tweet: "...what made so many americans so stupid?...."

[orleans]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[mopinko]

1. teaching to the test.

and whitewashed textbooks.
just like us liberals warned would happen when st ronnie started it.

[dchill]

4. And then there's home schooling.

[mopinko]

6. there's more good than bad there.

and it's a tiny percentage of the population.
just dont go there. i did it for 8 yrs, and i am far from the only du'er who did it successfully.

[Tommymac]

13. Obviously your experience was good, as is probably the majority's; but...

I read a blog online written by one mother who home schooled 10 children. She was a christo fascist nut job, and that is how she home schooled her children.

Her blog had an article about how proud she was that her kids argued with and in her mind destroyed a park ranger at Mt St. Helens National park with the TRUTH because Science was wrong and is actually the tool of (wait for it...) THE DEVIL!!!!!!


While in a tour group led by the ranger, the kids argued that no way was the volcano millions of years old because God created the Earth only 6500 years ago according to some Bishop (Usher?) who preached that fact because of his studies of the book of Genesis and the genealogy/family trees contained in it.

IMHO THAT is the danger of Homeschooling. Unqualified parents passing on myths as real knowledge. If the parents are properly screened and receive at least some basic skill training and use the State approved text books and teaching methods I am all for it.

Unfortunately too many insane ignorant racist christo-fascists (and other unqualified nut jobs) pull their kids from public school because they claim the kids can't pray there, and because minorities sit in the same classrooms as their lily white darlings.

So I get your stance, but homeschooling does have its downside.

[calimary]

28. THIS!!!!!!!!!

[mopinko]

34. the plural of anecdote is not data.

lots of kids who are neurodivergent are homeschooled out of desperation. it's better now than it was when i was doing it. but there still arent enough slots for these kids.
back then harvard and yale took a lot of homeschoolers. the ed dept at northwestern was one of my resources. they were true believers, and my kids did great in their programs.
those who do it well produce well motivated learners. autodidacts, even.

so, that's my 2 kids, who did the full 8 yrs. then there is the horror story of the other 2 who had to go to public school when we couldnt pull it off any longer. 2 for me, -2 for govt school.
know a lot of other people who take it seriously, which is the key to doing it well.

but in the end, even if you are an idiot, you get to raise your own kid.
people used to ask me about 'accountability'. me- my students will pick my nursing home. the f'd up 'professional' teachers get a pension, and dont remember my kid's name.

[Tommymac]

37. Sincerely sorry for your bad experience. My spouse is an 20 vet of the public school system.

Now moved on to other things - she physically could not handle the kids any more.

She was a great special ed teacher. Her population consisted of autistic kids in all stages. She had residential students who were put there by the system, or whose parents simply could not cope with their behaviors.

She cared deeply about her kids. Spent our money and her time on supplies and basic things the school budget could not provide.

She said that the vast majority of her co-workers were good caring teachers. Some exceptions of coarse - humans are that way.

She was a great administrator. She dedicated her time to making sure the school was run as best as it could be. She screened staff. Worked with frustrated parents. Dealt with ignorant and/or corrupt local politicians and gung-ho LE officers who did not understand why these kids were aggressive and ran away sometimes.

Both systems have flaws, major ones if you ask me.

My choice would be the on campus route. Simply because there is more accountability. Your choice was otherwise - I understand.

But as an engineer, hard facts and concrete data always have the edge over anecdotal evidence. It's who I am.

[mopinko]

38. sadly, afaik, there isnt much out there.

tho i do remember at the time a few studies that showed the strengths. sometimes even the brainwashed kids developed good skills. it rly has to do w both competence AND support.
i had little. nothing like what kids have now.
the big thing they found was- they step up to the plate. they dont duck, like most kids do. even my kids who went to school in primary grades were like that. they always stood out in class.

a lot of the xtians have a tight knit support groups, and solid curricula. at least in the early grades, it's hard to do a lot of harm compared to some of the schools that are available.
the horror stories out there are usually isolated, and unsupported. best intentions gone awry.
but nobody hears about them good ones, or even the mediocre ones. so they grow up to be baptists preachers. or car mechanics. better than guests of the state.

my kids did have some great teachers, and few monsters. but then, my kids are white.

but in the end, teachers arent rly that accountable, but parents are. maybe not legally, but morally. the buck has to stop w them, whether we like it or not.

[spike jones]

35. the answer is religion and hate made them ignorant. n/t

[Pacifist Patriot]

42. That's not a danger of homeschooling. That's a danger of religion and ideology.

[dchill]

24. I accept your post except for "just don't go there."

This is democratic underground, is it not?

[mopinko]

29. it's like the olive garden, only not funny.

it's not germaine. it's a tiny minority.

[Pacifist Patriot]

43. No you're not.

Homeschooled first two kids K-8 and third kid K-6. All went straight into honors and AP classes when they went to school and no social adjustment problems. Kid number one graduated college MCL and is now in grad school and a TA. Kid number two is on track to graduate MCL with a double major. Kid number three is now at a top music conservatory. All are politically aware and proud progressives.

Plural of anecdote isn't data, but my data points are pretty damn cool. Yep, I'll brag about my boys.

[Midnight Writer]

2. People watch FOX News because it is designed to be entertaining.

The poison is mixed into a cocktail, a cocktail of pretty women, aggressive men, lots of us vs. them conflict.

They lovebomb their viewers and vilify non-believers, just like a cult.

[wnylib]

19. Which is why I refuse to use

the words "Fox" and "news" together. To me, they are Fox Entertainment."

[Pacifist Patriot]

44. Our household refers to it as Fauxtainment.

[wnylib]

50. That works.

[GoodRaisin]

56. Also, they actually think it is news and that watching it makes them smart.

This is clear whenever you are confronted with a Fox parrot.

[gab13by13]

3. OMG the fly has a Maga hat on.

[Progressive Jones]

26. Trump is the shit that the magaflies love to eat. nt

[W_HAMILTON]

5. Fox News and the rest of conservative media.

[certainot]

46. 1500 coordinated radio stations is the difference. fox is part of the free speech spectrum, with

a much smaller audience. those fox blockheads and blonde perms couldn't look into the camera and sell massive global warming and covid denial, crap like CRT, obama is a muslim, ssingle payer is communism, the clintons are the most corrupt politicians on the planet, millions of 'illegal aliens' are voting for democrats etc. and unlike fox it is coordinated at the national AND local level.

without the unchallenged repetition only that radio monopoly reaching 50 mil/wk americans would be a lot smarter and better off - rw radio made sure we never got any serious reform.

and russia, through it's point man limbaugh, used it to take over the republican party. limbaugh decided the tone from 600 of the loudest stations in the country, and because his dittoheads couldn't call him they policed the tone on another 1000.

and we even llet 87 universities support it

good part is, with limbaugh dead and artificial intelligence to digitize it, it is very vulnerable.

[captain queeg]

7. Certainly ending the fairness doctrine was a huge part

So many people just accept whatever they see. When “news” became “entertainment” it was a slippery slope. Followed by explosive growth of media and degradation of public education, it’s really not to surprising where we are today.

[Tommymac]

14. And the relaxing of the regulations/laws that did not allow a cartel to own both TV and print ...

in the same market. Hence 90% of ALL media is now owned by 6 or 7 Global Cartels, including Murdoch and Blackwater.

I think this was a Telecommunications Act passed during President Clinton's 2cd term in 1997.

Unfortunately Democrats have made mistakes in this area too.

[certainot]

47. for about 10 yrs before that limbaugh control content 600 stations and he and his dittoheads

were policing 1000 others - that was total messaging monopoly without the tel com, and doing the real damage - and we still ignore the main problem - the biggest political mistake in history continues

[Pantagruel]

8. "Short attention spans"

Complicated issues reduced to jingoistic slogans so the tiny brained folk don't have to think. Much simpler when everything is black and white, grey areas give them headaches.

[wnylib]

20. Yes, there used to be a time when

journalists were well informed on issues and discussed them intelligently. But then news became entertainment to boost ratings and physical appearance and personality became more important in journalism than knowledge and intelligent reporting.

[Mr. Ected]

9. That element was always here, always dragging us down

This isn't a recent phenomena.

[hunter]

10. Anti-intellectualism has a proud history in the U.S.A.

I blame all the religions that wouldn't exist without it.

[Backseat Driver]

23. I think my FOO were sympathetic closet Luddites

Why? Grand-dad, the American-born son of Ellis Island immigrants from Germany, was a New England wire textile weaver (paper mfg) that automated looms eventually made obsolete, yet back then he did make it into retirement w/a few benefits (early 60s) - I think there was lots of unspoken situational trauma of illness, physical and mental, job loss, relocation, and marital discord in the family histories on both of DHs and my historic family stories. None of their kids, our parents, would make now be "eligible" for a rise into the lower middle class if they were forced to start off their young lives today with the same mindset, and the GOP has a lot to answer for in taking back socioeconomic well-being that the relatively placid after-war and 50s brought followed to those that endured/and served in
WWII with rapid advanced technology and requirements for matriculation from K-12 public schools and post-HS educational curriculum changes required and associated costs of living associated with that "good, religiously conservative, life" was really quite contrary to what was happening in corporate board rooms. Some failed to make those adjustments or convey the necessity to their own kids for the new callousness against "classic" education without learning submission to the new requirements corporate America required to fund the economics of the insatiable leaders of industry and will-always "haves."

[niyad]

11. Thank you for the reminder about ray-gun and rupert.

[rsdsharp]

12. Bork and Scalia, sitting on the DC Circuit, struck down the Fairness Doctrine.

When Congress codified it in response, Ronnie vetoed it.

[Magoo48]

15. Because we haven't swept our forests...

[GoodRaisin]

16. Don't underestimate the number of low IQ's in this country.

There are a lot!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

41. When my therapist

Told me the average most common IQ score I couldn't believe it. It was mid 80's

For so long I was talking stuff I thought everybody understood for years.

Wondering why they got mad or some other emotional reaction making the discussion near impossible.

I blamed myself for it for years. I was talking over thier heads and never realized it. They reacted because they have lower intelligence,they had trouble comprehending.

One thing I miss about my ex.He was great to talk with me because he could keep up with me intellectually . I miss having complex intelligent conversations about all kinds of stuff from philosophy and politics to quantum physics to the number of bones a cat has and how missing a few bones would affect movement and such of a human.

[GoodRaisin]

55. Understand what you mean.

I’ve no idea what my IQ is, but my wife and I having the same level of education, we could communicate very well intellectually. We have equal understanding of political and government things and it seems she’s the only one I can really talk to anymore about those things, other than the people who frequent this website.

I think I had some idea for years that there was a lower knowledge base in the general community around us, but when Trump came along, it exposed the rocks for me. I was shocked, and particularly at the amount of political apathy/ignorance and racism I discovered existing in work and social settings.

[Ford_Prefect]

17. I bet Vlad Putin could tell you in short words even the MAGATS would understand.

Lord Rupert could too but he'd need lurid photographs or video to do it.

[ancianita]

18. Three generations of defunding teachers' training, public schools and social services. Period.

The four steps of wrecking an institution:

1. Defund -- corporate media reports (oh noes!) bullshit about fraud and waste;
2. Reform -- corporate media reports bullshit about the worst teachers to malign and define the profession; universities and state bureacrats "develop" their treadmills of innovation and standardization -- that ramp up gradgrindian levels of busyness on the pretext that the only thing important is what can be measured;
3. Stigmatize -- spread negative data about the poorest funded schools systems and national results to make the case that public schools and teachers are failing America; raise CRT, saluting the flag, masks, vaccinations, goddam teachers unions, etc, etc.
4. Privatize -- open "choice" up -- corporate schools that promise more bang for buck, while owners wouldn't be caught dead in a classroom, and turn out achievement results worse than those of public schools.

Leaving the public to throw up its hands. Because why listen to the field professionals -- EVER.

[OMGWTF]

21. Once upon a time most Americans got their news from the same places, i.e.,

the local newspaper, Walter Cronkite, etc. We could pretty much agree on what was truth. Now it's like truth is on LSD and everyone is trippin' to a different story.

[bucolic_frolic]

22. Life is a tailgate party

AAARGHH!!!!!

[hay rick]

25. Love the fly and the honeybee. nt

[Initech]

27. Living in a Facebook bubble for 10 years trading racist memes?

[Jetheels]

30. People have not changed.

Technology has, so we know about it now. The smartphone, ironically.

[GoCubsGo]

31. They haven't been taught critical thinking skills.

Especially over the past 20 years, when kids are being taught to regurgitate information in order to pass all the tests they're forced to take. They don't absorb any of what they're learning, as a consequence.

P.S., It's "drivel," not "dribble." Although I'm sure there's dribbling involved.

[Elessar Zappa]

48. But it's not the young people

who are right wingers, for the most part. It’s the older generations that put Republicans in office. Fox News viewers are overwhelmingly over 65. So that must mean education has been bad for a long time.

[GoCubsGo]

49. There are a hell of a lot of 30-to-64-year-olds in that group, too.

Look at any of Trump's rallies. It's not all old people. Far from it. At least as many Gen Xers as Boomers. The seditionists who attacked the Capitol last January were mostly under 65.

And, yes. Education in many parts of the country has been bad for a long time. In large swaths of those areas, it has been bad all along. A lot of them are the same people who think they're smart because they can memorize hundreds of Bible verses, and regurgitate them--without understanding what they're saying.

[Pacifist Patriot]

51. Critical thinking skills weren't taught when I was a student 30-40 years ago.

People seem to think "teach to the test" is something new when that's been public education for...well, all of public education. I'm 53 and my parents and their friends describe the exact same thing.

Critical thinking skills, logic, argumentation, rhetoric, whatever you want to call it is rarely if ever part of a public school curriculum as a standalone class and it should be.

I gave each of my kids this poster when they were entering high school. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/publicspeakingprinciples/chapter/logicalfallaciesinfographic-pdf/

Such simple stuff, but hardly ever presented in a way that is effective and meaningful.

Add in the fact that schooling is oriented towards just two intelligences and it is a recipe for social disaster.

[GoCubsGo]

52. I spent nine years in the Catholic gulag, and it sure as hell wasn't taught there.

It was all "memorize and regurgitate." Fortunately, was able to attend a good public high school, where we actually were taught how to think critically and logically. It wasn't in a stand-alone class, but it was incorporated into everything else, as it should be. We had actual science classes there, rather than the half-assed stuff they taught in the Catholic schools. Science classes are the best place for learning critical thought.

[Pacifist Patriot]

54. In my experience it was teacher-driven...

I can recall two outstanding teachers in my high school (one in Social Studies and the other in the English department) who made critical thinking part and parcel of their pedagogy. If it hadn't been for them, university would have eaten me alive. And rightfully so.

[Taraman]

32. It was the teevee

[Kid Berwyn]

33. Absolutely corrupt, The Alien Rupert Murdoch wasn't first. And he isn't alone.

Details, courtesy of Greenpeace:

The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions. On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

Additional important history to know...

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda

The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

Source: TUC Radio

Part 1: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-one-of-two/

Part 2: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-two-of-two/

[flying_wahini]

45. Thanks for posting, Kid. I will go thru this and enjoy it.

[Buckeyeblue]

36. People have always been stupid

Ask anyone who has worked customer service. There are a lot of really dumb people out there. It has nothing to do with education. Smart kids are still smart no matter what education they receive.

The difference is that people are being encouraged to celebrate how dumb they are. Social media has laid out the red carpet for the ignorant. It used to be that only their family and neighbors had to deal with their dumb ideas. Now we all do.

And unfortunately, I'm afraid dumb people out number the smart people.

[Martin Eden]

39. Fly wearing the maga hat, loving shit

One of the best analogies, EVAH!

[Skittles]

40. don't blame the Aussie

Reagan himself made ignorance and greed fashionable.

[lame54]

53. Limbaugh preceded Fox