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. 

Appointing Supreme Court Justices has become critical to political parties!

I will be surprised if the conspiracy stories do not begin soon over Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. There were some very important cases about to be ruled on, cases that have tremendous political ramifications.

Among these is Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, a landmark case regarding the mandatory collection of union dues and their use for political purposes. The ruling could have meant the death of collective bargaining and the political might of America’s unions.

The Democrat Party has depended on the union votes for decades to keep them in power. Since Reagan the union’s power has slowly eroded and if employees were not forced to pay union dues their political power would have most likely ended. Without political power to threaten politicians with their block votes and large campaign donations politicians would no longer have a reason to rule in favor of union bosses even when the politicians know their decisions are not in the best interest of the country as a whole.  

After oral arguments in the case in January, The Washington Post indicated the court’s conservative majority, including Scalia, were leaning to rule against the union’s ability to collect mandatory dues. But, with Scalia’s passing and the news that the Republican led Senate will likely not confirm an Obama nominee means such cases could end up with a 4 to 4 decisions. Lacking a majority, the lower court’s rulings would stand in favor of the unions.

Had the Supreme Court ruled that union dues could not be used for political purposes, it would have dealt a major blow to one of the Democrat Party’s most powerful assets.

Another key case is U.S. vs. Texas, in which opponents challenged the legality of the president’s executive orders dealing with illegal immigrants. Signs are now strong that it will be decided at the lower court level and the Supreme Court will not deal with it.

Supreme Court justices take a vote on a case immediately after oral argument, cases that have already been argued, even if no opinion has been written yet, the Chief Justice has an obligation to include Justice Scalia's vote in those cases. In other cases where no vote has yet been taken, we may get tied votes which means the lower court decisions will stand. That means that a number of controversial issues will have to be brought back to the court in new cases when there are nine justices.

Not all legal experts agree with the view Chief Justice Roberts could issue a decision using Scalia’s vote.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, blasted comments by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader that the Senate would try to block President Obama from nominating a new justice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.

Ms. Warren said, “Senator McConnell is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. In fact, they did when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.”

That is not what Ms. Warren and other Democrats were saying in 2008 and 2004 when they were afraid that George Bush would appoint a new Supreme Court Justice prior to elections. The Democrats in 2008 and 2004 like the Republicans in 2016 threaten to block a new nominee for the Supreme Court.

In the 1840’s and 1860 the Supreme Court went two years without nine Justices. That is certainly not an ideal situation, but the Supreme Court operated during those periods and would do the same today regardless of what Harry Reid says about the Court cannot go one year without nine Justices.

There was a time when the Supreme Court exercised its role as final decider on important public issues, modestly, on a non-partisan, non-ideological basis and only when necessary to protect the Constitution from clear excesses committed by the political branches. In my opinion those days are long gone there is no denying the Supreme Court has become just another arena for playing out the same partisan and ideological warfare that dominates the other branches. This is why political parties and politicians fight so hard to have their president make these appointments.

The current size of the court, nine justices, is not established in the Constitution. It has varied over U.S. history from five to ten.  The changes in the size of the court were almost always done for partisan/political/ideological reasons. Constitutionally, the number of justices could be changed again. F.D.R. is the last president to try to change the number on the court, but he failed to do so.

Republicans and Democrats have been obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair when it comes to appointing Supreme Court Justices. Be careful of what you believe coming from the mouth of politicians from either political parties during this time of replacing Justice Scalia and be careful of the conspiracy stories that will likely begin over Scalia’s death – no autopsy, no heart failure, death due to natural causes, enjoying a hunting trip and vacation the day before he died will only feed them.