Every time I read about or hear about proof that the average American citizens’ intelligence level is lower than that of a common chimpanzee I cringe until my blood begins to boil.
There is no excuse, whatsoever, for adults to not live up to their intelligence potential. We are given the opportunity to get a free education until the 12th grade and most (the vast majority) squander the time spent in high school as an excuse to ‘hook up’ with their friends or plan parties. Parents are happy to get the kids out of the house for six to eight hours a day so they get time alone away from them. Opening books and studying for the barest information possible required to pass the next test is the only brain exercise these kids get. And they do not want to do anything more than what is minimally required to get into the next grade level with only one goal in mind, to graduate. By the time they do graduate they can’t even answer what are considered high school level questions.
Jay Leno occasionally does a segment on the Tonight Show, called “Jaywalking”, where he goes to a college campus and asks college students high school level questions about various subjects. The responses he gets make me want to cry. I want to cry because I am so embarrassed about being an American citizen and, by default, lumped into the same pin with these morons. The fact that these ignorant asses just laugh off their stupid responses just shows how little regard we Americans have for education.
You can find examples everywhere of how under-educated America has become. It has become commonly acceptable for Americans to not watch the evening news, or any news program. Current events is treated as a plague to be avoided at all costs. Proper English, the very tool of communication we have been born and raised to speak and write with has not been used in this country for years, possibly even decades.
There is a television program called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” where adults subject themselves to be pitted against actual 5th grade students. The creator of this program must have the same cynicism that I feel towards American adults. I gave up watching television for entertainment years ago but my father-in-law was watching this particular program as I passed through the living room the other night an just for the hell of it I decided to watch part of it. A grown man was struggling to identify what a bear’s offspring is called. As I watched this moron actually take the time to vocalize the elimination of three of the four possible answers, I could not help but picture everyone backstage laughing at this product to our education system. The fifth graders had already written their answer on a piece of paper and were patiently waiting for him to come up with an answer. This show has to be scripted. There is no way an adult is going to stand in front of an audience and humiliate himself like this. At least I was praying this was not for real. Is this the level that television has been lowered to? What a colossal waste of airtime.
You quiz any group of adults about history, math, science, politics, etc, any high school level subject and the great majority of them will fail that test. You may ask, does it matter? Hell yes, it matters. Why? Because the dumbing down of America plays directly into the hands of the people who run this country. These people depend on an ignorant population to keep them in power. If we get too intelligent then we will figure out what is true and what is pure crap. Politicians live on crap. If the voters became more intelligent then the politicians would have to become more intelligent. We get what we vote for.
We are all born with the equal ability to be great thinkers. We all have the same capacity to think for ourselves. Yet we freely give up that potential in exchange for being cool. Do you remember someone in high school who was obviously eager to do well and always studied to get good grades? Do you remember how that person was treated? That person was labeled a geek and was ostracized from all of the ‘in crowd’ activities because that person did not ‘fit in’. The people who did ‘fit in’, those who thought they were cool because they shunned education to party and hang out with their friends now have low level jobs, dead end careers, and appear on television shoes like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” and are happy about it. The ‘geek’ owns a business, drives new cars, has lots of money.
You see, high school isn’t all about education. It is a means of teaching you to plan ahead, do the research, be industrious, think for yourself in order to become a leader and not a follower. It teaches you self-reliance. Some kids pick up on this early on and are the most likely to succeed. Others decide they would rather party and ‘be cool’.
Things have gotten so bad that if you exhibit average intelligence then you are the person who is most likely to succeed. Although, you still will probably not get to the top unless you really apply yourself. But in most cases, all you have to do is show a little bit of intelligence and fortitude and most people around you will think you are a freaking genius. This is truly sad.
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