Dumbing Down the Kids?

Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds
By SAM DILLON
The average American college graduate's literacy in English
declined significantly over the past decade, the test
showed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16literacy.html?th&emc=th

.............................................................

I have to admit as a college teacher that I see much less book and newspaper reading going on by the current generation of students than any I have known. I don't know whether this is due to other sources of information -- the web -- or simply distractions along the lines of MTV and the junk TV stuff that is watched in place of settling down with a good book. But the upshot is a general dumbing down -- lack of knowledge of the most basic things of which my generation was fully aware -- significant events in history to basic things happening around the world.

Such a dumbing down -- and that is what it is -- does not bode well for American democracy. We are not producing the replacement generation of skilled performers that are needed to fuel a society and to keep it from wasting its resources on scams of an infinite variety of kinds, e.g. the construction of kinds of expensive military equipment not needed in this post Cold War era, but which only enrich those who produce them and the representatives in their states who lobby for the same. The ways in which the U.S. leads the world -- military budget larger than the rest of the world's combined, highest percentage of those imprisoned (1/4 of the world's total with 1/20 of its population), massive trade imbalances and budget deficits, etc., etc. spell deep trouble for our future when our house of cards comes tumbling down.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights

http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/

http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp