How Changes in our Society Caused Dumber Kids

Within the last twenty years kids have become dumber and dumber. I watched the change as it happened. It was fast and disturbing. When I started in elementary school, we were taught the competitive system that had kept America on top of the world since my grandfather was born. Kids were expected to learn every thing that would get them through life. They were to grow up to be multi-skilled and independent and each kid learned the value of competition. There was an idea dreamed up by the cold war era government that if everyone was successful and had a chance at a piece of the American pie then the whole country would do better. Then somethings changed.

Suddenly, no body gave a damn about the success of the many. The government and corporations that had supported the industrialist, capitalist way of life that had us constantly improving and reinventing ourselves to keep us above the rest of the world decided they just wanted there piece and the hell with every one else. Rather than teach kids new technology and basic skills for business, the companies shipped their factories over seas and schools stopped pushing the young to be better. Other problems also led to what I see as the possible decline of American civilization
The idea of “no child left behind”, or as I call it “it’s okay to be stupid”, was invented. Under this new system, a child could pass with straight C’s all the way through high school without getting a single paper right, as long as the showed up every day and handed in some garbage answers on their work. This eventually became so bad that I’ve heard a teacher at many high schools isn’t allowed to give an F to a student writing a paper in internet short hand.

Of course all this coincides with one of the other great ideas of the 90’s; “politically correctness”, or as I call it the “we should always be okay with everything” concept. At school, I suddenly found we were playing musical chairs with extra chairs so that “everyone was a winner.” kid’s shows stopped showing anything that resembled conflict, to protect the sensitive little ninnies being raised in our society from the harsh reality of the world. Before all this, cartoons like G.I.Joe had plots about characters turning traitor to afford chemotherapy for there dying parents. A few years later, TV for the same age group was dumbed down to songs about hugging and how everyone should always get along about everything and in no time kids up to eight were watching shows that tell a kid there a genius if they know what the color orange is. The final straw for TV helping a generation become stupider was when the new fad of cute shows where the characters make baby noises and grunts and roll around like idiots hit the networks. Imagine what it must do to a child when he is left alone in front of Teletubbies and Zoom for six hours a day during their crucial learning years.

This attitude of lets all get along is reflected in school. Besides for classifying the ever changing computer short hand (with it’s smiley faces and abbreviations) as a language, they’ve also included Ebonics (formerly Jive) and Spanglish as scripts to use on any high school paper. “Why?”, you may ask. Because it would be mean to tell them they aren’t using real languages. Similarly, you can’t tell a kid that he’s to small to be a football player. Do to lack of nurturing, (I mean talents not feelings) and the it’s okay if you can’t add fifty two and seven attitude, kids are coming out of high school fully ready to push carts for the next fifty years.

Another nail in the coffin of the communal brain of this country was when pop culture began advocating stupidity to make marketing easier. Those selling whats cool found a beautiful gem in “Gangsta Rap.” suddenly, MTV was pushing the image of an uneducated, rebellious drug dealer shooting people and robbing liquor stores so he could be new clothes and luxury cars. None of the young minds that fell victim to this logic realized that most of them were going to end playing don’t drop the soap in state prison or shot by a fourteen year old while selling him crack, rather than living in mansions and sitting in hot tubs full of champagne. The girls of my generation found their moron inspiration in Hollywood’s equivalents of the bar flies you find at any shady dive in the world. I’m speaking, of course, of the teen idols. Paris Hilton, Christina Agulara, Britney Spears and others proved that no brain was needed to be famous. All they did was lip sync and dress slutty and the whole world was open to them. This isn’t the ideal I would want a future daughter to look up to and I would like to point out to anyone that tries this will end up older, not quiet as pretty (and therefore broke) and with a sexually transmitted virus they caught off the a fore mentioned Gangsta Rapper.

Another major problem with the development of young brains in contemporary America is the concept of sheltering. Sheltering is by definition protecting kids by keeping them ignorant to the darker aspects of the world around them. Kids with heads full of misinformation and gaps in their knowledge of the mechanics of the world can only grow to make bad and uninformed decisions. I’m not looking forward to the day when people that think the world is all kitty cats and puppy dogs run the world. Book burners, censors and religious fanatics bother me as much as the ignorance the promote.

This is all based on my rather bias views of the world but I think my opinions speak for themselves. Turn on the TV and you’ll be bombarded with stupidity and half truths. Watch a movie popular with the youth of America and you’ll be confronted with thin plots and happy go lucky Emo vampires. Go online and you’ll find more misinformation than the useful knowledge it was supposedly designed to house. We’re looking at a sad and confused future. The only good thing about it is that I will seem that much smarter in comparison.