Dumbing down U.S. education

Looking at films like Idiocracy, we laugh and poke fun at how unbearably stupid Americans could be 500 years from now. But all laughing aside, we have to wonder: Is it possible that our country is being dumbed down? Between tabloid-controlled media, reality shows like American Gladiators and presidential nominees being revered for winning a Grammy, I would have to say, it is not only possible, but a quickly forming reality.

At the end of the 19th century, education painted a very different picture. Most educated people had no more than an eighth-grade education. Ignoring that a majority of the population didn’t even come close to that level, we still have to consider the minimal education the population did receive. Were students with eighth-grade educations in 1908 better educated than our eighth-graders of today?

The answer strikes up a heated debate. Apparently, there are those who believe that our education system is far worse and overstretched than it ever was before. These people believe that the average grade-school vocabulary was 25,000 words in 1945 and has depleted to a surprising 10,000 words today. Yet, these people are quickly shot down due to a lack of sufficient evidence or trustworthy surveys and statistics, making the rates flawed.

There seems to be no right answer to the question, and no one can fully agree as to the results. We know one thing for sure: What people read and do as pastimes has changed drastically over the last 100 years. At the turn of the last century, Americans had no television to entertain, magazines certainly didn’t contain the gossipy smut they do today, and they could not yet listen to music on radios. Without shows like the popular American Idol or soap operas like Grey’s Anatomy, people of privilege had opportunity for very few pastimes, but reading was definitely among them.

While the debate about our current state of education to our former will continue to be unresolved, we really should be looking to see how we compare to other nations of the world. Germany’s education system, for example, has a K?13 setup, as opposed to the United States’ K?12, giving students one extra year before venturing off to college. After they complete their four years of college education, Germans will have the equivalent of an American master’s degree. Apparently, during their high school equivalent, Germans obtain all basic required undergraduate courses before even heading off to college.

With the average German citizen having a higher education than we do, as well as several other nations, how do we ever expect to remain a world leader? U.S. students aren’t getting the best education possible and aren’t using the system to their advantage. Why do we have those required undergrad courses? Shouldn’t we have learned all that crap in high school? Unfortunately not. Because our education system has been so downplayed and been on the backburner of important governmental topics, people are now graduating high school without even taking basic history classes or knowing how to write with regular penmanship. No kidding.

In the wake of the current election year, people still rebuke President Bush as being more monkey than man. Maybe this symbol of American ignorance still represents the impending doom of our own intellect. As much crap as we give Bush, the populace managed to still elect him as the leader of our country–twice.

Having turned into a culture accustomed to instant gratification, how can we ever expect to be satisfied with sitting down to enjoy a good book and expand our minds? Would we rather go see the latest horror film plaguing movie screens? Or watching reality television that has a real-life person actually being tortured before our very eyes? Hopefully, the next generation will scoff at this form of entertainment, but having grown up surrounded by it, maybe we will form our own idiocracy.