Are Our Schools Harder Or Easier Than They Used To Be? We Know They Are Lots Easier!

By: David Malone.--Author of "The World's Most Politically Incorrect Blog In The World"

 Is Social Media Dumbing Us Down?

Have you ever read some of the letters written to wives and sweethearts from rank and file soldiers during the Civil War? A lot of them read like poetry and today would be worthy of consideration for the T.S. Eliot Prize or maybe even a Pulitzer. Most of the authors of these beautiful and verbose letters were written by men with very little formal schooling beyond the rudiments. Of course they had much more practice as that was their only method of correspondence. Cell phones and emails were still about 125 years into the future.

You might ask yourself, “what if they had had smart phones with internet access and an easily accessible online thesaurus? Surely their writing would have been even better. Wouldn’t it?” My contention is no, it would not have been better. In fact, I don’t believe it would have conveyed the truly, heart-felt sentiments these men had. They were writing from the soul, using words that I’m sure weren’t used in their daily intercourse with fellow soldiers in such a harsh environment, where the uncertainty of their very existence was on their minds every minute. The words they used had to be quickly found in the cluttered closets of their minds, as I’m sure they weren’t at leisure to spend hours penning these florid masterpieces.

Let’s take another example. The following is an excerpt from a high school entrance exam in Salina, Kansas in 1895. These questions are from the arithmetic section. Now I understand some of the questions are a bit outdated. But that aside, I wonder how many of today’s 8thgraders could even be admitted into high school, much less college?

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft deep, 10 feet long and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per meter?
8 Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

Now, I consider myself to be at least as smart as the average bear, but if I suddenly went through some kind of time warp and found myself in Salina, Kansas, somewhere around fourteen years old in 1895, I might have had to repeat 8th grade.

When Alexis de Tocqueville came to this country from France in 1831, he was mesmerized by how much the common person knew. Anyone who had finished two years of schooling could read and comprehend what they read. Even a mountain man, in the most remote frontier, could read a newspaper and tell him, at least in rudimentary terms, how our government worked. Especially when it was going too far and was doing something they felt was infringing on their freedoms. One of the reasons he decided to visit was because he, or no one else in Europe, could believe that a country that had been around less than fifty years was already equal, if not superior to, the European countries that had been established for centuries. When he saw the passion the citizens had to stay educated and informed, he knew right away that was one of the primary reasons they were able to advance as quickly as they had.

The point I’m trying to make is this. There were nowhere close to as many distractions in the historical periods of the examples I’ve given. People were a lot more self sufficient as a matter of necessity. In other words, “if you were gonna be dumb, you’d better be tough.” Now days it seems ignorance is celebrated in some circles. Incentives to learn have been diminished as a new entitlement mentality is pervading the country. I could cite story after story of articles I’ve read and interviews I’ve seen where grown men and women couldn’t even tell the interviewer who the vice-president of the United States was, or what political party the current president belongs to. These people are raising children and are relying on our public school systems to not only educate them, but to provide nourishment two and sometimes three times a day, in a lot of cases. They also depend on schools to instill in them certain things that are much better learned at home, such as basic morals and proper conduct.

And besides the fact that I believe our sagacity is demonstrably suffering, there is another question we must ask ourselves. With everyone walking around constantly staring at their phones, noticing very little of their surroundings, and text messaging replacing verbal correspondence, are we going to lose our social skills? Will we regress to the point that we communicate using the primordial grunts of the Neanderthals?

With easy access to the internet, and all the knowledge one can imagine only a few mouse clicks away, you’d think we would be a nation of geniuses. But easier is not always better. In a lot of cases, I believe easier diminishes our ability to reason and deduce effectively. I don’t want to be misunderstood and have everyone think I am an opponent of technology, including social media. On the contrary, I am a strong advocate of all the wonderful things the internet and social media have done in making all manner of information ubiquitous. We just have to remember that we can’t rely solely on one source of data and that our brains need to be exercised daily in more conventional ways.

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