Moron U
April 10th, 2008Via: Chronicle of Higher Education:
I teach a seminar called “Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge.” I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word “rendition.”
Not one hand went up.
This is after four years of the word appearing on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, on network and cable news, and online. This is after years of highly publicized lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and international controversy and condemnation. This is after the release of a Hollywood film of that title, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.
I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play.
I nodded charitably, then attempted to define the word in its more public context. I described specific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreign citizens, of the likely treatment accorded such prisoners when placed in the hands of countries like Syria and Egypt, of the months and years of detention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges, of some prisoners’ eventual release and how their subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. government were stymied in the name of national security and secrecy.
The students were visibly disturbed. They expressed astonishment, then revulsion. They asked how such practices could go on.
I told them to look around the room at one another’s faces; they were seated next to the answer. I suggested that they were, in part, the reason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo detention, warrantless searches and intercepts, and a host of other such practices have not been more roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.
That instance was no aberration. In recent years I have administered a dumbed-down quiz on current events and history early in each semester to get a sense of what my students know and don’t know. Initially I worried that its simplicity would insult them, but my fears were unfounded. The results have been, well, horrifying.
Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn’t pretty.
Repeating and cross-posting the erudite dialouge from Wonkette’s highly esteemed and dignified commenters (ahem):
“Well they’re JOURNALISM MAJORS for chrissakes; their ignorance is merely preparation for the work they will some day do as poorly as today’s journalists!” – Puffington_Horawitz_III
“With the exception of an evolved ability to operate recreational electronics, the student aged population stuns me everyday with their stupidity. I am amazed they are not all eaten by reptilian predators which outclass them in both brains and cunning.” – moondancer
“The bar is so low, expectations are so low, almost any tyrant could slide behind the wheel and nobody’d notice. Wait a minit…” – declineandfall
haha. gotta love the snark. I read Wonkette for humor, and Cryptogon for the news. 🙂
I don’t consider myself to be terribly intelligent, and yet, I knew the answers to those questions. Not a pretty picture, indeed.
I attribute a lot of this dumbing down of students as citizens of not only the U.S. but also of what goes on re Planet Earth to their parents.
We grew up with a saying “spoiled rotten.” When we used that term to describe a person, it meant that their parents had never said NO to them. And, not ever saying no to a child does
spoil their life path. The urge or quest for knowledge, self growth, to know something beyond themselves is quite ruined. When life as you experience it is similar to being spoon fed like a baby with oatmeal, why bother with the world outside of the aura of the big teat?
I’m not a parent of a child (but a parent to my Mom now (huh, I can’t say No to her either) but I used to get so MAD when my sister just could not bring herself to say no to her now 23 old son throughout his entire life. She actually BOUGHT HIM A CONDOMINIUM – and pays his bills.
Oh gawd. I’m stopping my rant before it goes further.
But the ramifications of not knowing what the word NO means, I think is going to be a lesson lots of people are starting to learn right anon. Want a loan to buy a house? NO! Mommy, I want to go to Harvard! NO!
Well fer cryin out loud! The President of the US is a prime example of what happens when you don’t say NO a person in their youth. And the state of the US and the world economy in general right now in particular, is a result of just not knowing how to say NO!
Down, down, down off your soapbox girl! (I’m talking to myself).
These kids aren’t stupid by accident, they’re stupid by design. John Taylor Gatto (former NY state teacher of the year) wrote about this a few years ago. Here’s the introduction to an article of his:
http://4brevard.com/choice/Public_Education.htm
“As a bit of background, the industrial titans of the 1890’s began to think that not only could the production line be engineered, but people’s lives could be engineered as well, in order to work like homogeneous robots with the machines. Rockefeller and Carnegie gave huge sums to prominent academics to see if this could be realized through the educational system. They found that to a considerable extent it could, and it is still being done today as evidenced in the Congressional Record during the Clinton administration.”
In short, the U.S. educational system needs to produce drones who will sit in place for hours on end, doing what they’re told as obediantly as possible.
They have achieved this goal admirably.
The problem with the solution as promulgated by carnegie et al is: by what special dispensation from the cosmos do you guarantee that wit, verve, and genius shall be borne only unto your class ?
This is always why empires fail: they arrogate unto the ruling class all power, but few brains. Eventually, enough are born outside the palaces, and the paradigm shifts. a shift in Zeitgeist, if you will.
One day, i do hope another way will develop: paradigm shifts are seldom bloodless …
cybele
That is distressing news, but it’s hard to lay all the blame at the feet of the students. When I was in school all day, then came home to homework all night, I didn’t have the time or desire to peruse the daily paper either.
A kid’s time is controlled both in and out of the classroom with more and more busy-work. The overachievers are perhaps *especially* susceptible to this.