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Was that ever true? Time was, they kept the idiots off TV and put mostly smart people on. Now idiots are the bread and butter of TV. Just a thought regarding general perceptions.
I don't think it was ever generally true. We have an opinion that people "back in the day" were more educated because only the activities of the more educated people have been preserved for our perusal. Where the uneducated were presented, it was always as though they were social outliers. Those people who could intelligently discuss world affairs and philosophy were always, however, in the minority.
I work with many teachers and it is shocking what many of them do not know. Especially some of the younger ones. I won't go into it, but is not good.
I'm in my late 40's and I remember lots of learning and discussion going on growing up. I remember my granddad (a WWII vet) reading history books about Europe and atlases and other things. I remember him discussing world events with his cronies. My grandmother read sewing books and other household things and discussed them with her friends. My parents read and talked about things. I remember my dad and uncles sitting around the table talking about politics and other subjects.
When a society no longer values learning, they are in real trouble.
Sometimes, when confronted with discussions like in your first paragraph, it's best to just change the subject. And while I know that teaching is often a considered to be an "art', and not a "science", the teacher should have a pretty strong command of his subject , especially with older students.
I was thinking recently about how much general knowledge my parents had that I have not learnt, and how much I do know that has not been passed down to my son.
Of course, each new generation learns new things, my Dad was born in 1908 so grew up in an age of gas lights when people travelled by train or on horseback. My Dad was a young child when Bleriot flew across the English Channel - he had often watched dirigibles flying over London. I remember people of my parents' generation being struck with awe and wonder by Armstrong landing on the moon. Both my parents were deceased before the invention of the cellphone, so they knew very little of "modern technology".
But my parents and their friends could discuss knowledgeably the Crimean War, Robert Clive of India, Elgar's Enigma Variations, French impressionist artists, Italian industrial design or the Suez Canal and Egyptian politics.
I could not possibly do this, so while I feel I have a fairly broad general knowledge compared with, for example, my son, there are millions of things I know almost nothing about.
I am interested in how you guys feel the replacement of general knowledge by technical knowledge may affect future generations.
I'm pretty certain this is not what you're talking about, but it is related:
I always wanted to go to St. John's College in Maryland. Undergraduate study is four years of studying the highlights (and sometimes more obscure) of the world from the beginning the written word (and whatever know we from before the written word) across all areas and relating it all together.
We've lost that. I think everyone should HAVE to take four years of Liberal Arts as under-graduate students -- or four years of World Civilization. THEN, in graduate school, they could major in their field of interest. There is SO much to learn these days. All we're doing now is turning out college graduates who can tell you all about their field (well, at least the basics of it) -- and nothing else. Well, except maybe the latest Heavy Metal bands. And what a poor life it is that knows little.
I wonder how many people know that philosophy and religion and war and peace and art and poetry and fictional literature and music and political science and Greek Mythology -- and even computer science -- they are ALL related to each other! I'd pay big bucks to hire someone who would bring a wealth of general knowledge to his job/career!
I read something similar to this years ago. A quick check of Snopes.com admits that the answer is neither true nor false which makes sense since there will always be those who don't apply themselves to their school work.
But I can vouch for the fact that my father, born in 1915, educated in public school and later in the more specialized MN School of Business had a very broad education, indeed. He could quote extensively from the classics, remembered well into his dotage dates and names of long forgotten historical figures and events and had a huge, though rarely used vocabulary.
His mother before him, a pioneer Norwegian immigrant, named all of her children after obscure (to me) historical figures which indicated that somewhere, in some country school, she must have had a brief but intense education in history.
Nearer to the present my husband was recently giving the four digit combination to a door lock to a group of thirty and forty-somethings and said, "This will be easy for you to remember. It's the year the Second World War ended" and no one in the room knew it.
Ever been grocery shopping and buying veggies by the pound and having that late teen-aged kid behind the counter have to ask you what it was before he weighs and prices it?
And don't even get me started on grammar and spelling!
One problem I have with claiming that TV is full of "idiots" is that people seem to ignore that the Internet is no different. It is a relatively unmoderated landscape where anybody with a keyboard and a subjective opinion can make their presence known. The Internet is not a magical tool that is exempt from human ignorance and it's time people stop thinking it is like that. The Internet is merely another factor of human existence that reflects the human condition.
The retention of information is our responsibility as a species. Information can exist, but not be relevant. Or it could not exist at all. Or it could exist and be useful. When people show signs of being less knowledgeable in history, politics and world affairs, the responsibility is theirs and ours as a society.
I read something similar to this years ago. A quick check of Snopes.com admits that the answer is neither true nor false which makes sense since there will always be those who don't apply themselves to their school work.
But I can vouch for the fact that my father, born in 1915, educated in public school and later in the more specialized MN School of Business had a very broad education, indeed. He could quote extensively from the classics, remembered well into his dotage dates and names of long forgotten historical figures and events and had a huge, though rarely used vocabulary.
His mother before him, a pioneer Norwegian immigrant, named all of her children after obscure (to me) historical figures which indicated that somewhere, in some country school, she must have had a brief but intense education in history.
Nearer to the present my husband was recently giving the four digit combination to a door lock to a group of thirty and forty-somethings and said, "This will be easy for you to remember. It's the year the Second World War ended" and no one in the room knew it.
Ever been grocery shopping and buying veggies by the pound and having that late teen-aged kid behind the counter have to ask you what it was before he weighs and prices it?
And don't even get me started on grammar and spelling!
Thanks for the post, Lodestar. I was going to mention something similar. Some years back the test requirement for graduating from the 12th grade around 1900-1910 (don't recall the locale) was posted all over the net. I believe the assessment was most college grads would flunk it with flying colors.
Lots of non-fact PC garbage is now taught as fact. Colleges (and the entire education establishment) have been dumbed down seriously. It happened once after WWII when the feds sent lots of GIs to school. Later when affirmative action and automatic promotions ensured that people would move up no matter what, if anything, they knew.
A high school grad before 1950 commanded more general knowledge, had better thinking skills, and could do in his head what almost everyone with a BA, MA, or PhD today needs a calculator to go figure.
My father grew up in a hick town in the early 20th century. In elementary school they studied Latin and Greek. He was still reading various books in Greek in his last years.
In the 1960s and 70s he commented that he could add up the grocery list faster in his head than the clerk could punch it into the adding machine and pull the total lever.
Yes, he was smarter than the average guy. But there were no excuses in those days. Life was hard, and so was school.
What passes for the power of reasoning today is the shallowest of emotions powdered with a few semi-facts.
As we become more technically proficient and our machines do more work for us, as a people I believe we get less capable. It's like a car vs. walking. Yes, the car can do more. No, we don't want to go back to walking. But can the average schmoo go hike 10 miles? No way.
Jay Leno's Jaywalking segments and Jessie Watters' Watters' World both illustrate the vast quantity of ignorance commanded by The Dope On The Street and how very little many random schlubs know, things that even 6th graders of my generation knew.
Jefferson said it well: “Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.â€
"If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818. FE 10:99
"If the Wise be the happy man... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation." --Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, 1816. ME 14:405
I read something similar to this years ago. A quick check of Snopes.com admits that the answer is neither true nor false which makes sense since there will always be those who don't apply themselves to their school work.
But I can vouch for the fact that my father, born in 1915, educated in public school and later in the more specialized MN School of Business had a very broad education, indeed. He could quote extensively from the classics, remembered well into his dotage dates and names of long forgotten historical figures and events and had a huge, though rarely used vocabulary.
His mother before him, a pioneer Norwegian immigrant, named all of her children after obscure (to me) historical figures which indicated that somewhere, in some country school, she must have had a brief but intense education in history.
Nearer to the present my husband was recently giving the four digit combination to a door lock to a group of thirty and forty-somethings and said, "This will be easy for you to remember. It's the year the Second World War ended" and no one in the room knew it.
Ever been grocery shopping and buying veggies by the pound and having that late teen-aged kid behind the counter have to ask you what it was before he weighs and prices it?
And don't even get me started on grammar and spelling!
I have seen the snopes link before. It is amazing to think about tests then and now. Part of the deal with public education in 2014 vs. public education in the very early 20th century, in the US anyway, is public schooling was far from universal. There was legal child labor and (other factors like being in rural areas) which kept large numbers of children out staying in public schools in the US. American schooling at that time was definitely geared towards traditional academics and not the entire populace as a whole.
Some of the college curricula over time has to be "dumbed" down for the masses, so to speak. I had read somewhere that about 7% of the general public had a college degree (BA/BS) in 1930 or so and now that percentage is roughly 30%.
LOL, the second part that you describe in your post about those group of people not knowing that WWII-related date would make me think like this guy ->
Many ideas, traditions, and other practices are lost in the sands of time with generations. It just happens. I see the same as I age as well.
Ahh so what, us young'uns don't need to memorise all that old stuff now that google exists. Google has rendered entire university degrees redundant. We learn about what's relevant today and if we should happen to need a Shakespeare quote or whatever then it's only a couple of clicks away.
A high school grad before 1950 commanded more general knowledge, had better thinking skills, and could do in his head what almost everyone with a BA, MA, or PhD today needs a calculator to go figure.
Most Americans, however, were not high school graduates before 1950. High school graduation rates did not reach 50% until 1940 and were barely above that until 1950. So all this discussion about how smart high school graduates were in the early 20th century is about a minority of Americans (and doesn't even include all of those high school graduates).
I suspect the percentages of Americans who know those things is probably about the same. The problem--and I agree it is a problem--is that a kid has to get to college and pay heavily for the same education he got free and much earlier before.
I am old enough to have grown up while television was becoming universal. I lived in a house without television, and read instead. Television was touted to be the greatest educational tool for the mass public that ever existed. And it was! Before that was radio generation. I remember the gradual shift from hard news to entertainment news. World events were once the top topics, were replaced by whichever wannabe starlet having a wardrobe malfunction becoming the story that scooped the front page news. (For history buffs, that refers to 'news papers'). Now, there is the internet. I see that it is touted to be the greatest educational tool for the mass public that ever existed. And it is... The cultural shifts from pre-radio, to radio, to television, to computer internet, to cell phones are each profoundly different, but somehow, history repeats.
I also grew up in a household that would move every year, and to a new school district. The standards of schools, and teachers varied vastly. One of the worst/best events to me was moving to a rural school that was two or more years behind in grade level. I was the "Brain" and only opened a textbook occasionally and received straight As and 100%s . That school had history textbooks that were 35 years old. In context, that meant that WW2 had not happened, during the Viet Nam war. Science was elementary school level in high school. I remember having to tutor the science teacher about basic math and science. This was in a mid western state that was top in the nation in education.
The great blessing that I had was that there was always one or two exceptional teachers in every school. I would immerse myself in those teachers subjects. That ended to a generally rounded education for me. I know by experience that the education that students receive is directly related to teacher quality, and secondly to material quality.
The potential of Ted talks, and free knowledge academies that are now available truly astounds me. I wish and hope that potential is reached. Only if history doesn't repeat.
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The cultural shifts from pre-radio, to radio, to television, to computer internet, to cell phones are each profoundly different, but somehow, history repeats.
