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I can only tell you about the schools I worked in. But, I have to tell you that when I was in junior high back in the 1960s, students didn't debate the wisdom of dropping the A-bombs on Japan. None of us took trig in the 8th grade...it wasn't even offered.
I often said to my classes, especially the last 15 years or so, that if the graduation requirements in place starting around 2000 had been in place in 1972 when I graduated that I wouldn't have.
It's not so much a dumbing down as placing emphasis on feelings rather than facts. To the masculine brain that seems like dumbing down. Facts are still taught, but in the context of how they make one feel.
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Dumbing down is quite real (have you hired a Graduate lately?)
I recently attended a Grad program, and I teach in Jr College and adult ed. (classmates are not impressive in intellect / contribution)
Dumbing down is the new norm (since 1970's, then BIG TIME after 'All-Children-Left-Behind' initiatives), and now includes the teacher 'output' from Universities, and the hiring managers at Schools.
The US is paying for this.
And will continue to wallow in the pig pen of public education we created. (trough feeders, stinky environment, "big pigs" win more food / more space / more power)
The output is not impressive. Unless you can live on FAT rather than Lean (as our US Public Schools have enjoyed for decades)
Whether it's a deliberate conspiracy intentionally designed to make people dumber, then I believe no it isn't. There is no secret cabal of leaders sitting around trying to find ways to make people dumb. I do believe however that as more and more "feel good" edu-theory takes hold in educators, they spread that throughout the school population.
Take for example, "No Child Left Behind." It's simply an impossible statement. Not all children are the same. Some children will zip right through and some won't be able to succeed in school. That's reality. The only way to get all children to progress through a school system and not leave some behind is to lower the expectations at both the grade levels and for graduation to the level they can succeed at. And then hold the better students back so they don't get too far ahead.
Think of how often, on this forum alone, we've discussed how teachers can't fail a student even if they do zero work or similar situations. Or how they need to get the diploma even if they haven't learned anything so they can apply for jobs, devaluing the meaning of a high school diploma.
None of this is a grand conspiracy. It's a collection of well meaning individuals who want everyone to feel good about themselves and who think they are helping those students, when in reality they are doing the opposite. And none of this even gets into the constantly changing teaching methods as they throw out what works while chasing the flavor of the month in new math, new new math, common core math, look-say, phonics, social service hours, and so on.
Whether it's a deliberate conspiracy intentionally designed to make people dumber, then I believe no it isn't. There is no secret cabal of leaders sitting around trying to find ways to make people dumb. I do believe however that as more and more "feel good" edu-theory takes hold in educators, they spread that throughout the school population.
Take for example, "No Child Left Behind." It's simply an impossible statement. Not all children are the same. Some children will zip right through and some won't be able to succeed in school. That's reality. The only way to get all children to progress through a school system and not leave some behind is to lower the expectations at both the grade levels and for graduation to the level they can succeed at. And then hold the better students back so they don't get too far ahead.
Think of how often, on this forum alone, we've discussed how teachers can't fail a student even if they do zero work or similar situations. Or how they need to get the diploma even if they haven't learned anything so they can apply for jobs, devaluing the meaning of a high school diploma.
None of this is a grand conspiracy. It's a collection of well meaning individuals who want everyone to feel good about themselves and who think they are helping those students, when in reality they are doing the opposite. And none of this even gets into the constantly changing teaching methods as they throw out what works while chasing the flavor of the month in new math, new new math, common core math, look-say, phonics, social service hours, and so on.
You don't understand NCLB. It never said that all children could achieve equally. It more like the old slogan for the army -- be all that you can be.
It's not so much a dumbing down as placing emphasis on feelings rather than facts. To the masculine brain that seems like dumbing down. Facts are still taught, but in the context of how they make one feel.
Sexist much? Your masculine brain?? From what I've seen from my kids not so long ago education, facts are still taught and even better, students learn how to sift facts from feelings to make smart decisions. Data driven decisions is a pretty common buzz phrase. Unfortunately, this is not true at every school.
As tnff said, no, there is no secret group waiting around to make sure kids don't learn anything. But what kids learn now is very different than what they learned 50 years ago, and I think that confuses some people.
--For instance, it was once far more common to have foreign language classes in elementary school--where they made sense because that's when it's easiest to pick up a second language--but it's pretty rare now.
--Most English classes almost always had a big grammar component. That's no longer the case. Biut writing well is emphasized a lot more now than it was when I was a kid. Go figure.
--Remember your old history classes? History was almost always a steady diet of the achievements of dead
white men. Thankfully we've gotten past that.
-- And your average high school civics class back then was very much focused on the federal government. Now it's generally focused as much on the workings and issues of state and local governments, which I think is all to the good.
--And where were the high-level math courses back then? Unless you were in a private or test-entry school, they mostly didn't exist. No calculus in my old high school, but now its much more common.
So kids are learning different things, and some of that IS due to the emphasis on standardized testing squeezing out other learning opportunities. But a lot of what's new is not dumber, it's just different, reflects an acknowledgement of a a changing world, and in some cases is a real improvement over the old days.
And BTW, that Website in the OP immediately put me off when i clicked through and one of the subject tabs at the top of the page was "Soviets in the Classroom." Spare me. Just spare me.
Look, if you've got someone claiming that schools may be "deliberately dumbing down" the curriculum, I think telling them to consider that it's their masculine brain telling them that, is a perfectly reasonable approach.
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