As if we didn’t already know that the American education system is seriously lacking, I read an article yesterday which said that 1 in 4 Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth instead of the other way around.
Say what!?! All this time I thought the earth revolved around me!
I suppose the realization that 1 in 4 Americans are, as my Aunt Belle would have put it, “dumb as a box of rocks” should be shocking, I can’t say I’m totally surprised. After all, this is the same nation who, for some reason unknown to those of us with at least one working brain cell, thinks Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are legitimate role models.
To be fair, I don’t think the entire blame for such blatant stupidity can be laid entirely at the feet of the educators. I think most teachers do their best to provide a quality education for their students, but it’s also the students responsibility to apply themselves to learn what their teachers are trying to teach. Unfortunately, it seems being rock-dumb has been the “cool” thing for so long that it has dumbed-down the American society for years now. This dumbing-down has caused a snowball effect on the educational system: students who graduate with less knowledge then go on to teach the next generation, then that generation graduates with less knowledge than their predecessors and they in turn teach the next generation with less knowledge, and on and on the snowball rolls until we reach the state we’re in as a society. Now, we’re in a predicament where 25% of Americans have the mentality of those in the dark ages. Pretty bleak, huh?
I have to wonder what might be in store for society if we keep getting dumber as the years go by. While I know I’m in no way the smartest person on the planet (as evidenced by that run-on sentence in the above paragraph), I do feel like I have a grasp on general concepts of science and other areas of educational study. Heck, even a kindergarten student could probably tell you the earth revolves around the sun. I hope, anyway. The way things are going, we might one day see a debate such as whether or not the stars are holes in the sky which aliens use to watch us as legitimate.
Aunt Belle would probably have a word or two for these types of people. Heaven help us.
Observations from Oblivion 