The Dumbing of America: Special Comment by my 72-year-old friend

By GottaLaff

My very caring, impassioned 72-year-old Twitter pal, who goes by the name 42bkdodgr, would like to share his feelings about the state of education in America and how it affects America's future. I am more than happy to oblige.

But first, a personal note from 42bkdodgr:

Many of you may wonder why I chose to use the “ 72 year old friend” as the introduction to my Special Comments. I selected the moniker so readers could see that from my age and life experiences I give a different perspective to the issues of today.

Now for his Special Comment:

The Dumbing of America

For the past week something has been gnawing at me, but I couldn’t figure out what is was until a few days ago. It was remark made by Pat Buchanan following the election of Scott Brown to the U. S. Senate.

On MSNBC Pat said, to the effect, that the election of Scott Brown was the voters way of telling the Democrats they were rejecting the eastern establishment Harvard and Yale elitists for the Sarah Palin type of politician.

Pat, Sarah Palin just happens to be the exact opposite of your so called elitist group.

You glowingly support Sarah Palin who:

* Went to five colleges to get a degree

* When asked to name the newspapers she reads “ All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years”

* When asked to name her favorite Founding Father, answered “all of them”.

* When asked on her foreign policy insights into Russia, answered, “They're our next door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”.

* In the book Game Change, she is portrayed as someone who knew very little about WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and was not aware of the difference between North and South Korea.

You think this is the type of intellect Americans should elect to the highest office in this country? A person who can’t answer some very basic political questions?

Pat we are in the midst of a Great Recession, created by the Bush Administration, and most states in the last few years, have and are experiencing an economic crisis, that has required them to cut funding to their educational systems... which affects staffing levels, class size and student programs.

These cutbacks in funding could very well result in our country seeing a generation of less educated people, and I think we are already seeing signs of it.

In 2009 the Oklahoma Council of Public conducted a survey of 1000 high school students asking them 10 questions that are given to candidates for U.S. Citizenship.

Only 3% of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test. Included in the test were such questions as:

--Who was the first President of the United States?
--We elect Senators for how many years?
--What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
--What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?

The organization that conducted the test said Arizona had similar test results, and they are concerned about the rest of the country.

A recent high school graduation report by the Southern Regional Education Board stated that only 61% of South Carolina’s entering freshman wind up graduating from high school compared to a national average of 73%; which I feel isn‘t a great percentage either.

Meanwhile, China and India continue to stress the importance of having a good education to their youth, which will eventually result in those countries passing us by both intellectually and competitively in the near future.

This country must begin investing in our educational system and have programs that stress the importance of having a good education to our youth by:

(1) establishing procedures to remove unqualified teachers, regardless of tenure
(2) developing subjects and/or programs that will enable our students to be competitive in the 21st century
(3) having realistic exams to judge a student’s true educational level
(4) having merit pay for outstanding teachers
(5) not having a curriculum whose sole purpose is to teach students to achieve at least the minimum scores for state and/or federal requirements
(6) reducing class size

Unless we start taking such action, we will become an uneducated and non-competitive country in the future.

Many thanks again for another thoughtful, relevant piece, 42bkdodgr. You often say what many of us are thinking and feeling, and we thank you for your unique perspective.