Some Remedies Within Reach - Part 1

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!

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” - Alexander Hamilton

#SmartCitizensUS...Get Smart America!

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Adults throughout the social system--parents, culture producers, teachers, professors, administrators--have failed to socialize many young people to understand and experience the personal and social benefits and pleasures of learning. We have not conveyed to them that it is more fulfilling to be skilled than unskilled, to know than to not know, to inquire than to be self-satisfied, to strive than to be apathetic, to create than to be fallow. We have failed to empower them to take responsibility for their own intellectual development, or even to care about it.

Sad to say, the problem of anti-intellectual students is only going to get worse. It is the result not only of misguided educational policies and practices K through 16, but of vast social and cultural forces well beyond the classroom. These forces include family dysfunction and divorce, disengaged and permissive parenting, peer pressure to regard education derisively, youth-culture activities that militate against serious and sustained intellectual engagement, a widespread deligitimation of reading and print culture, and, an ambient popular culture that glorifies triviality, coarseness and mindlessness. How is it possible to overhaul the entire system--from popular culture and family life to the educational establishment--simultaneously? 

The whole situation is immensely depressing.

But I do not counsel despair, because the remedies to the problem are so obvious.

Of course primary and secondary schools must be made more rigorous, challenging and--therefore--engaging. William Damon believes that students have become anti-intellectual and disengaged--anti-educational--because primary and secondary classrooms have been stripped of "challenging intellectual material and rigorous standards." Students become bored, give up on school and find more engaging things to do (Damon 19). The only way to academically re-engage students, Damon contends, is to raise standards at every level and to challenge students to strive for excellence (23, 57-58, 79, 120, 203-04).

To accomplish this, the quality of textbooks will have to be raised, the curriculum tightened, and teachers better trained in new teaching techniques and authoritative mentoring. When it comes to teacher training, colleges of education are going to have to raise standards and demand more from their majors. Right now too many education majors are themselves beneficiaries of anti-intellectual practices and policies in college.

Schools must institute measures and policies that convince students that academic success will have future payoffs and that underperformance will be penalized. This can be done through standardized national exams, exit exams, and exams for federal college aid. Another way is to publish data on how students at the school perform, and to provide more useful information to future employers. Another is to set minimal achievement requirements for graduation. Another is for colleges to send reports to high schools about how their graduates perform in postsecondary institutions.

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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, #RevengeOfTheNerds

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