Hi!
I found this when I was preparing issue no. 83. I will
post some of the comments regarding the state of affairs
as far as geography education is the way it is in the US.
These are posts by others, and I simply present them to
you.
I guess that these posts also explain why serious analysis
tends to be shunned.
Here are the posts.
It is no wonder that this fact exists; what is more
troubling is that it will surely get worse in the next few
years.
The reason, sadly, is that geography is both mis-taught as
well as not taught. The situation reminds me of many older
elementary teachers who 'teach' mathematics the way they
were taught in school in the 50's and 60's. They 'teach'
arithmetic believing that they are teaching mathematics.
Further complicating the geography issue is the fact that
social studies gets less and less attention in the
curriculum because of the NCLB Act that puts increased
emphasis on reading and math. Elementary teachers have
been told to increase the math and reading time and thus
social studies gets chopped.
This all smacks of the usual: politicians messing with a
field of study of which they are fairly ignorant.
The above is an IMHO EXCELLENT post that explains several
issues here.
2. But [young people] can tell you what the hottest new
bands are, sing their song lyrics from memory, know
exactly when their favorite shows are on, and give you a
synopsis of the entire season so far. Or keep track of
their favorite sport or team.
They constantly ask for help and whine when they don't get
it, whine that they don't understand, whine about how
stupid the people teaching them are, yet there's no
evidence of them cracking the book open... and if they
cracked the book open, they don't look at any OTHER books
or anything else for help.
By the time I was in fourth grade, I could look up
something in the old fashioned CARD CATALOG (with real
cards and how I miss 'em), and then go find it on the
shelf. If I couldn't find what I wanted in the catalog by
looking under one subject, I knew enough to try other
similar subjects. This crop of kids, if they can't find it
under the first term they searched for, they start whining
and throwing a fit.
If their toilet runs they have no idea what to do. Hell,
they could be sitting there with access to Google and they
can't figure out how to type in "fixing a broken toilet".
I've had offers of serious money to write papers for some
of them, or to help them cheat on a test, or other
academic "help".
I don't know if it was just me or what, but I was brought
up to figure out how things worked and try fixing them
myself or find out an answer from non-human resources
before bothering a person first. It constantly annoys me
that people DON'T get off their asses and LOOK FOR
ANSWERS, or they PICK THE FIRST LIKELY ANSWER and assume
it's gospel without cross-checking.
As for the meaning you are looking for... what it means is
that Americans are getting lazier and stupider.
Information is not entertainment for them. They've been
raised to want clean simple answers. Look at the tests we
have today... MULTIPLE CHOICE. ACT, SAT, state exams...
multiple choice. Except for the writing sections that
colleges are finally demanding after having had too many
dumbasses have to go through Remedial English. In part due
to the fact they don't know how to use a dictionary (and
spell-check doesn't teach anything about what the word
actually means). If not multiple choice, then it's
matching, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank. Give them
essay or short answer and they start talking of rebellion.
Story problems? They can't extract information from story
problems.
The really awful part is that most of the parents are the
same way.
And let's face it. There's some really [messed] up
priorites in the USA. And I'll start by bringing up the
saying that makes me want to punch people: "... has too
much time on his/her hands". Someone makes a scale model
of the starship Enterprise out of popsicle sticks... too
much time on their hands. Same deal if I spend two hours
researching a political topic and posting it here... "too
much time on my hands". And what's the person saying that
spending their time doing? WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL OR SOME
OTHER INANE DRIVEL ON TV, OR DISCUSSING IT WITH THEIR
FRIENDS ON MY SPACE, OR OUT BUYING STUFF THEY DON'T NEED!
....value judgement on how one finds entertainment, is
what it is... and if your'e not in with the majority,
wasting time on Hollywood and sports, you're some kind of
sad, sad nerd with no life. And this attitude even exists
in the "goth" culture which is already comprised of MANY
of the people who shun (or are shunned by)
the "mainstream". The attitude is much, MUCH less
prevalent there but it still exists.
3. One , albeit perhaps smaller part of the problem is,
the public school systems of today waste a lot of time
teaching (or maybe indoctrinating) with feel-good
politically correct stuff rather than actually trying to
educate. When I was in school, it was the basics-reading,
writing, arithmetic,english, art, mechanical
drafting,whatever. The things to help you develop skills
and get you through life. Do agree today's kids are worse
on the rebelliousness, but there was a lot of that back in
the fifties as well. The difference was the schools
refused to put up with it then. Now they can't touch a
kid, let alone discipline them, without threat of a
lawsuit.
4. I don't know how many here listen to Sean Hannity. On
Fridays he'll get one of his assistants to walk the
streets of NYC with pictures of people. In the first group
he has President Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Alberto
Gonzalez, etc. In the next group he takes pop culture
icons (American Idol contestants, Britney Spears, etc.) He
randomly chooses 3 or 4 people to say the names of the
people in the pictures. Most people get Bush, maybe half
get Cheney, and no one gets any of the other people
(Condi, Kofi Annan, Rumsfeld, etc.). When they ask for the
names of the pop culture pictures they're always correct.
If the majority of people he finds on the streets don't
know the pictures of our leaders, then how in the world
can they make informed decisions about major issues like
Iraq, taxes, healthcare, and education?
I think all of this just points to the fact that most
people are content with being happy today. Forget being
happy tomorrow or helping other people be happy; Americans
as a whole don't think past the here and now.
5. Americans as a whole don't think past the here and now.
Hell, HeyHey, they don't learn about and from the past
either. That's why we're in such a fix now.
6. AC, the sad truth is that entertainment is being
promoted, used and abused AS IF it was information. Even
the so-called wars America fights now are primarily
entertainment venues which people often mistake as
educational information. Let us not forget the large
percentages of Fox viewers that believed many false things
about the reasons for the second US-Iraq war. Let us not
forget the Scud Stud from the first.
Anyhoo, it's been noticed in studies that Americans are
growing progressively (and intentionally?) more ignorant
of world news ... which is rather amusing considering this
trend accompanies the opposite rise of economic (even some
political) globalism. As the highly American form of
Hypercapitalism infects the globe like a nasty viral
outbreak, Americans themselves are less interested in this
outside world.
7. Here's the money quote, the one you should sear into
your head:
"Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic
knowledge. American adults in general do not understand
what molecules are (other than that they are really
small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to
heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is.
One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around
the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th
century."
8. I have a sister-in-Law who recieved a 4.0 at BGSU in
Biology. In conversation one day I was utterly amazed when
she popped up in all seriouness and asked...
"NYC, that's on the Pacific Ocean coast...right?"
9. Mike,
I wish I could say that any of this is shocking, or even
surprising, but it's just not.
The ignorance that we see in our schools, and as a result
in our general population, is both willful and the result
of decades of socially engineered dumbing down of American
society. A dumb population is much more docile, and much
more likely to uncritically accept what it is told...
...I came from a culture where
a) teachers were practically venerated
b) Academic excellence and intelligence were considered to
be good and positive things.
I was shocked to discover that it was just the opposite in
the U.S. That even if you're not dumb, you have to act
dumb to be respected by your peers. That teachers are
ignored, derided and ridiculed (often justifiably,
however).
P.S.-I don't remember the exact question, but a few months
ago the NY Times published the results of a survey which
discovered that 20% of the American population couldn't
answer some "is the earth round or flat?" type question
correctly.
That's the shape we're in.
________
Take care!
Ze
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