Why are students so dumb today?

All one has to do is watch Jesse Waters on Fox Network and you will see how really dumb students are today. It makes no difference if he interviews students at Yale, Harvard, or Podunk Community College they are dumb.

Do they even teach history, geography and government in public schools.  It appears they do not require college students to take basic courses the first two years in college any longer.  They do not even know the basics of politics, government, geography, economy or the social system. They have no reality of how we got to where we are today.

I watched as he ask who the Vice President of the United States is. I believe only one out of about twenty knew. One even said Al Gore! They ask about Bernie Sanders and one said he is the guy who owns all the buildings. If they are our future our future looks bleak.  How are they not going to make the same mistakes we did if they do not have any knowledge of history?

I am beginning to think our students are functionally illiterate. Whose fault is it? I am beginning to think it is our fault and not their fault. We allowed the politicians, teachers unions and educators to destroy our schools. We listen as they told us in the 80’s it was more important for the students to feel good about themselves than to actually learn the correct information. If Johnny thinks 2+2=5, it’s okay because he will eventually learn it’s 4. We not only listen we believed their crap and allowed them to adopt it in our schools.

Mark J. Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan claims the grade “A” is now the most common grade given to students. D’s and F’s are typically less than 10% of all letter grades. What is even more shocking is private universities give more A’s and B’s than public universities.

Students and their parents are being ripped off. Anthropology professor Karen-Sue Taussig at the University of Minnesota said, “They’re paying for it,  and they worked really hard, and they put in time, and therefore they think they should get a good grade.” Not only do the students think they deserve the good grade the professors are giving them the good grades.

I suggest  If a university cannot educate its students well enough so they can gain proper employment, allowing them to pay off their loans, the schools should not get paid. The student loan program is run by the government I bet if politicians began to withhold student loans to universities that are doing a poor job in educating our children universities would improve rapidly.

High school students are completely unprepared for college, the reality is most of them have not even been equipped with the necessary skills that they need to function at a very basic level in the real world.  Today, a surprising number of high school students are simply unable to fill out a job application, write a readable essay or balance a checkbook. Our government schools have failed them and we have failed them because we did not force our government to do a better job. It is a national disgrace.

According to a survey conducted a while back by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 could find the nation of Iraq on a map of the world. Our men and women have been getting killed their for over a decade so our children can go to school and our students do not even know where it is. Even worse, according to that same National Geographic survey only 50 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 could find the state of New York on a map.

Our young adults cannot even have an informed conversation about what is going on in the world and yet they are VOTING. They do not know the difference between communism, socialism, fascism and capitalism. Some do not even know who their hometown mayor is.

So what in the world are they learning in the classrooms of our government schools and our universities?

I though it was a joke when high school graduates were asked: What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress and only 27 percent knew; What are the two major political parties in the United States and only 43 percent  knew; Who was the first President of the United States and only 23 percent knew and Who is in charge of the executive branch and only 29 percent. I fell out of my chair when black students were ask who fought in the U.S. Civil War and two said the French and U.S. and one said the Germans and U.S. Some of the black students did not even know why the civil war was fought. I do not want you to think the white students knew because 90% did not.

Is there any doubt that public education in the United States has completely and totally failed? We are rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in education. At this point, U.S. 15-year-old's do not even rank in the top half of all industrialized nations when it comes to math and science literacy. So how do we expect to compete with the rest of the world in the future?

I am thankful the University of Saint Thomas taught us how to think, not what to think; to question whatever we read, and never to accept any claim blindly; to suspend judgment until we heard all sides of a question, and interrogate whatever claims to be true, since the truth can withstand any scrutiny. They taught us how to learn!

Critical thinking is one of life’s survival skill.