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We’re Seeing the ‘Dumbing Down of America for Three Generations.....
breitbart ^ | 8/8/2020 | JEFF POOR

Posted on 08/08/2020 8:52:51 AM PDT by caww

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich discussed the push made by the progressive left in America to undermine the traditional education system.

Newt....“I think what you’re seeing is the dumbing down of America for three generations, you’re seeing left-wing indoctrination and literally groupthink,”.... I really think the time has come to take back the schools and to take back the universities. And I think that a lot of governors, frankly, aren’t doing their job when they allow public universities to be run by people who are radically anti-American.”

“So, this is a very dangerous moment in our history,” Gingrich continued. “We are not going to compete with China if we insist on having schools where the unions won’t teach and what they teach isn’t true. And for example, in Baltimore, their entire buildings were not a single student could pass the state exam.”

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: education; groupthink; indoctrination
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1 posted on 08/08/2020 8:52:51 AM PDT by caww
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To: caww

I graduated from high school in Minnesota in 1971. I think the dumbing down process was already getting started.


2 posted on 08/08/2020 8:56:09 AM PDT by euram
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To: caww

The Government Indoctrination camps have gone too far down the Rat hole to be fixed by tinkering. Privatize the schools by issuing stocks to its employees and then get Government out of the education business permanently. Separation of School and State is an idea whose time has come.


3 posted on 08/08/2020 9:01:56 AM PDT by Nateman
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To: caww

20 years ago, when I was in the Army, I went for show and tell in uniform and ruck to my daughter’s kindergarten.

We talked about sleeping in the woods and we opened and ate MREs. The kids loved it.

It was near the end of the day. Some parents, picking up their kids, were visibly upset and talked loud enough to to the teacher for all to hear.

“What is HE doing here?”

And my favorite:

“We need to bring in an environmentalist for counter balance.”


4 posted on 08/08/2020 9:02:47 AM PDT by 2banana (Common ground with islamic terrorists-they want to die for allah and we want to arrange the meeting)
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To: caww

The “dumbing down” is a consequence, not a cause.

Americans have lost their faith in God, and in self-responsibility, and instead worship the State and materialism.


5 posted on 08/08/2020 9:03:05 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: caww

As a child of the 50’s, I witnessed this first hand...taught for 47 years...


6 posted on 08/08/2020 9:07:28 AM PDT by choctaw man (Good ole Andrew Jackson, or You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma...)
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To: caww

Three generations of dumbing down sounds about right. That put the start of the dumbing down about 1966.

I escaped that crap because I finished HS in 1960. Back then we actually were taught by the teachers who were both feared and respected. And we took tests which if we failed we would get a big fat F or E (depending on the teacher.

The tests were handed back marked, in open class and EVERYONE knew if you failed because it was announced in subtle ways such as, “Not to good Jones you better pick it up or you’ll be back here next year”

There were no participation trophies for anything and ifm you tried out for one of the school sports teams and you weren’t good enough you were unceremoniously cut and that was also public knowledge.

We learned that failing can be a growing experience if we dealt with it which we did since we had no choice. We learned nothing was free and the only way to succeed was thru hard work.

I thank God I was of the generation born in the early 40’s. That was the last generation which were taught and upheld America’s traditional beliefs.


7 posted on 08/08/2020 9:08:03 AM PDT by billyboy15
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To: choctaw man

I’ve thought School should
Spark inquisitive minds to
Think and find answers
Not indoctrination that
Seals a mind to Dogmas.


8 posted on 08/08/2020 9:14:59 AM PDT by Big Red Badger (TRUMP vs Biden-----------Any Question?)
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To: caww
It has been going on since Woodrow Wilson.

The revolution is now ripe.

9 posted on 08/08/2020 9:19:36 AM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: caww

But wait...Landslide Lyndon told me that we were going to build a “great” society...


10 posted on 08/08/2020 9:21:43 AM PDT by PerConPat (A politician is an animal that can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground--Mencken)
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To: caww
The following essay is excerpted from the 1987 Bicentennial of the Constitution Volume entitled, Our Ageless Constitution, [p.51]
The Spirit That Enabled A People To Transform Their Ideas Of Liberty Into A New Concept Of Constitutional Government For A Free People

“…one must understand something of the spirit of the people who had been experimenting successfully with liberty for over 165 years when the Constitution was framed.”

From 1620, the settlers of America were motivated by a passion for liberty. British statesman Edmund Burke, in 1775, traced the astounding economic development and the unparalleled spirit of liberty of the Americans when he appealed to Parliament for conciliation with its colonies (See: Part VIII – Burke Speech on Conciliation). He said: “…it is the spirit that has made the country…

Examining some of the reasons for the spirit, he continued:

“Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit…. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it…. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces…. The Southern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher and more stubborn spirit attached to liberty than those to the northward.”

Burke’s comments shed remarkable light on the American spirit exhibiting itself, even to those in foreign lands, by the time of the American Revolution. His observations are significant for they reveal something important about a people already established in the eyes of the world as lovers of ordered liberty and participants in outstanding progress. Burke described what he called the “temper and character” of the people, saying, “In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole….” Among the reasons for their “untractable spirit,” he said, was their “education.”

“In other countries the people … judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle.”

In other words, Burke observed that in most of the world, people could only begin to understand an oppressive or bad idea in government after it had been employed to harm them. Americans were different, he said, for they were taught to understand the principles--ideas and principles inherent in human nature, both good and bad--before they could be used to oppress them. Possessing such understanding, he said, Americans could detect “misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” James Madison later expressed it this way:

“The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soon to forget it.”

It is clear that Americans were educated in the ideas of liberty for several generations. As late as 1830, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed among the general population of America the same high degree of education and understanding of basic principles. “It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic….” Even in outlying areas, he said, the American “will inform you what his rights are and by what means he exercises them….”

Such understanding was the primary purpose of the education provided to early generations. As Thomas Jefferson stated:

“The most effectual [effective] means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate …the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”

According to Jefferson, the people’s study of history would “qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it to defeat its views.”

By 1787, after having endured a long and traumatic struggle for independence and freedom from a government that had become increasingly abusive and oppressive, their understanding of the nature of mankind as revealed through history and their examination of ideas and principles necessary to liberty had equipped them to undertake the establishment of a government for a free people – a government having its very foundation set in the knowledge that the rights and liberty of people are endowed by their Creator and are, therefore, unalienable.

With this concept and these principles firmly fixed in their minds, and with a “stubborn spirit attached to liberty” they were ready, in 1787, to prepare a Constitution for the United States of America.

(W/Permission, "Our Ageless Constitution," (1987) Co-Editor, L. Lewis)


11 posted on 08/08/2020 9:23:37 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: caww

This is the result of states, starting in Wisconsin in 1959; to allow teachers unions to use collective bargaining and gradually ceding control of the education system.


12 posted on 08/08/2020 9:28:12 AM PDT by yuleeyahoo (The nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one. Hamilton)
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To: caww

“And for example, in Baltimore, their entire buildings were not a single student could pass the state exam.”

I think one of those students wrote this article...


13 posted on 08/08/2020 9:31:18 AM PDT by sam_whiskey (Peace through Strength.)
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To: caww

Just face it. White kids were too smart and creative for their britches


14 posted on 08/08/2020 9:34:29 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: caww
Conservatives and/or Republicans throw around words, in dire tones, like socialism, Marxism, and communism.

I think there is a huge swath of 20 to 40 year olds who DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE, thanks to their crappy education. It means very little to them, much less something to be wary of, thanks to the lack of authentic history and economics instruction in the schools.

Nobody in the public eye ever seems to do that - they just assume people have the background to understand it.

15 posted on 08/08/2020 9:34:41 AM PDT by Lizavetta
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To: caww

I am 64. Right behind me, my little brother got the “new math” and things went downhill from there. So, it really became obvious as starting around 54 years ago..... No, we can’t fix it. Too late. Need to scrap it all and start over.... Starting with eliminating the Department of Education.

Everything we federalize becomes cr@p.


16 posted on 08/08/2020 9:39:38 AM PDT by Whatever Works
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To: euram

I believe the “Dumbing down” of American history began back in 1968 with the murder of Bobby Kennedy by a Palestinian immigrant.

I remember the discussions on how to “de-violence” young boys and turn them into more feminine kids.

The toy guns disappeared from toy stores. Adult TV (but still safe for kids) was dumbed down to kiddie shows. Pulp magazines changed their blood soaked covers. Movies shown on TV were butchered to remove “violence’.

The movie industry said they would “police themselves” with a joke of a ratings system, added more blood, guts and sex, then for R rated movies they aimed the trailers (previews) at the kids.

History books suddenly became less print and more picture illustration of history. The picture became more important than the written word.

Details on important history suddenly became less important than the emotional response caused by such things.

Even today I am shocked, when discussing something in the past, that the kids are totally ignorant on what has happened at that time. It is like the old joke of “The Germans bombing Pearl Harbor”.


17 posted on 08/08/2020 9:43:55 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: caww

We’re Seeing the ‘Dumbing Down of America

That can be proved see
1.Media
2.Schools
3.All the whining about silly things
4.Being lazy is an asset now
5.Stupidity is excepted as the norm of things


18 posted on 08/08/2020 9:46:16 AM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: caww
Given that a generation is around 20 to 30 years, BINGO! Do the math. Right on schedule!! And if they were simply DUMBED DOWN, we'd be better off. But they've been INDOCTRINATED & BRAINWASHED to embrace MARXISM!
19 posted on 08/08/2020 9:48:37 AM PDT by Dick Bachert (THE DEEP STATE HATES YOU!)
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To: Lizavetta

There’s a lot of Americans period who don’t know what those words mean.


20 posted on 08/08/2020 9:59:35 AM PDT by caww
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