"They dumbed down education!" .......Who? ..... (Whom?)

[Berniewood Hogan]

It's a complaint that we've all heard. American education has been "dumbed down." That exact phrase is so common, you should be able to buy a Big Mac at it. I have two questions about this:

1. Is this actually true?

At what point in US history was education noticeably superior? Our citizens are making rapid technological advances right now, despite their allegedly dumbed down schooling from the land's pedagogues. Speaking of whom...

2. Whose fault is it?

Conservatives, for diverting funds to private schools which teach that science is a lie from Satan? Liberals, for.... I don't know, telling kids not to beat up gays? The bureaucrats, for demanding quantifiable student achievement data from standardized tests? Bush? Obama? Illegal immigrants? Big Corn? Feminists? The Nicene Creed? The band Creed? The state of Texas with their almost-monopoly on textbook printing and their backwards hillbilly views on what kids should be exposed to via that dad gummit book-learnin'?

Who started this gangsta shyt? And to whom is the motherfukking thanks we give?

Please support your replies with evidence, list your sources, and give credit to photographers.

 

[Hood Critic]

School hasn't been dumbed down so much as it hasn't evolved with the times.

Children in the average school are still being taught in 2017 the same material and principles that were needed to live and work in the mid 1900's. We live in the information age where some of the key principles to education should be critical thinking, research and being able to identify good and bad data.

 

[Arcavian]

I blame no child left behind and the increase in standardized testing in this country

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I blame no child left behind and the increase in standardized testing in this country

Not that NCLB was a good thing, but the trend started way earlier. I've been reading The Schools Our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn because I saw him speaking last year and he was completely on point. In this book he has entire chapters about how bad the standardized test-focused mentality has destroyed our schools...and the book was published in 1999.

Not that there was an earlier golden age, he draws out the roots of the problem going back a hundred years or so. But we're becoming more uniformly focused on standardized tests over all else when that's the opposite direction we need to go.

 

[Maschine_Man]

Nah, education really isn't getting "dumbed down". IN fact, the standards are just getting higher.

Actually, public education is getting better, not worse

Education Reform Is Making All Public Schools Worse | HuffPost


also, on average kids (actually all people) are actually smarter than they were 50 years ago. More ppl are going to college than ever before, and that insistence on going to college is far higher than ever before.

Kids are also taking a lot more on their plate than they did before. With placements, and co-op and mandatory volunteer hours, plus all the extra-curricular shyt that is required just to get in to a good school there is way more kids are expected to do.

 

[Tony D'Amato]

I blame cell phones. I blame parents getting small children cell phones.I blame instagram and facebook. I blame Apple. I blame Ed O'Bannon. NCAA football made me want to go to college.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Ask God?

"God did you do this thing to us?"
"Who is responsible?

He will answer

 

[Shogun]

Where to begin?
At it's bedrock level, though, the problem is that American culture doesn't value education.
Most American students (and their parents) approach education as something that's owed to them...not something they have to work hard for.