Larry Romanoff – The Unz Review Sept 23, 2022
For background, the Boston school system had for many years grappled with the problem of how to assign students to Boston’s public schools that could both let children attend one of the few good schools in the system while also finding one close to their homes. They also wanted to ensure that students from poor neighborhoods had the same chance of attending good schools as those from more affluent neighborhoods. The school system was divided into zones where many students were bused far from home but still attended the lower-quality schools. A newly-appointed 27-member committee tried yet again to find a solution but after months of examination and debate became hopelessly entangled in what were largely irrelevancies, and again could find no solution. But a 24-year-old Chinese student named Peng Shi who was in a Ph.D. program at MIT and who was looking for a thesis topic, attended the meetings, asked a few questions and gave them the obvious solution of eliminating their school zones and applying a different model for selection. After some study, the committee voted overwhelmingly to adopt Shi’s model, calling it “a breakthrough moment” for Boston’s school system.
According to an NYT article reporting on the event: “That it took a dispassionate outsider with … no political agenda to formulate the model is a measure of the complexities facing urban school districts today”, but that is a baldly dishonest statement. Yes, it took a ‘dispassionate outsider with no political agenda’ to solve the problem, but the problem was not “a measure of the complexities facing American school districts” but one more indication that (a) creativity, independent thinking, problem-solving and all the other good words do not in fact exist in the US educational system, and (b) adult Americans really are dumber than the average human.
After multiple repeated attempts over many months, the solution was not only not obvious but non-existent, to the 27 adult American “educators” who “lead the world in innovation and critical thinking”. But after only 30 minutes the solution was obvious to Shi, a 24-year-old Chinese kid, a rote-learning robot whose educational system taught him only to memorise and not to think, who knew only how to produce high scores but not to apply any knowledge, someone with no creativity and no imagination.[2] [3]
We know all the criticisms. China’s children are taught only to memorise and not to think or question. They are rote-learning robots without capacity for original thought. They know only how to produce high scores but not to think. They have no creativity, no imagination, no concept of innovation. The classes are too large; there is no individual attention paid to students. The entire Chinese educational system is corrupt and failing. But this is all nonsense, yet one more foolish myth propagated by the Americans. There has never been any evidence to document such claims which, like so many others, are fabricated solely on an imaginary moral superiority.
America Leads the World. Or Does it?
The quality of American education, as we will see, is far lower than the world has been led to believe, and the quality in China is in many cases much superior to that in the US. Americans might care to ask why it is that Chinese elementary or high school students moving to the US are often promoted by one or two grades. The reason is that they know so much more than their American counterparts they would suffer terminal boredom if forced to remain at their prior grade level.
If we refer to the PISA tests, Shanghai’s math scores were 119 above the OECD average, or the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling, with reading and science exceeding the OECD average by about 1.5 years of schooling. And in some cases, the American students were behind the OECD average by approximately the same number of years as the Chinese were ahead.[4] [5]
The myth persists that the US has always led the world in quality of education, but this is nothing more than branding propaganda and part of the indoctrination process of American moral superiority that is wholly unsupported by facts. Consider this quote from an American education expert:
“The US has never been first in the world, nor even near the top, on any international tests. Consistently over the past half century, American students have typically scored near the median at best, but most often being in the bottom quartile. The historical record indicates that American elementary students are only average at best, their performance degrading year by year until high school seniors perform last in almost all international tests. The International Science Studies that began in high schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s found that 14-year-olds were below average and seniors scored last of all countries. In the International Mathematics tests that began in the 1960s, American high school seniors scored last of all nations. In the 1982 International Mathematics Study, high school seniors placed at the bottom on almost every test. In terms of the PISA tests, American students – placing last – are simply following the pattern that has been consistent for the past 50 years or more.” [5a] [6] [7]
The National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP — called the Nation’s Report Card — is an exam given to fourth-grade and eighth-grade students throughout the country by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education. Only 36 percent of fourth-grade students and 34 percent of eighth-grade students in 2015 scored high enough to be considered proficient or above in reading. In math, 40 percent of fourth-grade students and 33 percent of eighth-grade students scored proficient or above. Many experts have stated that Americans are “uneducated to a degree unmatched by many third-world countries”.[8]
Recent tests in the New York area show that less than half of all students are proficient in English and Math, and in some areas the number is as low as 13%. This is true in most of the country, literacy being marginal in most American secondary schools. In an article published in the San Jose Mercury in 2001, it was documented that 75% of California high school seniors could not read well enough to pass their exit exams.
A quote from one news report: “In October of 2013 a new global report issued by the OECD found that Americans ranked well below the worldwide average in just about every measure of skill. In math, reading, and technology-driven problem-solving , the United States performed worse than nearly every other country… The US would have looked even worse if China had been included in this study. In basic literacy – the ability to understand and use basic written text – 80% of Americans reached only a level 2 out of 5. And in math and numerical proficiency, using numbers in daily life, they are worse … and 10% scored below level 1. Technological literacy and ability were worse too. In problem-solving in a technological environment and the use of “cognitive skills required to solve problems”, the Americans were at the bottom.” And that bottom is in math, vocabulary, language usage and technology, with Chinese students far surpassing the Americans even when using a language that is not their own.[9] [10]
In early 2014 the Washington Times reported that new studies and the results of the recent SAT tests demonstrate conclusively that the vast majority of America’s 2012 high school graduates aren’t ready for college, and SAT scores have plummeted to their lowest level in more than 40 years. The results of the exams, released by the College Board, revealed that only about 39% of students planning to attend university are in any way prepared for the world of higher education. More than 60% displayed functional illiteracy by failing the reading portion of the test, with only a slightly better result on math and writing, which means most US university students will achieve C or D grades at best, and that a great many will either fail or be falsely graduated without merit or knowledge. And the dropout rates are fierce. In Washington DC, the nation’s capital, almost 70% of college students fail to graduate.[11] [12]
The solution was to abandon the SAT tests for college entry.
I deleted this paragraph, then decided to re-insert it because the topic irritated me. We’re dealing with the English language, and listening to a senior American educator, a Ph.D. from Harvard, explaining why only 39% of all students who took the SAT college admissions test scored well enough to be deemed ready for college. In her little media sound-byte, she said this fact showed American educators where they needed to “hone in”. The correct expression is “to home in on”, as with a homing device, to focus on or bring us to the correct place, in fact to take us home. To “hone” is to sharpen, as to hone a blade, but for Americans who don’t – or can’t – read, the sound is similar and sloppy carelessness accounts for the rest. Critics pounced on this, but she and other ‘educators’ defended such a foolish error by claiming that language is alive and fluid, and it changes. To make matters worse, another shining light, this one an education expert from Duke University, informed us that our criticisms of poor-quality education (and educators) would likely “snuff out democracy”.
In spite of all the branding propaganda and rhetoric, the decreasing quality of American education is well-known in the West. It is not a secret that for many decades the US has been “dumbing-down” its education at all levels, consistently reducing government funding to result in fewer teachers, larger classrooms, poorer facilities, lower salaries and teacher quality, and steadily decreasing learning. One need only do a quick Internet search to find hundreds of studies and alarmed reports of the greatly-deteriorated quality of American education. As John Kozy noted, “In fact, piles of evidence reveal that Americans are getting dumber. People who have graduated from high school since the pocket calculator was invented can’t calculate in their heads, not even simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Many people addicted to the Internet have difficulty reading anything more complicated than a tweet”.
The propaganda machine focuses heavily on the mythical superiority of the American education system, but Americans haven’t the critical thinking skills needed to see through the lies presented to them. One author pointed out that American public schooling grinds away at children until they graduate with little creativity or curiosity, stating further that “Such people will never be informed citizens, and most could care less”. All of this has been heavily researched and documented by John Gatto, who was nominated as Teacher of the Year for New York State and New York City, and who has since left teaching, claiming he was no longer willing to harm children by teaching them in the US public school system.[13]
In 2013, Jeff Schweitzer wrote an article in the UK Guardian titled ‘God created gravity’, in which he deplored the sad state of American education, to quite an extent blaming religion for the lack of intelligent focus, with subjects like science still in the 17th century in US schools. He said that while the rest of the world is becoming educated, Americans spend their time discussing how exceptional and awesome they are, with the result that Americans are number one only in delusion. “Steeped in this wasteland of scientific illiteracy we march ever further toward a theocracy … twisting history to indoctrinate our children with stories about god and gravity”, with educational debates, like all others based on faith rather than logic. He wrote that the only way for Americans to support any position they hold is to simply assert their supremacy as loudly as possible, reduced to childlike tantrums of “I’m right, you’re wrong, I win.”[14]
Because American schools do not demand critical thinking and problem-solving from students starting at a young age, the students are lost in university classrooms when they are years behind and struggling with the basics of reading and understanding. Many US educators complain that fewer than one-quarter of their students have any proficiency at all in basic skills like math and reading comprehension, that they are never taught original ideas or methods of learning that will prepare them for higher education. One educator claimed, “My former teachers simply did not push me to think past a basic level, to apply concepts, to move beyond memorizing facts and figures.” And of course the students feel the pressure acutely. One first-year university student said, “I basically thought I was stupid. I just felt like, What’s wrong with me? Maybe I’m not meant to be here.” Another said, “You can’t make it in college by yourself. You just need all the help you can get.” One student who felt blessed by having a good teacher in her final year in high school said, “I feel like it was too late. It just wasn’t enough to have that kind of teacher for one year.”[15]
And it isn’t only the students who are in this position. The New York Post ran an interesting article titled, “US adults are dumber than the average human“, which stated in part, “It’s long been known that America’s school kids haven’t measured well compared with international peers.[16]
Now, there’s a new twist: Adults don’t either. In math, reading and problem-solving using technology – all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength – American adults scored below the international average on a global test.” The studies also found that it was much more difficult on average to overcome the lack of knowledge, literacy and other barriers in the United States, than in other nations.
The article continued, “It’s not just the kids who require more and more preparation to get access to the economy, it’s more and more the adults don’t have the skills to stay in it. Americans scored toward the bottom in the category of problem solving in a technology rich environment, even in skills such as using a mouse”, creating a kind of “underclass – a large group of people who are basically unemployable“. And again, “A quarter of all Americans never become proficient in math. In Shanghai and Korea, the comparable figure is about 6%. Some 7% of US students reached the top two scientific performance levels, compared with an amazing 27% in Shanghai.”[17] [18] [19]
Rick Shenkman wrote an interesting and enlightening article titled ‘Just How Stupid Are We?’, in which he wrote “Americans generally do not seem to absorb what it is that they are reading and hearing and watching. Americans cannot even name the leaders of their own government. The error can be traced to our mistaking unprecedented access to information with the actual consumption of it.” He said that in the postwar period, social scientists began to systematically measure what Americans actually knew, and even back then the results of their displayed ignorance were devastating. He further claimed that surveys showed Americans’ level of ignorance remaining constant over time, and that by some measures “Americans are dumber today than their parents of a generation ago. Young people … know less today than young people forty years ago.”[20] [20a] [21]
The situation is so bad that in 2003, when the Strategic Task Force on Education investigated Americans’ knowledge of world affairs, they concluded that “Americans’ ignorance … is so great as to constitute a threat to national security.”
But according to the NYT‘s resident jack-of-all-trades Paul Krugman, if you had to “express the greatness of the United States in one word, that word would be ‘education’.” Other more knowledgeable and competent people disagree with Krugman. Donald Kagan, a former president of Yale University gave a final speech in 2013 in which he said that American universities were failing their students, that the curricula were inappropriate and were “unfocused and scattered”, the campuses “a kind of cultural void, with an ignorance of the past”, and that “faculty with atypical views” were rare. Perhaps most importantly, Kagan said, “At the university, there must be intellectual variety. If you don’t have [that], it’s not only that you are deprived of knowing some of the things you might know. It’s that you are deprived of testing the things that you do know or do think you know or believe in, so that your knowledge is superficial.”[22] [23]
The man was precisely correct in this last statement, reflecting one of the hazards today of being an American, the programmed and propagandised uniformity of thought that deprives Americans of any way to test the validity of their (mostly) foolish beliefs. Such regimented and incessant propaganda provides a uniform reinforcement of ideology, creating impenetrable boundaries of the mind. The simple-minded adherence to a single ideology narrows one’s views and cripples the ability to think clearly or critically. As one author wrote, “a closely adhered-to ideology becomes a mental locality with limits and borders just as real as those of geography. In fact, if we consider (American) nationalism a pervasive modern ideology, there is a direct connection between the boundaries induced in the mind and those on the ground.”[24]
Karl Weiss wrote an excellent and perceptive article that was published in Germany’s Berliner Umschau in October of 2009; I will quote some of his observations here. He began with the decrepit American educational system, stating “.. the education system in America is unlike that of almost any other industrialized country. Free education is available only at primary and secondary levels; beyond that, community and technical colleges and universities are so expensive that children in lower socioeconomic classes have little chance of attending unless they are “gifted” and get scholarships. The education provided by the public school system is often so inferior that graduates who can’t afford better schooling have little chance of ever getting the knowledge and skills necessary to lead fulfilling lives. Instead, the focus is on producing nationalistic dimwits who know nothing but their own country.”
He went on to say that one result is a deeply divided society with the capitalists and bankers on one side and the uneducated and lower class on the other, resulting in what he called “a society of force so shot through with violence that any other value has little or no meaning”, and with everything rooted in the Christianity-based black and white dog-eat-dog competition that creates only winners and losers. Weiss’ allegation of “nationalistic dimwits” is not only accurate for the US educational system, but the process is universal throughout the nation. Educational materials in the US are largely propaganda tools, intended not to educate but to indoctrinate.
In the wonderfully disingenuous but disturbing manner of propagandising in which Americans excel, one educational website made the following claim: “While lawyers, doctors, and teachers typically complete additional schoolwork, computer programmers, nurses, and automotive technicians may be qualified with only one or two years of study”.
Doctors “typically” complete “additional schoolwork”? That sounds like some, but not all, medical students doing a bit of extra homework at the Grade Three level, but doctors in most countries need an undergrad degree plus an additional four years of grueling medical training to become an M.D., and yet this is being equated with an auto mechanic who may be qualified with only one year of study. This re-categorisation may appear trivial to the casual reader, but this anti-intellectual linguistic magic is reprogramming Americans with a much-denigrated appreciation of a university education. Now, an American hairdresser and manicurist is trained to the same level of competence as a gynecologist – except for the bit of “additional schoolwork”. And only in the US can a nurse be “qualified” with only one year of study. Many countries require a 4-year nursing degree.
The amount of mythological propaganda and marketing surrounding American education is stunning. Shailendra Raj Mehta, a visiting professor at Duke University, wrote one of the most nonsensical articles I have seen in years, titled ‘The secret of Harvard’s Success’, in which he wrote “No country dominates any industry as much as the United States dominates higher education”. According to him, in a ranking of world universities, 17 of the world’s 20 best universities are American, with Harvard topping the list by a substantial margin, a feat he attributes to “America’s innovative governance model for higher education“. I have no idea what that would be, but it can’t be good. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, Harvard was established by the Puritans as a religious training camp to produce missionaries for their heresies, not to “educate” anybody. And, as with all rankings everywhere, the Americans choose the game, set all the parameters, lay down the rules, decide the scoring system, then win the game. And the US media promote this nonsensical propaganda literally to the ends of the earth. American universities are not ranked so highly because they are the best; it’s because the Americans determined the ranking rules so they would come out on top.
In fact, in a recent, more intelligent and less-biased, examination of higher education systems, China ranked ninth, six places above the US. Universitas 21, a group of 27 research-intensive universities from around the world, created an international ranking system of educational quality based on national purchasing power. A leading Universitas researcher said that despite a relatively low per capita income, China had made a “phenomenal” investment in its top universities, resulting in Chinese universities now being “serious players” in research and other fields.
Here is an excerpt written by Sarah Brown, taken from Canada’s Globe and Mail, in response to an NYT article about Harvard students always receiving A grades:
“Having attended both Harvard and the University of Toronto, I can state that there are two differences between the schools: Harvard is much more difficult to get into, whereas the University of Toronto is much more difficult to get out of – with a degree and decent grades, that is. At Harvard, undergraduates have to take only four full-time courses per year to earn a degree, and they have a longer school year in which to prepare for their exams. At U of T, five full-time courses must be taken, and the school year is much more condensed. The atmosphere at Harvard is quite “country-clubish” and leisurely, while at U of T it is a downright pressure-cooker. At U of T there is an unwritten policy that 20 per cent of the students in every class will receive a failing grade. At Harvard, most students receive a minimum of A- grades. In fact, to receive anything less than a B, one would have to miss exams and not hand in assignments. As far as getting into Harvard goes, the most significant factor is whether or not you are a so-called “legacy,” meaning that if your father, mother, or sibling went to Harvard before you, you can still get in, as hundreds do, with mediocre high school grades. I’m not surprised that current Harvard students feel that they deserve A’s for their $100,000 investment; if they were forced to compete with students at the U of T, many would receive only C’s at best.” And many would fail.
Dumber Than the Average Human
When I was a university student, there were Americans at my school who had obtained B.A. degrees from UCLA with majors in – and I am not kidding – basket-weaving and ceramics. In America, that’s called an education. Basket-weaving. That’s about the same being granted a Master’s degree if you can learn to knit a sweater. At around the same time, a US polling firm did a nation-wide study and discovered, among other things, that a full 75% of Americans could not find their own country on a map of the world. Similar studies have been repeated many times since then, with essentially the same results among adults and students at all levels including university: about 75% of Americans couldn’t find either their country or Canada. One of the most famous references to this astonishing level of American ignorance occurred on US national television during a Miss Teen USA pageant when one of the finalists, Miss South Carolina, Caitlin Upton, was asked why most Americans couldn’t find their country on a world map. Here is her answer, which was posted on YouTube and received more than 40 million views.
“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”[25]
If that doesn’t tell you what you need to know about the quality of American education, I don’t know what would. It isn’t only the ignorance, but the obvious functional illiteracy of such a person, that is so stunning.[26]
The American media flood the nation and the world with the most astonishing propaganda and fabricated fairy-tales about the quality of the nation’s education. The US used to boast that it had the highest percentage of population with university degrees. I don’t know if that claim was ever true, but it eventually became false so the Americans moved the goalposts. Now, in all the statistics, including those by the US government itself, anyone with almost any kind of accreditation above High School, perhaps including even a hairdressing or lawn maintenance diploma – which they call an “associate degree” is listed as a college graduate.
Similarly, the US claims the highest level of literacy in the world – 99%. Truly enviable. But then, reading the small print at the end of a recent highly-regarded “definitive study” purporting to document American educational supremacy, what do we find? Just as with its economic statistics and every other comparison the US produces, we discover manipulated and falsified data. In these so-called studies produced by the US government and its educational institutions, the Americans simply misrepresented the facts so they could place themselves at the top of the list. In the case of functional literacy, the US position is this:
“For highly developed or high-income countries where literacy statistics were not collected, a rate of 99% was assumed.”
We might legitimately ask why the Americans didn’t bother to collect statistics. The reason is that in all studies, researchers have found the rate of functional illiteracy in the US is almost 25% of the total population, with the illiteracy rate for adults in many American cities like Detroit having been documented at almost 50%, a very long way from the fictional 99% literacy ‘assumed’, and in many other major cities like New York large swathes of the population read below a grade three level and have no math or other skills. The highly-regarded National Adult Literacy Survey found a total of almost 25%, or about 50 million of the 200 million American adults functioning at the lowest literacy level. In basic literacy – the ability to understand and use basic written text – 80% of Americans reached only a level 2 out of 5. It is so bad that 75% of the Fortune 500 companies have to provide some level of remedial training for their workers – a large number of whom are college graduates.[27]
Countless books and academic studies have been produced on the severe literacy problem in America, but the media ignore these facts and continue, like Paul Krugman, to feed the world the foolish utopian claim that the US is a world leader in education when nothing could be farther from the truth.
More than 25% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth, but one US columnist wrote that this wasn’t really a bad thing. He claimed, “Firstly, the great majority of humans throughout history have believed this. Secondly, it’s not a problem that impinges on the daily life of anyone. We should pick co-ordinates for convenience, not dogma.”
Talking to Americans
Canada had a popular TV personality named Rick Mercer, who took a camera crew into the US on a crusade to satirise the true educational level of Americans. One of his trademark programs (on Canada’s CBC network) was called ‘Talking to Americans’, in which he would conduct random interviews with average Americans and tell them outrageous stories about Canada which they would inevitably accept as true. In one show, Mercer told Americans that very old or terminally-ill Canadian citizens are put onto ice floes and just pushed out into the Arctic Ocean to die. He pretended to be collecting signatures for a petition to the Canadian government to stop this practice; the signatures he obtained included those of full professors from Harvard and Yale.
In another, he interviewed George W. Bush (who had previously stated “you can’t stump me on world leaders”), conveying to him compliments from Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Poutine, on Bush’s Presidential candidacy, to which Bush responded with the warmest expressions of heartfelt gratitude.[28] [29]
The Prime Minister of Canada was Jean Chretien; “poutine” is a French-Canadian dish of French fries with gravy and melted cheese. Bush was so miffed when the program aired, that Canada’s CBC was banned in the US for years.
In one of his shows, Mercer asked Americans how many sides a triangle had: One victim of American education said, “None. There are no sides in a triangle.” Another said “Four.” He asked them if the movie “Star Wars” were based on a true story; many Americans answered in the affirmative. It was so bad that Mercer claimed “About 80 per cent of the people give me the right answer, by which of course, I mean the wrong answer.” Mercer convinced tourists at Mount Rushmore that the mineral rights to the mountain had been sold to a Canadian firm that was going to drill for oil in Lincoln’s forehead. “Professors at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, NYU and Stanford University were consistently fooled by [Mercer’s] absurdities.”[30]
It isn’t only Canadians who mock American ignorance and lack of education. The US late-night talk shows often do this kind of thing, ridiculing the fabled ignorance of their own citizens, claiming that they need to speak to only ten or at most twenty Americans to find 5 stupid ones who know nothing – 25%. This is so well-known that in Europe, ‘American’ equals ‘ignorant’, the two adjectives considered equivalent and synonymous.
Ron Unz wrote an excellent and informative article in The American Conservative titled The Myth of American Meritocracy, in which he detailed issues with admission to top US universities, quoting other studies as well, all of which suggest that various preferences and biases, including the role of cash in this process, with most universities, including Harvard, having a ‘cash price’ of admission, meaning that a substantial donation will obtain admittance even for a dim-witted student with no particular ability.[31]
He wrote that the notion of a wealthy family buying their son his entrance into the Grandes Ecoles of France or the top Japanese universities would be an absurdity.” He mentioned China as well, confirming that China’s gaokao is strictly based on merit and has never been corrupted by favoritism, and has been kept “remarkably clean for 1300 years”. He confirmed what many of us already know, that this uncorrupted system may be one reason so many wealthy Chinese send their “dim and lazy” offspring to study in the West. In his words, “enrolling them at a third-rate Chinese university would be a tremendous humiliation, while our own corrupt admissions practices get them an easy spot at Harvard or Stanford, sitting side by side with the children of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W. Bush.” One of his final comments was that the admissions process at top American universities operates under the principle of “Ideology and Diversity tempered by Corruption”, not what many Chinese have been led to expect from the propaganda machine.
It should be abundantly obvious that there is no way to reconcile these testimonials and experiences, and countless thousands similar, with claims that the US ‘dominates higher education’, at least not in any positive way. And so, with appropriate apologies to Paul Krugman, for those of you who are desperate to “express the greatness of America in one word”, that word would be “bull****”, not education.
[Mr. Romanoff’s writing ]has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. ([Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons]).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
Notes
[1] Dr. Andreas Schleicher who was in charge of the PISA test on behalf of OECD, said “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning. Large fractions of these students extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very CREATIVELY in novel situations. In my opinion, it’s the American k-12 education which has failed miserably in teaching the American students the solid basics, has to be reformed.”
He also added this: “I have no respect for a large number of the Chinese students who come to U.S. for UNDERGRADUATE study. Most of these students are from well-off families and academically too weak to get into decent Chinese colleges. The real smart Chinese students are the ones who finish their undergraduate education in China and come to the U.S. for graduate study and beyond.”
[2] Dr. Peng Shi | USC CAIS;
www.cais.usc.edu/news/prediction-and-optimization-in-school-choice/
[3] No Division Required in This School Problem;
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/education/no-division-required-in-this-school-problem.html
[4] What You Need to Know About the International Test Scores;
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/international-test-scores_b_4379533
[5] Global Test Shows U.S. Stagnating – Education Week;
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/12/11/14pisa-2.h33.html
[5a] Vietnam Wallops U.S. on Test Scores;
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vietnam-wallops-us-on-tes_b_7290682
[6] Asian countries top OECD’s latest PISA survey;
www.oecd.org/…countries-top-oecd-s-latest-pisa-survey-on-state-of-global-education.htm
[7] In PISA Test, Top Scores From Shanghai Stun Experts;
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html
[8] National Assessment of Education Progress Scores
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/naep-scores_562fd4fde4b06317990fcf74
[9] The Washington, DC radio station, WTOP, reported in 2016 that only 25% of American 12th graders are able to write an essay.
Many educators called in to say they thought the number was too high..
[10] Scores for Class of 2014 show no improvement
[11] Average SAT Scores Over Time:
https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-over-time
[12] SAT scores at lowest level in 10 years;
[13] John Taylor Gatto “Dumbing Us Down”
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/41319.John_Taylor_Gatto
[14] God Created Gravity: Why the U.S. Can’t Keep Pace With …
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/god-created-gravity-why-t_b_4387942
[15] Only 25 Per Cent of All Americans Go to College and Only 16 Per Cent of These Actually Try to Learn Anything. The Unz Review; Alexander Cockburn • March 23, 2012;
https://www.unz.com/acockburn/the-myth-of-the-knowledge-economy/
[16] US adults are dumber than the average human;
https://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/
[17] US adults rank below average in global survey of basic education skills
[18] National Assessment of Adult Literacy;
[19] Adult Literacy in the United States.
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
[20] Author: Irwin S. Kirsch; National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS);
https://nces.ed.gov/statprog/handbook/pdf/nals.pdf
[20a] Just How Stupid Are We?
[21] Terence P. Jeffrey, October 28, 2015; Detroit Public Schools: 93% Not Proficient in Reading; 96% Not Proficient in Math
[22] Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash; March 8, 2003; by Luciana Bohne
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/08_learning.html
[23] On November 18, 2015, Christopher Ingraham wrote in the Washington Post that Ben Carson’s presidential campaign inadvertently underscored this point Tuesday night, when it took to social media to share a map of the United States in which five New England states were placed in the wrong location.
[24] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/18/ben-carsons-campaign-made-a-u-s-map-and-put-a-bunch-of-states-in-the-wrong-place/?tid=pm_pop_b
[25] Caitlin Upton
—
[26] In another televised beauty pageant, a high school girl was asked to explain a quote by Confucius. In response, she said: “Confucius was one of the men who invented confusion.”
[27] An article in Forbes magazine stated that “America’s Millennials Are Among the World’s Least Skilled”. Specifically, they are short on literacy, numeracy, ability to follow simple orders, poor at solving problems.
[28] Talking to Americans – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_to_Americans
[29] 22 Minutes star pulls prank on George W. Bush | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/22-minutes-star-pulls-prank-on-george-w-bush-1.212339
[30] “Rick Mercer talks to Americans on Nightline”. Welland Tribune, August 2, 2001.
The Myth of America Meritocracy
[31] https://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
Off topic but not entirely unrelated to the above article:
@Andyay
Re: your comment to the article entitled ‘Don’t Blame Young Women for Being Whores’ published on TTS, September 23rd, 2022
May I humbly thank you for yet another of your interesting, informative and thought provoking contributions; one of many I have read on TTS from your good self on various issues. If there was any justice in this world you be placed at the head of Oxford University and given a free hand to design the entire curriculum of study for all of it’s students into the future – not before removing every Marxist “professor” and “lecturer” of course. This website is a real contribution to freedom of speech and debate and you Sir are it’s most learned contributor in my humble opinion. Thank you once again.
The dumbing down has been deliberate as a teacher i saw kids in the UK leaving school at 15 and 16 not able to read and write
this has been deliberate by government who could then say
” ah our kids cant do, we have to import them in from abroad for the jobs ”
my cousin a school inspector says the only schools not dumbed down are jewish schools
schools now are more interested in turning out perverts
or those who they think are the wrong sex
madness
r
It seems the author doesn’t live in America, the average math and reading scores are very different in America based on race.
People want their kids to go to the “good schools”, but typically the good schools don’t have better teachers, curriculums or teaching techniques, they simply have students with above average academic skills/thinking ability and parents who motivate them. Typically the parents have good thinking ability, college education, good jobs and live in a good neighborhood.
Some students are just better academically than others and they have parents who really care about their academics; the media should stop putting most of the blame on the schools.
These days, the main problem with school districts in America are the “diversity, equity and inclusion” departments.
I would suggest that this process of the dumbing down of the American people has been quite deliberate.
Blimey. What a great big wall of text. And just look at all those references. The “author” must be an “expert”.
What it completely fails to mention (or else goes on about it all the way through, depending how you look at it) is that “intelligence” is not measured by test scores. Or rather, it is, in your world.
If you want to measure how “good” someone is, look elsewhere.
If you want to measure how “good” some country is, look at the adults. India and China lead the world in “tech” and have for at least two decades. Is that “good”? That’s up to you. Britain probably leads the world in boring oafs who can quote 17th century writers ad infinitum. America probably leads the world in boasting. Oh, and killing.
In the uk, all of the stuff in the article has been known for a LONG time. The british “government” has been making the tests easier for decades, and every year it boasts about how many more people passed their whatever levels this year vs the last, leaving out the fact that they lowered the pass mark, reduced the number of topics to revise, and that there are 250,000 more people than last year. If there ever was a culling of the british population (oh happy dream), then the “standard of education” would plummet because there’d be hardly anyone “passing their exams” due to the majority being dead.
If you want to understand why all this is happening, you don’t need a group of 27 “experts”, nor even a chinese immigrant, all you need is uncommon sense. Most of the westerners have no motivation whatsoever to learn. The more money daddy has the less motivation little johnny has. That’s why the rich people’s brats are the dumbest. In China etc it’s the exact opposite. Most are poor, all are trying to escape the system, and so they have a hell of a lot of motivation going on. No doubt the “experts” in the west would then say the solution is to make all the westerners have a chinese life. Nice for them.
But why would education depend on school, from government? Good parents teach their children a lot and they buy their own books when older. School taught me less than an 1800 page encyclopaedia did after I left. Later you concentrate more on what interests you most
If the author thinks Yanks are dumb (and you’ll get NO argument from me!)…
he’d be in for an even bigger shock with THICK Brits…. who don’t appear to have the slightest problem with the vacuous vessel of a demented tea-lady as Prime Minister!
😄😅😂🤣
And at least that girl has got looks – enough to make any red-blooded male crawl a mile over broken glass with a red-hot poker up hie a$$ –
and she’s not half as dumb as the hysterical hags running the Woke West.. who actually think they KNOW something!!
You’ve got to be dumb if you go through training to be stupid. Then be indebted for life for it.
Thousands of soldiers are employed in Londinium and on London Bridge now, is everybody actually paying attention here……? Martial law coming for the UK?
lt seems likely that..and l have read some notable articles regarding this ..that the Western lQ has perhaps dropped fifteen points since the nineteenth century…
Now… this has accelerated in recent decades..undoubtedly due to averaging out the white population with lower lQ immigrants…
But…the obvious macro conclusion to draw from this is that these imbeciles have been created via ‘systems’ to benefit the kleptocracy… (hint: they have)..
Particularly their war on ‘white men’..white families and the ‘resources’ they require… (the root of the resource war or so called green agenda and preference for the brown man)…
and of course the threat ‘natural ‘whites would pose to an increasingly dvsgenic aggregate of ((elitists)) and the totalitarian liberal ideology they favour for profit etc…
NB: American food quality (if one can call it that) rates around 125th in the world.. and here is a point to muse on… most of the large scale corporate honey sold in the world but predominantly in America is actually…
a syrupy sugary fake…(safe and effective)…
Actually, I think that Confucius would confuse me also having never studied anything he said or did.
Why would the girl know about a Chinese philosopher unless she was taught about him in school? I never was, and I went to a private school. It would be better to teach the young girls how to be young ladies, instead of teaching them how to have sex and be sluts and lesbians, or to have their reproductive organs cut off.
They should be taught how to cook; to sew; to take care of babies from birth through childhood; how to administer first aid, how to clean homes; how to shop for food and clothing, etc. And of course, they should be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. Certain people who hate other people have designed the school curriculum in this world today for it is intended to bring forth misery and death.
Frighteningly, not just the fact of dumb, is the ability to conceal it. @20 yrs ago, met a woman that graduated the same HS I attended, and she took great pride telling me she had never read a book in her life. (I didn’t think that was possible) Recently had a run-in with a cashier at BK. She refused to even touch the register, (it WAS on) but proceeded to do the math out loud, by 2’s. 2+2+2+2…. for 15 mins. I added my order up, ($18.63) in a minute (twice), told her the correct amount, and she started over. She finally came to a figure that was 50 cents LESS than right. I almost corrected, but since it had been so
long, and I was the only white person there, I left.
Race riots in the UK every night for overa week
media silent as coloured folk burn and destroy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sORyDWCpC4
It seems a glaring omission not to cite the work of Charlotte Iserbyte, who sounded an early warning about the process of “deliberate dumbing down of America”,
http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/ddd/
Perhaps I missed the reference.
“I think we agree, THE PAST IS OVER.”
George W. Bush
————————
Miss Teen USA Contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton of South Carolina
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our [children].”
——————-
“Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
“To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States.”
George W. Bush
——————-
Awaken with JP ⏰ Why Only Idiots Don’t Go to College!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=froDJhnb-kw
——————
Identity crisis? Searching for Kayla Lemieux, the shop teacher with giant prosthetic breasts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrs_R4Kymi8
—————–
Jay Leno Jay Walk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqmQJXdqrM
——————–
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”
George W. Bush
From Jim Stone:
A college professor speaks up: College is worthless.
“Former professor here. I’m in the process of changing careers and here’s why: I cannot ethically continue to take a salary from such a fucked up system.
The underlying problem is the diversity worship. College administration believes in diversity above all else. We as professors have been forced to water down the curriculum so that the majority of our “new recruits” can be “successful” and graduate. I’m here to report I have given students passing grades who didn’t even speak English.
These students get a worthless degree and in exchange, they mortgage their future with student loans, and in my experience, many of these minority students who were held in such high esteem by the diversity worshippers are unable to find gainful employment. Now these little brown pawns are saddled with a lifetime of debt and no ability to pay it off.
Since the brown wave of invaders, quality has fallen so low that many universities have embraced a system of accommodating “disabilities”. This generally involves students who are either retarded or cheaters. The kids who are retarded obviously should not be there (I’ve been commanded to give some of these students up to four times the amount of time on exam) and the clever cheaters have figured out that all they need to say is “I have test anxiety” and the disability office takes over from there to justify their own existence. I taught in a major that is a direct pipeline into medical professions. I’d often argue that none of these students will receive double time or a distraction free environment on the job.
Who wins in all this mess? Administration. They recruit the retards and minorities because all they see are numbers and skin tones. Their existence as overpaid and underworked management depends on numbers. Our American population just isn’t enough to sustain their outrageous salaries so they worship diversity and recruit kids who have no business in college. I cannot stress enough how destructive administration has become at universities around the country. They are a group of highly unethical, egotistical, lazy and overstuffed people who would have no chance in a career outside academia. The most dangerous of these people are the female administrators who will lie and cheat to attain their desired outcomes.
So in closing I am leaving the profession because I can’t lie anymore. I can’t pretend what I’m doing is good or noble. I hope our country takes notice of what is happening, because I really did believe in the concept of higher education, but like everything in our nation, it has been rotted from the inside out. If you want the best for your kids, send them to a trade school. I would only let my kids attend university if they were dead set on a career they could not obtain without a degree (e.g. nursing, engineering, etc). Things are truly worse than you think on every college campus.
==========================================
Jim Stone’s comment below
My comment: College used to be for the best and brightest, and a college degree made a difference when only 10 percent (or so) of the population could go to college and actually be smart enough to get through it.
THEN college became easier, and became EXPECTED. If you did not go to college, you were second class, and average people could pass.
NOW college is there to pass the bottom and put it equal with the top in the name of “equality” which really means “subversion” and “creating confusion to prevent a nation of employers from knowing who really is qualified for the job. If someone truly qualified lands the interview along with someone who is not really qualified, is papered better, and can talk a good line, who’s getting hired?
The authorities in Western schools could easily close the gap with Oriental students by returning Britain, United States and Canada back to the standards of the 1950’s for instance. But they don’t dare because the Blacks flooding into these countries would be left even further behind requiring their own schools. Nothing would point out the insanity of those country’s immigration policies than going that route.
I just got this question from Quora mailed to me and it is the funniest question I ever read on Quora, but as the person who posted the question now blocked any comments, I thought I must just share it here :-
‘I stalk my therapist since she has such an interesting life and I even saved videos. I think this is making me lose sleep. Do I talk to her about it? If so, how?’
I thought it was brilliant parody till I saw who it was that posted it – it’s serious.
They ARE American though-
I would have been tempted to advise them not to speak to their Therapist, stand back and watch the explosive/implosive results – but I am not by nature cruel –
A very basic problem in the US and European educational systems is that FACTUAL history is not taught. WHY? Well, as the old saying goes, the winners in wars write the history. The truths of the revolution in Russia in 1917, WWI and WWII are ignored. An example is that Red Red Army defeated the Nazis. I loathe Stalin, but that is the truth. Of course, the firebombing of Dresden, or the unnecessary dropping of an atomic bomb on the center of Christianity in Japan are not mentioned. What is the common thread in this? The answer is SATANISTS, who have total control of the US and the EU.
Let’s be honest, decades before the current woke madness, US colleges were roughly equivalent to European high schools.
I remember preparing for my GRE in order to apply to a US “grad school” (Master’s) program. It took me one weekend, whereas local US students typically spent a year or more in Kaplan prep courses. I distinctly recall leafing through the Quant section of the brochure and telling myself, “hmm, back in Eastern Europe we were solving these kinds of problems in seventh grade!”
I have a special interest in “education”, having spent more than 20 years in classrooms in several countries in Southern Africa.These years were divided into two, separated by about 20 years of managing in the international mining industry. These years gave me plenty of time to reflect on “education”. When I returned for my second stint I was immediately struck at the decline in literacy, numeracy and general knowledge. Students needed calculators for the most simple calculations. When I’d do a calculation in my head more quickly than the calculator the students were amazed. Asking any student to point out any well-known geographical feature on a map was a waste of time. When they wrote they made a mistake in virtually every sentence, this after more than 10 years in the system. I concluded that the drop in standards has been deliberate. Also, we should draw a distinction between “education” and “schooling”. Education is an activity that involves the whole person, “educare” (Latin) meaning “to lead out” as in leading towards enlightenment. What we often refer to as education is, in fact, schooling – teaching a set of knowledge and skills, often with a purpose in mind. There are people who try to educate in the proper sense of the word, but most institutions are schools that employ “schoolers” We should not be surprised by the poor outcomes..
@ Ann Blue
I agree.
Young men would benefit from a more grounded and practical education too. If a woman superintends a home, then a man maintains a house. Boys should learn about general home repairs, electrical safety, plumbing, carpentry basics, the correct choice and use of tools for a job, etc. That’s in addition to being drilled in the fundamentals of adulthood; of definitively taking responsibility for your own self and for your own actions, so that you might, one day, develop the wherewithal to be capably responsible to raise a family of your own.
Something that you miss, in your curriculum recommendations, is dance. Both boys and girls should be taught dances. I favour traditional folk dances, such as we enjoyed at primary school to the accompaniment of Mrs. Tetmarsh’s virtuoso piano accordion. Tastes notwithstanding, the point is, that there is a certain type of child – “kinesthetic learners,” so called – for whom breakthroughs in understanding come, when they are engaged in moving rhythmically, which could simply mean while pacing about, like a confounded scholar. Dance facilitates intelligence in some people.
Ladies and gentlemen, grab your partners for the do-si-do.
What a moronic article. Sure, you will find retards and imbeciles in the U.S., as you would anywhere else.
But ask yourself a simple question: how do you build an aircraft carrier that can hold about a 100 fighter jets and 5000 people? Think of the other-wordly engineering involved in that? Now imagine building 10 of those! Imagine the gifted people and insanely top-notch education system needed to create the know-how for such an endeavor.
That’s just **one** minor example of hundreds one can give of American accomplishments. If the average American was really that dumb, how do you explain America? i.e. its amazing cities and infrastructure, technology, the fact that all research and development of sciences occurs in the U.S. … Ooops.
Mention of different outcomes based on race?????
Mention all that ‘innovation’ coming out of China????
Ridiculous crap
American education is a joke. A bad joke. Today people cannot/can’t even use their/there/they’re language coherently, literally ! If they only knew/new how much semantics/word play are being used to control and enslave them. Vocabulary is shrinking by the day and definitions of words are arbitrarily changed for political reasons to keep the public numb and dumb. A vast majority of Americans have become “literal” idiots/dolts and do not see that in the mirror ! I am ashamed for my country. This train wreck of an educational system seems to go on indefinitely with no engineer or conductor held into account for it.
I have to admit that I was also duped by some of the biggest lies and propaganda in human History like the man on the moon, the heliocentric model, and a globe earth. Thank Heavens I started to ask tough questions and seek out the answers. Now I am an island in a flood of lies & deception.
How many of our fellow man are monsters ?
This may surprise you.
MONSTER Definition & Legal Meaning
Definition & Citations:
A prodigious birth; a human birth or offspring not having the shape of mankind, which cannot be heir to any land, albeit it be brought forth in marriage. Bract fol. 5; Co. Litt. 7, 8; 2 Bl. Comm. 246.
https://thelawdictionary.org/monster/
Western education is an euphemism for brainwashing and mind controlling of Goyim youth. The thing is, the people with brains in their heads always avoid the System and its grid as much as they can. Or they just take advantage of it somehow.
Who would wear a mask to protect one from a fictitious virus. Most of the masses!!!! It is world wide, Ignorance and lack of right knowledge.
What is the shape of our world ??? Do not say it. _________________________
Who created the African pyramid in KMT called Aegypt. Africans or someone else. Even with Black images on its wall
Did NASA every go to MARS. I say NO !!!
Is the FEDERAL reserve bank private or owned by the federal gov.,, of U.S.A I say ____
Is the IRS private or own by the federal gov.., I say ____
Mystic and Yogi
@Mike D
You completely missed the point. It’s gone down the toilet. It was great, now it’s s_it.
“Dumb” is an adjective
@Ann Blue: as a mother who homeschooled two children (knowing public achool education was mediocre at best since I was a HS math teacher), I verify what you said. Boys and girls need to learn skills such as plumbing, carpentry, shooting, cooking, sewing, cleaning, first aid, auto repair, and even some sports, music, art, writing, etc. because where this world is heading, these skills will be necessary to survive. Just knowing tech isn’t going to cut it! (and oh yeah, studying the Bible…we Christian home schooled and did Bible lessons as well.)
Romanoff is correct about getting into Harvard. My daughter’s teen-aged friend back in the 2000s-2010s a very high IQ and valedictorian student (at a HS in San Antonio, Texas), with an SAT score of about 750 out of 800, STILL couldn’t get into Harvard! Why? Number one, she’s white. Number two, she’s not legacy. If she was black, she would have gotten admitted easily!
INSANE: Young Americans Don’t Know ANYTHING!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmcubp2szg
Asking College Students Basic Questions (THEY FAILED MISERABLY….)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV0AgB88JE4
How Many Americans Know Where North Korea Is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ugJZhL-cbc
Can You Name a Country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umpalMtQE50
HUMILIATING: Gen-Z Can’t Answer the Most Basic Questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2oMv93EUpY
Americans Know Nothing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H9-W50xaOA
Asking College Students U.S. History Questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIXtyi9WG1o
Okay, so the average American is pretty dumb (and the younger they are, the dumber they are), but at least there’s a substantial number of conspiracy investigators there.
Compare that with the THICKBrits, a people who unquestioningly believe the crudest rubbish pumped out by the mass media. As Coronavirus demonstrated – the most compliant people in the world (the irony – the British like to sneer at Germans as being robot people who obey orders without question).
this is good jewish work of
decomposing + perverting
US education . so faster US
empire will fall to enjoyment
of the world .
BABYLON FALL !
Mike D: Excellent commentary!
Someone else here said that the Red Army won the war in Europe. Actually, they won the war in the east, and the Americans, with help from the British, won it in the west. The same commenter noted that Dresden was firebombed…it and other German cities were by the Americans and the British. I don’t believe that was the right thing to do at all, but, let’s face it, if not for such actions, the Soviets would not have prevailed, not to mention that to the extent they did, they did it largely with weapons and materials delivered to them by the Americans. And, while accomplishing all of this, America fought and defeated the Japanese, i.e., successfully fought a major war against two powerful opponents on two different sides of the globe. The Russians didn’t come into the war in the Pacific until a couple of days prior to the Japanese surrender. It’s become fashionable lately to attribute victory in Europe (and the war in general) to the Soviets, but, like pretty much all fashionable, popular ideas, this is overly simplistic at best and, actually, completely wrong.
This said, there’s no doubt that America is failing and will possibly collapse soon. This failure is due to evil individuals (Satanists) having coopted her systems, including education. It is not an indictment of her people, who rise up each day and go to work and work long hours, trusting, unwisely and naively, in one side of the political spectrum or the other to do the right thing on their behalf. This worked in the past, but it doesn’t now, because of the utter penetration and takeover of the Satanists. The people haven’t figured this out entirely just yet, and perhaps they won’t before it’s too late!
At the end of the day, education is a personal responsibility…and a lifetime one at that. Once your teacher’s job is through, you should be adequately educated to instruct yourself going forward. Don’t give up, my friends!
As a product of the school systems, from primary through university, in the Jewnited States, I don’t understand a bloody thing in this article… lol
I have a few things to comment on about the piece but want to say straight off that Brian USA makes some good points in his comment above; people like to blame a lot of failures on the “schools”, but some of the problem is actually on the students, their dumb-f*ck families, and their dysfunctional cultures. Brian certainly had an excellent point when he stated, “These days, the main problem with school districts in America are the “diversity, equity and inclusion” departments.”
A crippling blow to the educational system in the Jew-S-A was the suicidal insanity of “No Child Left Behind”, shoved in during the treasonous Bush reign of terror. What that meant was public schools had to teach to the level of THE dumbest a**hole in the class, dragging everyone else down into the gutter to that wretched level. That started the race to the bottom, then the indoctrination got real hot and heavy and the race to the bottom dramatically picked up speed with the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” push, meaning not only would queers, niggers, mongrelization, degradation, and degeneracy be shoved down the throats of the impressionable youth, but the students would also have to be saddled with straight-up retards in class for the sake of “inclusion”, thus cementing the lunatic legacy of “No Child Left Behind”.
Then there is the fact that the “teaching” profession seems to be a magnet for deranged libtards and leftists to begin with. Many who get into “teaching” are already a species of do-gooder by nature, then they get more warped as they go along. They tend to buy into bad ideas, “teach” what they are told to “teach”, and to not make waves. Many school “teachers” I know do not seem to have any critical thinking ability themselves, so then they certainly cannot instill into students that which they themselves have no grasp, let alone proficiency.
Part of the master plan of organized Jewry for the degradation and destruction of society has been the infiltration then control of “educational” systems. The relentless machinations of the Jew, with the help of a lot of useful idiots, has driven it off a cliff. Many public schools in the Jewnited States are a joke, at best, and an intellectual abyss. I’m quite thankful my mother worked her ass off to give me the opportunity to go to rigorous private schools.
I did go to a public school one year of high school when I got booted out of a private one for disciplinary lapses…they did not appreciate me breaking into the school and running the black market there, go figure…but back then the public schools were still allowed to segregate the students according to their intellectual abilities, meaning the dumb-f*cks were carved out for their special classes while the rest of us could forge ahead. That certainly is not the case any longer, and has not been the case for at least a couple decades now. So into the gutter it went, to the point at which most people can’t even point to the country on a labeled map.
Oh, we were at a get-together this past 4th of July, where the grandmother of the host family wanted to play a group trivia game. The trivia questions had to do with history, geography, some very basic science, and so on. The group was divided into two teams of about 8 per team. The only people who had any correct answers were those over 40 years of age, as everyone under 40 literally didn’t have a f*cking clue. Scary. Frankly, 90% of the questions were answered either by me or a man deep into in his 50s on the other team whose day job was as an engineer, while the under-40s sat there as slack-jawed imbeciles, several of them college graduates, somehow, for God’s sake.
You are not allowed to have the intelligent in charge, because they are White men and these always gas 600,000,000,000,000,000,000 Jews in the showers; it’s all they can think about all day
There are eight towns called Boston in the world, five of which are in the USA. One would be inclined to put the author of this article into the category of “DUMB” for failing to identify it clearly!