Dumbing down America, the crisis

A provocative article that lays out much of my own viewpoints on the dumbing down of the American education system, and how it's churning out a lot of children completely unequipped with an understanding of basic concepts:

He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."

But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.

I'm amazed every day by how little incoming freshmen at the college I work for know - from basic scientific principles like the behaviour of forces, to how to write an analytical essay. It's ridiculous.