By picking the right metrics I can make todays college grads look dumber that 1900's seventh graders. So just how many ounces should one feed his plow horse?
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Mine were rather good.
Yeah, but can a 1950s high school grad create an Excel spreadsheet to show population trends in Asia or determine how much additional RAM is required in a given computer to run Windows XP?
Comparing education now to the 1950s is meaningless. There were far fewer distractions for a student in the 1950s so it should come as no surprise that a student from that era has more "book knowledge." On the other hand, students of today tend to be more worldly. My sons regularly communicate with kids from around the world on computer and when they are doing homework, they literally have the world at their fingertips (via the Internet). A Google search will turn up far more information on an obscure subject than a textbook of the 1950s.
And what did the students of the 1950s end up doing with their lives? Smoking dope, protesting the war and listening to acid rock. Well, many of them did, anyway.
Are you a recent college graduate? Did you read the questions? Good grief, anyone who cannot answer all these questions is an ignoramous. When I tell people the main problem with this country is that most people stupid, they do no believe me. It is apparently worse than I thought.
1-Which is the largest lake in North America?
2-What is the national language of Brazil?
3-In what country was the Battle of Waterloo fought?
4-Who made the first non-stop transatlantic solo flight?
5-What professions do you associate with Florence Nightingale?
6-What is the capital city of Spain?
7-What composer wrote The Messiah?
8-Who wrote a play entitled. A Midsummer Night's Dream?
9-Which planet is nearest the sun?
10-What is the name of the decoration given to those in the armed forces who are wounded in action against an enemy?
11-What great scientist do you associate with the Theory of Relativity?
12-Which of the following states border on Canada?
Montana
Michigan
Minnesota
Maine
All
Not sure
Hank
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in the dictionary?
I dare say you did not read the story. In 1950, there were no computers. I think your statement reflects the Zogby poll.
High school principals and police chiefs don't need advanced degrees. Cops shouldn't need college degrees at all. We are graduating fleets of dumbasses: They can make a spreadsheet do addition for them, but have no clue whether the curve-fitting a spreadsheet does is valid for their application or even to ask that question. That's lame.
The achievements of today's college under graduates, in the hard sciences such as math, physics, and chemistry, is not worse or better than it was in 1950....true. We are talking here about the unchangeable basics of science that cannot be "dumbed down".....and the computer studies you infer are all based away from this fundamental and unchangeable scientific foundation.
Nonetheless, such things as English literature and the various social scineces, for example, are mere shadows of what was once required curriculum. Now we have the wonders of such things as Edridge Cleaver displacing Shakespeare and graduates in many fields nearly put out into the world nearly illiterate. As a result, many Universities have found it necessary to teach renmedial high school work to enable young people to "master" the most elemental of these non-science courses.
Sad
I have a friend who graduated from Central High, Little Rock, in 1958 with the National Guard camped on the football field and patrolling the halls.
As a junior he hooked up his mother's stove so that a phone call home turned the oven on.
After college he was a jet pilot in the navy; landed jets on a moving ship.
After Viet Nam and 5 years in the navy his degree (EE)was obsolete (computers had become big) so he went to Georgia Tech for a Master's.
He retired last year (VP) from a major computer corp; has 7 patents used in computers.
His best friend in high school went on to a Ph D in bio-physics and retired from Brown University.
The attitude then was "this is what you're expected to learn -- those who cannot keep up can drop out". The attitude now is "no child left behind -- we will dumb down the curriculum until ANYBODY can pass it, no matter how dumb"
You were expected to have a broader education back then, but for now, it can be a hinderance. If you are taking electives in humanities, while your potential competitor is loading up on the hard science classes, you may be more rounded, but they may have better real world tools to compete with you for a job.
Sure, your personality might suffer, but that is what the Liberal Arts grads in the Human Resources are there for to smooth out ;)
Btw, I knew all 15 answers, and yes, I was a liberal arts major.
In 1780, the entrance requirements for college, what was expected from a talented high school graduate, included - translate several Odes of Horace from Latin into English -verse-, translate a book of the New Testament from Greek into -Latin-, show expertise in mathematics, and have a blameless moral character. That is what was expected from someone coming out of high school. But only a few percent of the population was expected to go to college.
Lowering of standards has gone hand in hand with extending educational opportunities to more and more people over our whole history. And the big increase in access to higher education takes place between the 50s and today. These days, it is graduate or professional levels of education that correspond in selectivity to college degrees back then, and college degrees now are almost as common as high school diplomas were back then (when plenty of people dropped out after 8th grade to start work in a trade).
Personally I did graduate in the 50s and am acknowledged to be perhaps the second-best field botanist in this half of the State of Michigan. And, might I add, SELF taught.
One of these college grads could correctly adentify maybe 15% of the flora we encountered.
The other wonder boy only correctly identified ONE plant all summer!
Not only wasn't he able to identify plants, which is what he supposedly was getting paid for... He couldn't spell beyond the second-grade level.
For example, pretty was rendered pity and grass as gras.
When asked to write up a detailed description of a site, he comes up with "this is a very PITY place. Nuff said? I guess that nowadays you just pays your money and they hand you a diploma. Oh yeah, they were both fairly proficient with computers, especially the chat rooms.
At the rate the NEA has dumbed down it's students these days, make that 1900's fifth graders.