or: Are young people getting smarter or stupider?
This is just another of those posts where I hope to start a conversation in which we might learn something. But the question is a serious one, more or less. I honestly can’t tell which way this trend is heading.
I know my kids are smart. I know they have smart friends. I know young people are learning more stuff in school than I did at their age. But learning stuff aint the same as being smart.
I do have a theory that if you sit down and watch Jeopardy every night for a week with someone, based on the number of answers they get right you can tell something about them. Maybe not if they are smart or stupid, but at least if they are paying attention.
I know there are a lot of ways to evaluate intelligence. I know that smart and stupid are sort of subjective terms. I keep seeing statistics about our country that worry me. That some frightening percentage of Americans can’t find America on a map or globe, let alone anyplace else.
I know they don’t teach creativity in schools. They just keep cramming facts and figures into the kid’s craniums. I sort of think that thinking… ha… is something that you either do or don’t do. They don’t really teach you how to do it. What you do with all the facts and figures they give you is up to you.
Maybe the dumbing down of America isn’t just for the young. It really scares me how many people in this country honestly believe that evolution is just a theory, and probably not the correct one. I mean, gravity is just a theory too, right? Climate change can’t be real, and even if it is, it is all part of the plan of the great creator… because he must want us to pollute the planet or he wouldn’t have invented dinosaurs to turn into fossil fuels… oh wait… that’s right… you don’t believe in dinosaurs… no wonder you are confused…
Okay, I may have gotten distracted. What were we talking about again? Oh… right… being smart… maybe I am not the one to start this discussion…
Pouring My Art Out 
I think there is a huge difference between being book smart & being street smart. I don’t think enough young people these days have common sense. They are so used to having stuff handed to them, they don’t have a clue how to make things happen for themselves. I pity the employers of some of our young people. I think wisdom comes with age & experience, intelligence is something you have a leaning towards (you either are curious & learn from it or not).
Well said… by someone who knows how to think,,, and is smart!
Another shout out for Joe Hoover!
The astonishing excuses the kids I tutor come up with may be creative, but speak to a nauseating entitlement that only perpetuates their stupidity.
“I left my books home because I didn’t know where the maid put them.”
And that endless tap tap tapping on the phone. I won’t go to coffee with someone who keeps their phone on the table. Unless he/she is a cardiac surgeon awaiting a donor heart.
The entitlement thing bugs me. Reality comes as quite a shock to some of these kids.
I firmly believe kids are less smart these days, so when I speak to a kid who has a bit of nous it;s refreshing. Luckily one was my niece which I was amazed by since her dad is an idiot. I think a generation is overly led by the output on the internet and TV, they live through the eyes of celebrity confusing this was success. They see completely average people make millions from being idiotic and this is aspiring to them. Stupidity is lauded.
It’s lousy tarnishing everyone like this but from personal experience trying to hire young people I am astounded by the level of intelligence displayed. Common sense is one of the most important factors in a job, I don’t want automatons, but need people who can think but have found them so hard to come by. We hear about lack of jobs for young people but all those I hire struggle to make it out of bed in the morning, being 2 hours late became the norm for some of them. And the list of excuses I had, “I have to go home and wake my boyfriend up as he started a new job and hasn’t got up” I suppose they are showing creativity in their bullshit at least.
Or they have their mobile phones out on the desk and are tapping away at them all day and leaving to take calls. These aren’t emergencies just the integration social technology has taken into their lives, it would be unheard of for them to not be checking their Facebook all day, what if someone posts a picture of a dancing cat, what if someone is slagging them off?
Even people my age are culpable of that, I have been to the pub and had four friends all tapping away on phones, making each other into zombies instead of actually talking to each other which is the sole reason for a pub existing. I am constantly derided for never taking my phone anywhere with me, yes it defeats the point in having a mobile phone but if I am out with people that is what I am doing, I don’t need to be chatting to people who aren’t there.
Of course it has wonderful consequences too, being on WordPress for example and meeting great people but this is the exception I believe, like this discussion now, there is a point. Most interactions don’t have a point and we are raising a nation of morons. People who get their music taste from The X Factor, people who just absorb whatever tripe is thrown at them and don’t bother looking beyond that for true artists.
We’re completely satiated on the deluge of crap that we can’t see beyond it for anything else there. I’ve gone off on a tangent slightly, but my point is, when I grew up it was an adventure hunting things down of interest, now you are blasted with everything available, I imagine it’s a nightmare for young people to filter it. We build our intelligence from the influences around us and the influences are now completely shit.
If kids are worse, I know we brought it on ourselves. We need to take a better part in the raising of all kids. We are screwing them up… good comment!!!
Don’t pin this on me, I don’t have any 😉
You are still part of the village…
When cats start being dumb then I’ll take responsibility
HA!!!
You GO, Joe Hoover! I see the same things you see in the labor force. I also see a distinct lack of adventure for the little darlings, they couldn’t find their arses with both hands and a road map, let alone find their way to Katmandu or even Brighton. Thankfully there is less time before me than there is behind me and I won’t have to witness much more of this crap.
That’s looking on the bright side!
Hence why my job is safe, no young upstart will be able to oust me
Other people’s stupidity is our job security…
very true
Sometimes I get lucky
American children are not being taught to think critically or to imagine creatively in school. Childhood has vanished, schedules have taken the place of daydreams.
In the US, we must pay close attention to who is dictating public policy and why. We have seen the privatization of the prison systems, likely education will be next. It ain’t good.
We seem to be on the same wavelength a lot.
I think you’re leeching my thoughts out while I’m sleeping.
I feel so connected to you right now. I thought of that before I read your post, you know that right?
Yeah, I bet you’re having turkey for dinner tomorrow too… . I can feel my thoughts disappear as soon as I wake up, I know you’re taking them out while I sleep.
I have a magic straw…
Kids are smarter than us. They seem shallow, but that’s because we compare them through the lens of age against what we think we were when we were their age. Kids today are, in my opinion, wilder but also more open and thoughtful and I have great hope that they will save this oddball planet of ours. I have hope that my kids will try. Keeps me warm at night. Which is badly needed, because it is cold hereabouts.
I hope you are right.
You really are intelligent. It really is scary how people are not willing to think for themselves. It isn’t only the kids, it is us. It is so much easier to say, “they told me this.” Rather than ask, “hmmm, why are they telling me this?” Remember, just because the masses might say the world is flat, doesn’t make it true. Peace.
Peace… and love… and brains!
Unfortunately, knowing the facts (and doing well on Jeopardy) doesn’t mean that the person is smart. And it’s also possible for people to know about carbon dating and fossil record and still think that God created everything as is – because “because God” is the simplest explanation there is.
I worry about us.
Hi Art-I’m new to your party, and digging your blog.
And I’m a tutor, so I’m just the person to answer your question about young people. They are definitely getting stupider. I love my students immensely, but by and large, they’re a calculator-driven, spoon-fed generation. (what does by and large mean, anyway?)
School does not teach you to think. Our system of education is regurgitative, at best. Critical thinking and deductive reasoning – some are perhaps endowed with it through genetics; or perhaps acquire it through reading avidly. I’m not sure. I only know that I’m not allowing the school system to be wholly responsible for my son’s education, or he’ll wind up an idiot with a 4.0 GPA.
Wow! You just had to ask that question on my very first visit to your blog, now didn’t you! Something that makes me go off like a prom dress!
Anyway, ever since I found Le Clown I’ve been finding the most interesting bloggers. Keep pouring out your art, Art, cause Samara is following. Thanks!!
umm… Glad to have you. Please feel free to poke around, but don’t get lost. I don’t try to make people think every day. That would be cruel. But every once in a while…
Ha maybe you are..
um… okay?