[lbo-talk] 'American kids, dumber than dirt'

[Carl Remick]

On 10/29/07, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Carl Remick wrote:
> > [Hmm, I dunno -- the US has showed an impressive capacity to turn out
> > big piles of idiots throughout its history, so I suspect Mark Morford
> > may be a bit alarmist here.]
> >
> > American kids, dumber than dirt
> > Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots
> > in U.S. history
> >
> >
> To put it bluntly, this whole article is anecdotal bullshit.  As I've
> noted before, the historical trend is irrefutable: more and more people
> are receiving more and more formal education, and every generation of U.
> S. adults outperforms the previous generation on standardized IQ tests.

Thanks for the clarification, Miles!  How obtuse of me not to see the
flourishing state of US culture today, the vibrancy of our democracy
and the strength of our economy, as -- generation by generation --
those beloved standardized IQ-test scores of yours zoom upwards!   But
for novelty's sake, I'd suggest you stop scrutinizing the IQ stats for
a while and actually contemplate the world around you without the
anodyne intermediation of fanciful quantification.  I suspect you
won't like what you see from such an unaccustomed foray into
"andecdotalism," those messy nonscientific factors that were formerly
known as real life.

Carl