient History, Chinese/Asian, African, all the PC stuff, but NO AMERICAN HISTORY!

One of the good things about having had a subscription to 'Muzzleloader'; lots of articles of early U.S. history, told in good form.

What I found interesting was the statement that the students regard reading a book as punishment.

Why doesn't the videogame industry stand up and take credit for this?

Or the DVD rental chains?

Or the advertisers, who obviously want people to watch football games and buy beer?

Hey! I've got an idea: at the start of each FOX News broadcast the anchor says "We would encourage you to turn off the Tv set after a few minutes, go to a bookstore and buy a non-fiction book about our top news stories.

The school system is turning out "factory drones" when all the factory jobs are being sent to Mexico or the People's Republic of China?

And there is conscious desire to make them into conformists?

So-- at what point do enough factory drone jobs get sent to Mexico that the school ssystem has to start producing individuals again?

Hey-- in other countries, what is the knowledge of their own history?

What is their knowledge of our history?

Do the Canadians have a better knowledge of American history
than Americans?

What about French Qubec students versus the rest of Canada?

Education standards worldwide, Bradley, seem to be declining.

But nowhere as precipitously as here, I think.

Don't blame the video game and DVD industries. Blame the parents who won't do their jobs. I spent large portions of my childhood glued to the internet, TV, or my Nintendo controller, but I also loved to read and still do. Why? Because my parents (both of them) went to the trouble of reading to me when I was very young, a lot, every day, and not just "Spot got the ball".

Sorry, "frothing at the mouth", I'm going to have to go with LabRat on this one. It's not the fault of the video game industry, the television industry, or the movie industry.

All three of those get a good deal of my money (and I'll readily admit to being a video game / TV / Movie addict), but I spend more money by FAR on books. The reason? I suspect it's because I saw my Mom reading for fun when I was young.

If parents would take the time to teach kids that reading is fun -- BEFORE the English teachers get the chance to spoil it -- we'd have a nation of readers. Unfortunately, it seems that far too few of them take the time.

Kevin, this mirrors my exact experiences as a university instructor. Some examples from the last semester:

Most students had no clue how to construct a simple x vs. y graph, nor how to compute the slope of a line.

Most did not know the formula for calculating an average.

One student complained that y = mx + b is graduate-level math.

One had never heard of "hydrogen."

On top of this, their spelling and grammar are atrocious.

I keep hearing about how difficult it is to get into UT, but I don't see it.

But the most disturbing observation I have made is that many of my students could not make use of simple logic. They simply cannot think for themselves, and to me this is more egregious than lacking in knowledge.

Quite often the homework questions I assigned would be ordered in such a way that the answers to the first two questions would automatically provide the answer to the third question, in the spirit of A = B and A = C, therefore B = C. Most students crapped out on the third question. I think they're too used to being spoon-fed answers instead of being made to struggle for them.

Minor quibble: that's the result of GOVERNMENT education, not public education. The fact that most people no longer distinguish between the two is part of the problem.

I lurked on a Crooked Timber thread a while back where the discussion was about phonics vs. whole language, one of the perennial debates among child educators.

One commenter pointed out: research indicates that either method works well enough, IF the student knows what a book is. A kid who has never opened a book, or had one opened for him, can't learn to read.

I mean, like, duh, you know?

First-- do we have any real way to prove that

More TV, video games, DVDS = fewer people reading books?

That you guys do all of the above, including books is not teh same as to why the students in the article regard reading books as a punishment.

Secondly, what kind of concentration do you have to put into reading abook as opposed to watching a DVD?
That would explain why the class in the article didn't want to read books.

Thirdly, you aren't even touching on my idea: have FOX undercut its own audience by asking their viewers to stop watching the news after a few minutes and read a book about the same subjects instead.

You'd think that every book seller in the U.S. would be grateful if FOX would sacrifice it's quaterly profits to encourage literacy.

Next point: if the schools are dedicated to turning out "factory drones" what happens when all the factory jobs are sent to Mexico or China?

If all the students in the article are "factory drones," what are they to do when all the factories are outsourced?

So-- the Soviet Education system turned out good socialists-- but then in eastern Europe, the Czech,. Hungarian and Polish schools blundered and produce free-thing individuals who caused the 1989 end of Communism in Eastern Europe?

The conspiracy blew it in Czechkoslovokia! But in the same state as Ronald Reagan, they triumphed!

I don't buy that.

I believe you'll find that freedom and affluence have a corrosive effect on societies.

Freedom is hard and requires work. When you have it, it's far too easy to relax, and lose it through inattention and sloth. This reminds me of two things. First, a political joke:

Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land." Nearly 5,000 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Now, the government's policy will be to steal your shovel, tax your asses, ban your Camels, and mortgage the Promised Land.

The second is the (probably apochryphal, but still accurate) Alexander Tytler quotation:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.

To be willing to do that, the electorate must be willfully ignorant of the consequences of their actions.

What this piece illustrates is a willfully ignorant populace. As the National Commission on Excellence in Education stated, we've done this to ourselves.

And FOX News isn't going to stop it by falling on its sword. I'd be willing to bet that FOX has a larger percentage of readers than the other cable news networks combined, anyway.

I was lucky in that we had only a B+W TV and no cable until well into my teens. My older brother gave me a Sci-Fi short story anthology when I was 8 and I never looked back.

Beyond your parents and school encouraging you to read, especially history and current events, you need to feel that it has some relevance to your daily life.

"That you guys do all of the above, including books is not teh same as to why the students in the article regard reading books as a punishment."

No, it's not. If we misinterpreted you asking why these industries don't stand up and take credit for the decline in reading, then sorry. I'd say these kids regard reading as punishment because they were quite simply never taught it could be pleasurable- lord knows if I'd relied on the school system to teach me to read instead of my parents, I'd feel that way. Most of the books I was assigned and the way I was asked to treat them DID feel like a punishment.

"Secondly, what kind of concentration do you have to put into reading abook as opposed to watching a DVD?"

Depends on the book, depends on the DVD. I could read Stephen King with only half my brain, and in fact that's exactly what I do do when I want to unwind. (This isn't an indictment of King- I love many of his stories- but he's an easy read.) I'd never try to watch something by David Lynch unless I was cold sober and felt up to an hour plus of undivided and intense concentration. Complicated "literature" gets plenty of attention and so do shallow movies and TV, but there are a LOT of books out there that could be followed by a semiliterate monkey, and not a few movies and shows that can't be.

And MY point would be that it's NOT an either-or choice, which is why I think asking FOX to do that would be useless.

I do agree with you about the contrast between the Soviet education system and this one making that a weaker theory, though.

Did anyone on this blog read "the Revolt of the masses" by Ortega Y Gassett?

I think it was dated 1932 and made the same complaints about the majority getting stupider--

but that's a 72 year old book...?

However, in 1932 many U.S. high schools were still teaching Latin and Greek.

Now Ivy-League universities are teaching remedial English and math.

There've been a lot of Education 9/11's, Kevin. They just don't get the notice the explosive one did. Instead of leaving a smoking hole in the NY skyline, the education 9/11's leave a mouldering hole in our stock of knowledge... they're a lot quieter, and you have to look harder for the explosions.

Every time over the last five years or more that I've logged into my forums and gotten into discussions with so-called "adults" who can't write and show no evidence of critical thinking facility, and no knowledge of history or literature beyond the latest movie... that's a bit of debris from a previous "education 9/11". They've been happening all along.

Um, Ironbear, the idea of an "education 9/11" is an event that can't be ignored."

By definition, then, such an event has not occurred, since the majority of the country has ignored them, and you yourself state: "...they're a lot quieter, and you hve to look harder for the explosions."

What kind of event would it be?

I really don't know. The incrementalism has been so effective, I can't see them deviating from that path.

But...Did the 1932 book The Revolt of the Masses come true, or did its complaints of 1932 not come true?

Incidentally, how many math savvy computer programmers have comeinto being since 1932, even if fewer people learn latin?

There's a difference, Bradley, between stupidity and ignorance. The second is correctible through education, the first is not.

So no, the general level of stupidity has not increased (so far as we can tell) but the level of ignorance has most definitely increased.

How many of those "math savvy computer programmers" know much about American (or any) history? How many are capable of writing an intellible operating manual for the software they create? How many think socialism sounds like an ideal system because it makes perfect logical sense?

How many think Microsoft is capitalism incarnate, and that why socialism would make perfect sense to them?

Buggy buggy buggy software!