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

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Oct 29 16:22:12 PDT 2007


wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
> I'm mixed on this. I don't think Miles is totally off.

I think he is totally correct. Veteran teachers have been spouting this nonsense as long as there have been teachers. Such rot was commonplace in the Haven Hall coffee room at University of Michigan back in the late '50s. Totally wrong standards are being used to measure the "intelligence" or whatever of current students. It's mostly a matter of conflicting judgments of what is important, and on the whole the students are probably more correct than the profs of what is AND WHAT IS GOING to be more important in their lives.

Opaque social relations create such disconnects, and isolated intellectuals fail to be intellectuals and try to look beneath the surface because it is so much more fun and so much easier to kvetch about this here generation.

Carrol

This
> narrative of a defective generation of youth has a long history. One
> could probably use Williams' critique of the golden age as a strong
> analogue. On the other hand, my experiences teaching tends to move
> in this direction as well. I find a lot of willingness to follow
> instructions, but not a lot of critical thinking skills. A collegue
> (who teaches 5th grade) suspects that part of the problem is that
> internet strategies of reading tend to operate on a pan and scan
> model, rather than a model that critically takes in complex
> arguments. I would be interested if there were any long term studies
> on this question of critical literacy (ie. I accept that I am
> producing ancedotes, which may or may not mean much). My intuition
> is that this may actually go beyond the effects of the internet, and
> may have a lot more to do with a society in which its citizens don't
> have much say in its direction. Robert Wood
> >
> > I hear things similar to what the article reported from a lot of
> > veteran HS and college teachers - poor preparation, lack of interest,
> > inability to read, write or think. When you hear the same thing over
> > & over again from people with long experience, you should ask just
> > what the IQ tests are measuring. That interview from Flynn that
> > Michael Pollak posted was interesting - the rising test scores are
> > mainly an artifact of changing modes of life and thought, and not a
> > reflection of what Miles thinks they are.
> >
> > Even at the high end things seem rather grim. My sister-in-law
> > graduated from Harvard in June '06 and reports that her fellow
> > students were an intellectually uninspiring bunch. They're hyper-
> > coached, machined little achievement products, but not what you'd
> > think of as an intellectual elite.
> >
> > Doug
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
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