The Kids Are Alright.
(maybe something longer later if I have the time)
We may be dumb, but at least we’re not listening to all that devilish jazz and snorting everything around us through a dollar bill.
I don’t think my generation is stupid, but we need to grow up a bit. All the people in my class kept whining about the Spanish 3 class having a fiesta. All the Spanish classes get fiestas, but we have to have one right now just because they did! Are we 7 years old again? This is probably just pointless jabber on my part >.> My bad, just feeling a little jittery.
While I completely agree with Sin and to a very large point Xwing, I believe that we are still missing quite a large chunk of the problem.
Let me use democracy as an example: the very meaning of the word has changed greatly in the minds of the ‘general’ American public; from a form of government it to being interchangeable with capitalism and freedom. The colloquial change in the meaning of words is rarely every done by the education system itself.
The education system itself is competing with other highly influential forms of knowledge proliferation. So while I am going to reserve myself from any doom-saying, I think we need to change our attention to why children are learning what they are learning, and how they are doing that. Perhaps, it isn’t the fact that children are stupid, but what they are being exposed to outside of school it teaching them more efficiently than the unchanging (see d Gallo’s post) techniques used in the education system.
With that in mind, perhaps it is no longer- or rather far more important now- that the rest of the ‘community’ around the child take responsibility for what that child is actually learning. Now I am not specifically picking on television media, because that is not the only medium which seems far more effective than the school medium. Take for example a highly religious family or a highly militaristic family. A child spends much more time around their family than at school, and it is likely the family in these cases would control the T.V. which their child is able to view.
Of course even if the parents are stupid, if they are say highly religious they have other opportunities to teach their children with people who are perhaps not so stupid- and that is were the complexities come in.
So while it is easy here to be critical, trying to solve the problem- or even identify it entirely- is not so easy.
Oh and Sin, just home school your kid and send them to ‘after’ school activities for social education.
:kissy:
You’re complaining about the fact that you need to have a party? What am I missing here?
Some of the kids I meet are really rewards-oriented. They view good grades as a prize or something. If you want more of them you can either work hard or cheat. A lot of them see nothing wrong with copying other people’s work to get an A. They don’t even consider the part where they don’t learn anything.
I don’t think what you guys are talking about is really intelligence, it’s more like who can conform to the standards of society. And anyways, most people won’t need to know where Nairobi is or what the Federalist Papers say. As long as people know what they’re doing at their jobs, they can still be functional members of society. Just like Sherlock Holmes says, knowing things that aren’t related to what you do is just wasting space in your brain. Going to other Asian countries won’t change anything either if your kid doesn’t want to learn cuz a lot of my cousins went to school in other countries and they’re still hella dumb.
Hey, there are people saying that education there is actually getting better instead of worse:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071025_827398.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
This was surprising. I don’t know if this is true or not, but this guy is saying that Google, MS etc. are wrong when they say there aren’t enough people for the market. I do have a strong feeling that his data is twisted when he says those companies are getting it wrong.
There’s not really any scientific evidence supporting either nature or nurture as the major degree of influence of “intelligence” in a given area, so you guys are arguing a moot point :[
Well, there is evidence to show nature is the overwhelming deteriminant when it comes to how you do on an IQ test(numerous 'twin studies - studies of identical twins separated at birth and raised in different environments - have borne this out)… to an extent. People living in areas classified as suffering from poverty(and this is a specific definition having to do with average income etc.) do significantly worse. But if you don’t live in an area classified as poverty stricken, you have as much chance as having an IQ as high as that kid whose parents made him watch educational videos starting at 2 months old.
The real question is how much validity IQ has. First - it does have validity, because we’ve found some serious correlations between IQ and real facts. For instance, there is a positive correlation between your IQ score and life expectancy. Higher your IQ = longer you live. Scientists suspect this is because the higher your IQ, the better you take care of yourself.
Another correlation is that women strongly tend to marry men whose IQs are higher than they are(women and men both have the same average IQ score, BTW, so its not simply a fact of men being a little smarter than women). Women with very high IQ usually don’t marry.
Then again, recently a study was done on millionaires, and it was found that millionaires on a whole possessed the same average IQ as the rest of the nation.
And there’s the fact that Muhammed Ali, one of the greatest boxers of all time, once took an IQ test and was found to be mildy retarded(according to the test). Which kind of put a hole in the theory that those with higher IQ are better at everything.
Quite frankly, a lot of the info about IQ studies has been suppressed due to political correctness. A few decades ago, someone published a report stating that whites, on average, score ten points higher than blacks. He wasn’t saying that this is evidence that blacks are genetically inferior; he was simply pointing out the fact(which is true). The researcher was completed dragged through the mud and shamed before the entire nation. Since then, few people have the guts to even touch IQ research.
As for my opinion, I think that IQ does matter, but that ultimately the most important factor for success is motivation and willpower. And that there are numerous other factors as well.
To comment on the topic of the thread, I think what the author is saying is that today’s younger generation is having trouble functioning in general, rather than just having low IQs or doing poorly in school. Also throw in the theory that we are all narcissists who believe we’re all destined to ‘change the world’, yet who don’t have the patience to actually work a job. This is actually a common topic of discussion about Generation Y, and I’ve heard many businesses run seminars on trying to deal with with Generation Y and their habit of emailing the boss with suggestions for changing the schema of the company when they’ve worked there for less than a week 
(Obviously, a lot of my post is tongue in cheek, so please don’t beat me up saying how responsible and high-functioning you are Still, I think the theory does have some merit).
I’m complaining about the fact that my class if full of a bunch of whiney children. That was a bad example. I’m just ticked about that because I didn’t want the party at this time of the year, and now I have to buy something to bring in when my family is already tight on money.
The main reasons that this is happening is because of the work “ethic” that we are taught, the attitudes that we have taught and are teaching our children, the increased amounts of standardized tests, and the focus of high school and college on pleasing authority figures rather than actually learning.
Maybe I’m going to be generalizing with the “ethic,” but it was what I was taught, unfortunately. If there was a big project around the house, and I needed help, my dad would try to get me to help. I’d invariably say, “No,” and my mother, because she grew up in a poor place and she didn’t have this option, would say “let him play.” I have a chance to be an adult when I’m an adult, and a child when I’m a child. This is certainly a fine thing when you compare it to the back-breaking labor that she had to pull on a farm with abusive step-parents, but when this is extended to things like cleaning the cat-box and setting the table, it gets a little ridiculous. Our generations are steadily getting lazier because we are encouraged by our parents to be lazier earlier, to put off development of important things for a later date. As a result, I realized recently, I have been acting like a child all of my life, and I have to make a much greater effort to fix my behavior patterns than someone who had learned much earlier that work is inevitable for all human beings. Now, I am not blaming my parents or society for my past laziness and hedonism (in fact, at this point in my life, I cannot blame anybody except myself), but it is somewhat of a factor, I believe.
As for the attitude of generation Y, I think that it started when we transitioned from Sesame Street to Barney the Dinosaur. I remembered being at just the right age to be sickened by Barney, but I didn’t really get how much more dumbed down it was. I believe that shows like Sesame Street, when shown in moderation and not in concert with other more “junk food” television shows, can be very helpful to children. I think that Barney is one of those “junk” shows. Why? The emphasis is not on the learning of letters, numbers, and fostering creativity in children. What is Barney’s message? “Everybody’s special” in their own particular manner. Now, Sesame Street taught about diversity, manners, and “getting along” and all that, as well as some more serious issues such as dealing with death, but Barney the Dinosaur was and is a show that is exclusively about what a special little snowflake each and every one of those smarmy little child actors is. From that, and the insistance of each parent that their child not be disciplined either in home or at school (as everyone, even that kid that beats up kids half his age, is just a “sensitive” individual), and our increasingly litigacious parents, has caused our children to believe that they are all golden children come to save the world.
The increased amount of standardized testing is something that has always irked me, as I can easily pass a test without learning anything. I learned, in school, how to take a test. Multiple choice, and even some of the more leading essay questions are useless. If we’re going to educate our children and young adults, we need to focus on short answer and essay questions, and give frequent papers. My problem with the mandatory multiple choice questions that the government (especially New York State) seems to orgasm over is that they don’t encourage the learning of a topic: they encourage pattern recognition and basic logic. So when we give a child multiple choice tests from when they are six, and are taught by teachers how to eliminate wrong answers, it is simple to take a test which they have no knowledge of and get nearly 100%. I know, I’ve done it. I’ve said pretty much the same thing to a philosophy professor of mine, and so he decided to take a vote. Unfortunately, the non-philosphy minors/majors opted for the multiple choice test instead of the essays. Maybe I’m an asshole. That’s besides the point.
But if college has taught me anything, if high school has taught me anything, it is something my mother has told me before: the teacher is like your boss. No matter how idiotic a rule, how wrong they are, how incompetent or patronizing or even mind-numbingly stupid a professor is, you should just say “Yes ma’am,” or “Yes, sir” and do what they tell you. Even if you do a poor job, if you do it by their standards, you will get a good grade. Of course, given that our school system was originally used for training our children to be factory workers, I’m not sure how different that is from the past. But the point is, when people say that school encourages creativity, “critical thinking,” et cetera, they are either masters of self deceit or they are incredibly bad liars. It is difficult for someone to be creative or intelligent when they are expected to follow any command, without questioning, no matter how utterly stupid it is (like the children’s literature professor that had us make a mobile… a MOBILE in college… I ended up doing a lot of independent research to satisfy myself for that course). Now, it might seem like I’m griping here, but we’re also supposed to assume that: A. Our authority figure knows what they’re talking about. And B. Our precious authority figure isn’t lying.
Physics 303: I was taught that acupuncture was a viable form of medicine because of the “chi” force. Now, I’m sure that the professor believed this, and that acupuncture may work for some reason (I honestly don’t know if it does- maybe Sin can shed light on this), but he told us all that it was because of this chi force, and that we should accept it. What scared me: my first instinct was to accept what he said simply because he said it. It didn’t hit me until nearly a minute later that he was infusing his personal beliefs into what was supposed to be a course on the history of science. Then it hit me how many things I was supposed to just “accept” on demand: everybody is racist (an assumption that I support, but it is still an assumption),everybody’s viewpoint is equally valid (I’ll speak about the way postmodernism has destroyed the school systems later if you want, but I’m surprised already how crazy later it is), and perhaps the most perverted notion at all: that if a professor says “don’t just accept what anybody tells you,” you should automatically assume what they say is the truth (it’s a remarkable persuasion tool). I hope much of what I said is on point, as I tend to ramble.
GAP: Placebo.
And ultimately, no matter what we say here, GAP is also right in what he says, the only measure we have for is our generation worse or better than previous generations is to look at the functional output of these individuals. So many people here are focused on getting into the little details of meaningless IQ tests and everyone being their own unique fucking snowflake that they aren’t looking at the bottom line which answers this question for us. I would argue that people don’t change and Xwing is perfectly right in saying basic human nature has been the same for thousands of years. The tabula rasa is bullshit. However, that doesn’t mean people aren’t worse off as a result of their own stupidity. Stupidity is a purely subjective word. So is laziness. My point would be is that if you’re too much in denial to notice the consequences of your laziness / actions / inactions / whatever you want to call it, then you’re a fucking moron / a drone. Do we live in a society where people ignore the consequences of their actions? Yes. All I need to do is point at the Iraq war. The fact that people especially ignore consequences has in part to do with upbringing / the ethical sense people develop when growing up, which goes back to my earlier points.
The main problem with this discussion is that its all over the place and people aren’t all talking about the same thing. The question is “is our generation stupid?”. The question is not about individuals but the general collective mass of people. From there its about asking questions that pertain to figuring if people are stupid or not and that brought over other topics of conversation like the question I asked “is our generation stupidER?”, which is a point Xwing also addressed. To digress again, part of the problem we have is that the consequences of the collective stupidity of our species are much more significant thanks to advances in technology and thus we would appear to be stupider because we’re fucking ourselves that much harder. But the fact of the matter is that we’re fucking ourselves in just the same basic ways as ever. Its just that now we get the gold medal from the special olympics for doing it in such spectacular ways. So if we want to ask ourselves if our generation is stupid, look at the results from the masses (ie normal people) and keep in mind that there are outliers that don’t represent the average (people who make discoveries).
Sin: I figured as much. Wasn’t there a study with a guy that was an acupuncture “expert” and a guy who knew absolutely nothing about acupuncture performing on patients (Surprise: it turns out that they had the same success rate)? I don’t remember the full details of the experiment, but I had read about it in philosophy of social science (or maybe it was that reading on philosophy of science).
So, although it doesn’t come right out and say it, it seems that you believe that our society rewards and praises stupidity and denigrates the intelligent. If that’s the case, then I agree. Regardless of whether you like the current American president, his election proves this point. When he ran for Congress in 1978, people dismissed him as the intellectual elite, a Connecticut intellectual who tried to stroll into Texas and take over (http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/072700wh-bush-lubbock.html). When he ran for governer years later, he re-invented himself as the thoroughly southern “good old boy” that he wants you to think he is, and he gets elected for both the Governer’s office and the Presidency. The people that voted for him didn’t care so much about the issues as much as they cared that he was just an ordinary guy. A regular guy who graduated from Yale and Harvard Business School. A regular guy whose father held several political offices, including president. It didn’t bother them that not only was their perception clearly incorrect, but that if it IS correct they would have an average Joe holding an office as important as the Presidency. A large minority voted for him before, and then a majority of voters fell for his chicanery a second time. If that isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is.
Of course, they aren’t as stupid as the people that don’t vote and subsequently “prove” that voting doesn’t do anything because the person they wanted in office wasn’t elected. But that’s another cheerful bedtime story.
If you judge ‘intelligence’ meaning functionality, that is, the ability to actually financially support yourself, our generation is horrific, myself included. So I"m pretty sure the author is right in that regard.
Every definition of intelligence refers to functionality in some general sense. The big disagreement has to do with the subjective value of which one a given person thinks is important.
Bush lost an election as an intellectual?! Colour me shocked.
This is something I can buy into, although I associate it more with WWI-WWII-era Europe than with 21st-century America. When you remove yourself from “the world’s going to hell” discourse of politics, and think about our era – <i>it’s not that bad</i>.
Sure, America-Europe relations have been better, China’s moving toward superpower status, terrorism’s increased, North Korea hates the U.S., and there’s a long-term occupation in Iraq. But that’s nothing beside the first half of the 20th century, when real world powers were at war with <i>one another</i>. That’s nothing beside the arms race of, oh, 1950-1980, during which the only barrier to WWIII was a theory of Mutually Assured Destruction. None of this compares to pre-20th century days, when so many people died of disease, malnutrition and violence that the world population barely managed to increase.
So if we’re stupid now, at least it’s in a relatively peaceful, financially stable, politically balanced, technology-bolstering, and emotionally sensitive way. Edit: I imagine you’re getting less at how bad things are, than our immense <i>creativity</i> in finding ways to screw up the world nowadays, despite the safeguards previous generations have developed. Which is fair enough.
All is changed, changed utterly;
A terrible beauty is born.
But yes, it is happening everywhere. Even the geeky kids are getting more retarded… Byebye sanity and faith in humanity and the power of families. 