Here’s a great quote from 1924 which I hadn’t seen until today.
“[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible
to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. . . . “ - Henry Mencken, The American Mercury, April 1924.
So the dumbing down has been going on a long time; and anybody who bothers to look could see it.
I’d like also to mention a new book called “Credentialed to destroy, how and why education became a weapon.” This is a serious 400-page chronicle of all the bad actors going back more than 100 years who have conspired to give us the situation we have now. Written by a lawyer.