Several recent incidents in the news concern me. On two separate occasions, very young police officers in their twenties accosted Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond and asked them for I.D. None of those officers had a clue who those men were. Surely the cops' parents or grandparents would have been aware of the two folksingers. Or perhaps the cops had been home-schooled by fundamentalist parents. Not very likely in Brooklyn or on the Jersey Shore. Those cops were intelligent enough to pass police exams, and they are probably well-versed in the local street-smarts and quirks of the areas where they patrol. But I'll bet they're ignorant about lots of general American culture, common-sense information that gets shoved aside by a media focus on mass entertainment and celebrities. This pervades our society and increases the dumbing-down process that is harming our people.
We all know that our public schools are in crisis: too many kids dropping out and semi-literate people graduating who can't write a decent sentence, let alone handle their finances. The base of common-sense information--life skills neceessary for people to function in our society has eroded sharply over the years. Schools were also under attack fifty years ago for academic deficiencies that left their graduates unprepared for the academic rigors of college. Blame was placed on "progressive education" philosophies and methods, which shifted the focus from academics to the student as a psychological and a social being. That's when the "dumbing down" of our schools began. Over the years, it has continued. Now that academic content has mostly flown out the window, life skills information is also vanishing. Even in our current recession, there are jobs that can't be filled, with employers seeking applicants from outside our country because not enough of our own graduates are qualified. Where is this all going to end?
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