It’s Time We All Wised Up About Dumbed-Down Schools

Time is running out, and it seems there’s no way America can reverse the continuing deterioration of standards within our nation’s school systems. Why? Because as we who were educated in the 1940s and 50s gradually disappear, fewer people will be left to describe what standards should be, or to explain what students must learn if America truly wants an educated society.

The biggest problem with American education today is that too many people, especially those under 50 years of age, have no idea what or how much we don’t know. This population includes both teachers and students at every level.

Last September at our usual start-of-the-university-year faculty meeting, a young doctoral candidate expressed his concerns about what he considered a pressing need to ease our students’ stress. He insisted instructors create stress by requiring business writing students to learn eight important writing concepts in only one semester. The kindly PhD-to-be was amazed when I told him that in the golden days of my education, my contemporaries conquered those exact same concepts by the time we were out of sixth grade.

That same semester I asked a young woman to meet with me in order to discuss her failing performance in my writing class. As a university senior, she was writing at approximately a fourth-grade level (1950s standard) and did not know when to correctly use “a” or “an.” When asked what she was studying, she proudly announced she was getting her teaching credential. When I cautioned her that she might consider another career path, she calmly reassured me, “It’s OK. I only want to teach little kids--like first and second grade.” That earnest future teacher has no clue why excellent writing skills are a necessity for any educator, nor just how poor her own writing skills are. And she had yet to learn that kids must know very early when to use “a “or “an.”

If you ever have an opportunity to speak in private with any teachers, they’ll probably share similar stories. These days we all have them. Any honest college instructor will attest to the fact that classes are filled with upper-division college students who are oblivious to what they don’t know: They don’t know how to think or analyze; how to use language for intelligent and rich discourse; how to produce a college-caliber paper without borrowing from a “sample” or doing a cut-and-paste off the Internet. Sometimes students don’t even know they’re unable to comprehend required course readings, textbooks or cases.

Sadly, we enter the terrible state of not-knowing in this nation as soon as our kids start school, where it’s possible that 18 different languages are represented in a classroom. With such formidable communication barriers, parents and kids can’t possibly know what students should be learning--or if they are learning at all.

Today, this state of not-knowing permeates every part of our lives. College graduates don’t know they might be ill-prepared for their chosen career. Employers don’t know it’s possible to hire an employee with a degree who might be, essentially, illiterate.

A college grad who plasters the bank where he works with signs announcing, “Happy Birthday, Fiona. Its [sic] hard to believe your [sic] 50,” doesn’t know he creates a bad image for his company; members of management who also miss his punctuation errors don’t know that such failings are one reason why much of corporate America is looking to have technology do the job wherever possible.

The education-fixer pundits tunnel our vision mostly toward the elementary grades and on the vagaries of new math, the inadequacies of whole language and on controversies such as bilingual education. Now it’s time to be honest and have the courage to address the big picture.

The signs of America’s intellectual deterioration are all too evident in our institutions of higher learning. With each passing semester, the men and women who are products of our nation’s abysmal dumbing-down process are becoming tomorrow’s scientists, journalists, professors, school administrators, historians, dentists, engineers, medical technicians, researchers, lawyers, physicians and surgeons.

Meanwhile, our elder sages who know the dangers inherent in our terrible not-knowing will continue to die off. Those who are left--people who might be responsible for your lives and well-being, your learning, your government and the future of your nation--will eventually be in charge. And they--individuals whose knowledge will be so vital to you--won’t even know what they don’t know. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.