Why America Is Kinda Dumb, And How it’s Already Getting Smarter

I think we have a deficit of logic and common sense in America, but I already see that deficit being erased. I don't even know if we can remove the root cause of this ignorant approach to education.

Any guesses what I'm talking about?  I blame a lot of our collective ignorance on standardized testing. Let's take that a step further and say I blame it on the school districts and governmental pressures that force teachers to "teach to the test".   Standardized testing has been around about 50 years and teaching to the test gradually became a "thing".  Prior to that time it seems that we were taught more of "how" to think instead of "what" to think.  It also involved a deeper kind of thinking.  We weren't taught the date of the moon landing, we were taught why we went there in the first place.

This misguided attempt to create better performing students created a few generations of people who can answer trivia questions but are unable to operate outside of whatever generic facts they were forced to memorize.  A teacher can no longer spend a week on the moon landing, they just have to hit the high points and have you memorize them. You may think that no one event should take up that time, but learning about an event like that in depth, surreptitiously teaches you how to dissect the knowledge and ask new questions about any event.

So how is this situation correcting itself?  It's the internet.  Kids are naturally curious and if they don't like the answers or the information they're getting, they'll get it themselves.  Comedian Ron White tells a great story in his latest special and he remarks on how you can't tell a kid a fairy tale anymore because they'll just punch it on on their phone, then look at you and say, "bullshit".

I see proof of what I'm writing here everyday on Facebook. There are is a large portion of the population who will take a meme at face value and send it on. They are literally saying "it says it here, so it must be true". Then there are those who will think logically and says "that can't be true" and they will go research the real answer and correct the information.  You most likely will also see proof of what I'm telling you in the responses to this blog. Many have been told that America is the greatest for so long that they don't ask "at what?".  It's certainly not education, which is described here as "mediocre". So, there will be a lughead or two who will look at the headline and say "if you don't like it, get out!" instead of saying "how do we fix this?"

Fortunate for you, in fact most of you reading this far, you're one of three things, #1. Old enough to not have been caught in the standardized testing trap, #2. Had great parents or your own devices to develop a strong sense of logic  or #3. Have adapted to the internet early on and started your own search for answers.

I don't know if we can ever get education back to the way it was. You would have to have some form of teacher accountability outside of those tests and I don't even know how that would be done. I would just say, do everything you can to provide your kid with an internet connection and they'll do okay.