The Dumbing Down of the U.S.

Since I served six years on the Board of Trustees of a small college in Brownsville, Tx. of which two years were in the capacity of Chairman of the Board, I had some knowledge of educational issues. This was from 1979 through 1985.

I've been thinking why we have an educational crisis in this country. I occasional muse about these problems.

I have to go back to 1962 when the incoming college freshman reached the zenith on scores on the Princeton college entrance exams. These were the highest scores every made by incoming college freshman.

By 1995 the scores had fallen by a full 40%. This was extremely embarrassing so the Princeton group dumbed down the tests in 1995 because under the previous test criteria, the colleges would be constrained to permit many students from enrolling.

The Scholastic Entrance Exam (SAT) was based on criteria set in 1941. A far cry from the test today.

Suddenly, state universities supported by taxes were having to offer remedial courses in basic math, reading, English, spelling, history, etc ie how to write a simple sentence with correct spelling. If a student lacked basic writing and reading skills, then you had to throw out the concept of their being able to write a theme or take test. Unless you are an advanced mathematician, people think in words.

Remedial education is simply a program to teach the incoming college freshman what their high schools neglected to teach them.

As the test scores were dumbed down, professors had to teach at the common denominator. I've had many late night conversations with them when I served on the Board. They simply could not fail the majority of the class and were forced to grade on the curve.

Hence, universities were graduating majors in Education totally "uneducated" in the broad knowledge accumulated by mankind over thousands of years.One doesn't need to be an expert in all the disciplines , but surely one has to have a passing knowledge that it exists. Unfortunately the teaching of education majors began to concentrate on the "method" of teaching with little emphasis on the "substance" of what they taught. So, while you may have been trained in teaching skills you were not trained to teach a substantive knowledge of the subject.

So what resulted, dumber teachers each year teaching students that were becoming increasingly dumber for lack of inculcating knowledge into them. It is what I call a synergistic effect that feeds upon itself. The dumber student goes to college and graduates as a dumber teacher and this process replicates itself.

I see no remedy. It is to be noted that there will always be a small segment of students who , by their own hook, will manage to absorb knowledge like a sponge. These are the types that will continue to learn throughout their life.

What doesn't bode well, are the number of citizens that lack knowledge of history, math, basic science, biology, reading, etc and not having the critical thinking skills that a modern Republic like ours needs in order to survive.

Worldwide test comparisons of students reflect that we're way down and getting worse against other countries.

All thoughtful people in our country are extremely concerned about the dumbing down of America. All sorts of proposals have been formulated. I don't see any that will get us out of this educational deficit morass.

If you reverted back to the 1941 test criteria that was used in 1962, then only about 5% of freshman applicants to a university would be accepted. We all realize that would be politically unacceptable.

Alas, it's a lost cause in my humble opinion. Wish I could say otherwise

Bob