By Michael Snyder,
March 16th, 2015
March 16th, 2015
As Americans, we tend to be pretty full of
ourselves, and this is especially true of our young people. But do we
really have reason for such pride? According to a shocking new report
from the Educational Testing Service, Americans between the ages of 20
and 34 are way behind young adults in other industrialized nations when
it comes to literacy, mathematics and technological proficiency. Even
though more Americans than ever are going to college, we continue to
fall farther and farther behind intellectually. So what does this say
about us? Sadly, the truth is that Americans are stupid. Our education
system is an abysmal failure, and our young people spend most of their
free time staring at the television, their computers or their mobile
devices. And until we are honest with ourselves about this, our
intellectual decline is going to get even worse.
According to this new report from the
Educational Testing Service, at this point American Millennials that
have a four year college degree are essentially on the same intellectual
level as young adults in Japan, Finland and the Netherlands that only
have a high school degree…
Americans born after 1980 are lagging their peers in countries ranging from Australia
to Estonia, according to a new report from researchers at the
Educational Testing Service (ETS). The study looked at scores for
literacy and numeracy from a test called the Program for the
International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the
abilities of people in 22 countries.
The results are sobering, with dire implications
for America. It hints that students may be falling behind not only in
their early educational years but at the college level. Even though more
Americans between the ages of 20 to 34 are achieving higher levels of
education, they’re still falling behind their cohorts in other
countries. In Japan, Finland and the Netherlands, young adults with only
a high school degree scored on par with American Millennials holding
four-year college degrees, the report said.
How in the world is that possible?
I can tell you how that is possible – our colleges are a joke. But more on that in a moment.
Out of 22 countries, the report from the
Educational Testing Service found that Americans were dead last in tech
proficiency. We were also dead last in numeracy and only two countries
performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency…
Half of American Millennials score below the
minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored
worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The
results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American
Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and
working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for
numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.
It is in this type of environment that Coca-Cola can be marketed to Americans as “a healthy snack“.
As I mentioned above, our system of education is
one of the biggest culprits. From the first grade all the way through
post-graduate education, the quality of education that our young people
are receiving is absolutely pathetic. In a previous article, I
highlighted some statistics from USA Today about the declining state of
college education in America…
-“After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.”
-“Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago”
-“35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone.”
-“50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages”
-“32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”
I have sat in many of these kinds of college courses.
It doesn’t take much brain power to pass the multiple choice tests that
most college professors give these days. The truth is that if you fail
out of college you really, really have to try hard.
In another previous article I shared some examples of real courses that have been taught at U.S. universities in recent years…
-“What If Harry Potter Is Real?”
-“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame”
-“Philosophy And Star Trek”
-“Learning From YouTube”
-“How To Watch Television”
-“Oh, Look, a Chicken!”
This is a national crisis. Parents should be
screaming bloody murder about the quality of the education that their
children are receiving. But because very few of them actually know what
is going on, they just continue to write out huge tuition checks all the
time believing that their kids are being prepared for the real world.
To show how “dumbed down” we have become, I want
to share with you a copy of an eighth grade exam from 1912 that was
donated to the Bullitt County History Museum in Kentucky.
Would eighth grade students be able to pass such an exam today?
Would college students?
As you look over this exam from 1912, ask yourself how you would do on it…
MUCH MORE
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