RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/american_students__dumber_and_more_woke.html

Professors often complain about the current crop of students being less intellectually talented than when they began their careers decades back. Such griping is, of course, easy to dismiss — it has occurred for millennia. Unfortunately, this time around the grumbling may be true and not the usual nostalgia for “the good old days.”  The anecdotal evidence from textbook reading levels, shortened college syllabi, scrapbook-like research assignments, proliferating college remedial classes, grade inflation, and the popularity of “gut” college majors such as Gender Studies, is indisputable. We have also invested hundreds of millions in our schools yet test results such as the SAT are flat over the past half century. Add the countless stories of illiteracy among high school “graduates” despite falling class size and expensive reforms. Judged by the standards of evolution, Americans may be going backwards.

The best evidence of this decline are data from the highly respected General Social Survey on mean IQ by decade among graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students (a tip of the hat to Charles Murray on Twitter). This is a complicated subject given how America’s demography has altered, and measuring IQ via surveys might be iffy, but the numbers, even if a bit unsure, are alarming.

These data are divided into three groups: those with high school diplomas, undergraduate degrees, and graduate degrees. Then the data are then divided by decades beginning in the 1960s through to the 2010 onward decade. The overall pattern is a steady decline in IQ scores for each group from decade to decade. For example, high school graduates in the 1960s had an average IQ of 99.3 but this figure declined so by 2010 and onward, it was 93.5. A similar drop occurred among college graduates — from 113.3 in the 60s to 100.4 in the 2010 decade. For those with graduate degrees, the fall was from 114.0 to 105.8.          

These are depressing numbers. That in 2010 the average college student had an IQ of 100.4 (almost exactly our national average) signifies that we are miles away from trying to educate the brightest youngsters. Worse, with an average of about 100, many of those enrolled must score below 100 and thus suitable only for low-skill occupations. This picture may even be worse than these numbers suggest if we subtract out the many smart international students now enrolled in U.S. higher education.  

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-its-done_5020230.html?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=rcp

The Jesuits used to say that if you gave them a child until he was 7, they would give you the man.

We can dicker about the time it takes to form a person’s character, but there’s no doubt that those early experiences shape us for life. Which is one reason why we think primary education is so important.

Sure, it’s partly then that the kiddies learn to read, write, and calculate.

But just as important are the moral lessons they learn: the emotional weather they cultivate; the sorts of feelings they nurture and those they recoil from.

This process continues throughout our educational career.

Most people instinctively recognize this, which is why education is always such a hot topic with voters.

What sorts of people are our schools and colleges helping to form? What values are students being taught?

Such questions help explain the passion that has erupted at school board meetings when angry parents confront school board members about the sorts of things that were being taught in schools: the gussied-up versions of Marxist ideology that goes under the name of critical race theory (CRT) as well as the quasi- and sometimes not-so-quasi pornographic exotica disseminated under the rubric of “gender” studies.

The COVID lockdowns first exposed the grim reality to parents.

Their children were forced to stay home from school and attend class remotely.