The Dumbing Down of the University - Part 4

What is wrong with our country??? Having served our nation for nearly 25 years in the United States Air Force and Air National Guard...I am deeply concerned about our future.

I have read multiple Pentagon reports that cite the decline of our nation's intellectual prowess and failure to develop skilled trade professionals as two of the most dangerous threats to our national security in the 21st Century.

Recently, I ran across a paper published by Paul Trout entitled "Student Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University." This paper was published in Spring 1997, but I feel Paul Trout's words are more true today than ever before. Anti-Intellectualism appears to have infected every part of our society in 2018.

In Paul Trout's paper, he calls for citizens to help spread the word regarding the "Anti-Intellectualism Epidemic" spreading across the United States like wildfire.

Therefore, in my feeble attempt to continue to protect our nation, I will be sharing Paul Trout's publication through a series of social media posts. Please read, share, and take action...our national security and economic prosperity depends on it!

#SmartCitizensUS...Get Smart America!

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Under almost constant pressure from students and administrators to relax and lighten up, many instructors have caved-in over the years, watering down courses and doling out high grades. Lowering standards is not hard to do when it pleases both clients and bosses, and when the collapse can be explained not as an ignoble capitulation to insidious pressure but as a humane "adjustment" to the "abilities and needs" of students.

So, instructors help to dumb down the university by offering innovative "fun" courses, by stripping tough courses of "boring" material, by refusing to apply codes of conduct and traditional academic standards to students unprepared for or "overwhelmed" by college, by relaxing academic standards to accommodate different "learning styles," by re-defining anti-intellectualism and disengagement as "learning disabilities" exempt from normal sanctions, by lavishing praise on students to puff up their self-esteem, by assigning fewer books and papers, by giving students exam questions days before the test to improve scores, by permitting students to re-take tests or re-write papers until they get the grade they want, or by giving high grades for mediocre work.

But, in the seclusion of their offices, most professors will admit that what they are really doing is bending over backwards "to appease unmotivated, acutely passive students" (Sacks 165). Peter Sacks heard confessions from a number of faculty who knew "they were watering down their standards in order to accommodate a generation of students who had become increasingly disengaged from anything resembling an intellectual life" (Sacks 78; Willimon 17).

Professors go along with this charade more out of fear than conviction. Few professors can afford to ignore what students say about them on evaluation forms--especially when these forms are factored into administrative decisions about hiring, retention, tenure, promotion, and merit-pay. Adjuncts and untenured faculty are especially vulnerable. As Andrei Toom puts it, "I could not afford to care about my students because I had to care about my safety from their complaint" (Toom 127). So, professors buy good ratings by giving their student "customers" what they want--easier courses and higher grades. Students know the power they have. I overheard one of them telling her friends to take courses from adjuncts because they have to give out lots of A's to get high evaluations so they can keep their jobs one more year.

Even tenured professors are vulnerable to the economic and psychological pressures of student evaluations. As Toom remarks, the criticism of academic bureaucrats can be easily ignored, but "censure of [the] market goes to the bones" (Toom 126, Note 4). How many times can even the most thick-skinned professor be denounced as an elitist swine before caving-in to make students happier and to be better liked?

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Works Cited

Bauer, Henry H. "The New Generations: Students Who Don't Study." A paper prepared for the annual meeting of AOAC International, Orlando (FL), 10 September 1996.

Damon, William. Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools. New York: The Free Press, 1995.

Damron, John C. "Instructor Personality and The Politics of the Classroom" (revised). 1996. Online posting <[email protected]>.

Esty, Warren. "Idle students are hurting everyone." Exponent 21 April 1995: 5.

Levitt, Paul M. ??? The Chronicle of Higher Education 4 May 1988: B3-B5.

Manno, Bruno V. "The Swamp of College Remedial Education." Academic Questions 9.3 (Summer 1996): 78-82.

Murray, David W. "Racial and Sexual Politics in Testing." Academic Questions 9.3 (Summer 1996): 10-17.

Owen, John D. Why Our Kids Don't Study: An Economist's Perspective. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Sacks, Peter. Generation X Goes to College. Chicago: Open Court, 1996.

Sax, Linda, et. al. eds. The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1995. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, 1995.

Sowell, Thomas. Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas. New York: The Free Press, 1993.

Steinberg, Laurence, et. al. Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Stone, J. E. "Inflated Grades, Inflated Enrollment, and Inflated Budgets: An Analysis and Call for Review at the State Level." Education Policy Analysis Archives 3.11 (26 June 1995). Online posting (a peer-reviewed scholarly electronic journal) <https://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v3n11.html>.

Sykes, Charles J. Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Toom, Andrei. "A Russian Teacher in America." Journal of Mathematical Behavior 12 (1993): 117-139.

Willimon, William H., and Thomas H. Naylor. Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995.

#StudentAnti_Intellectualism, #DumbingDownofOurUniversities, #BoredTeachers, #GetSmartAmerica, #SmartCitizensUS

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