Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We are definitely seeing the beginning of a dumbed down, computer reliant, TV generation. You see it all the time.. One guy I have worked with could quote any line from South Park, Family Guy or Simpsons. But when it came time to add two numbers together or calculate change from a fifty, he couldn't do it. Even some of the students at work act and talk like south park. Less and less students are doing TEE, of those more and more are failing. There is definitely a trend emerging.

TimC I've been ranting for many years about what I percieve to be the dumbing down of our society and particularly the effect of TV and the media in general on our children... the insidiousness of the adoption of all the worst parts of American culture... black gangster rap, bling, the drug culture, the cult of the celebrity etc....

Sometimes I've thought that I'm a voice in the wilderness so I'm glad to hear that others, particularly those like yourself who deal with students daily, have arrived at the same conclusions

Any self congratulary gladness is quickly replaced with an almost overwhealming sadness and rising anger as to how and why we as a society have allowed this situation to have prevail.

Why have we allowed both our education system and our general cultural phsyce to degenerate to a level of the lowest common denominator??

I know that you would encounter both great resistance and perhaps even degrees of threat and resentment from within the education hierachy and certainly from within the halls of political power and other vested interests....

But why as those who are directly resposible for our childrens education and in some ways are gaurdians of our general social norms/standards and base level of this nations intellectualism i.e. teachers... not raising merry bloody hell about what they see demonstrated everyday in the classroom??

I'm definitely not criticising teachers as such.... I believe teachers to be the most undervalued members of our society.... but it is because of the importance of the teachers role in society that I'm so gravely concerned when it appears that standards and the culturalism of the education system becomes cannabalised of worth and merit and designed to the lowest possible standard.

Whilst I'm aware that the current political climate imposes a suffocating blanket of dissaproval for any who may which to speak out regarding this matter... I believe as teachers it is both your duty and part of your job description to do so....

There are people like myself and other parents that will support you... maybe not enough at the moment, but please IT MUST BE DONE

Somebody should run for office and make changes!

Regarding the dumb people breeding thing...

It's true that the genetic component of intelligence remains for the most part unchanged over time. What DOES change is the conditioning to use reasoning.

Early Medieval European humans were pretty much the same as those in the modern West in terms of native capacity, but the cultural structure lent itself to reasoning by analogy rather than logic, and a much harder reliance on past knowledge not independantly confirmed.

This doesn't make their IQ lower, but it does make their effective useful intelligence lower than ours.

With that said, of course there were those individuals who broke the mold and strove to discover things. Chaucer, Omar Khayam, and others were lights in the darkness. One of the great redeeming aspects of humanity is that in every age there seem to be those who will march our species forward even though every obstacle is set in front of them.

tamo42
I Like what your saying.
The other direction doesn't bear thinking about.

I forgot to add that there are a host of modern studies that bear out thinking as a learned skill.

A couple come to mind though I cannot cite the authors of the studies.

In one, as a refutation of arguments made in The Bell Curve points to American black children raised among low income blacks and raised among middle income whites. Although the children came from the same gene pools, those in the middle income households scored 15-20 points higher on standardized IQ tests.

In another, "dumb" (avg IQ around 85) eastern European Jewish children and "smart" (avg IQ around 105) western European Jewish children all moved in together in Kibbutzes in Israel. After a year or so of socialization the two groups showed no significant difference (p<0.05) in IQ, and scored around 115.

tamo42: right. So the fear of survival of the dumbest does not appear likely, which is encouraging. There are of course fairly straightforward (though politically currently unacceptable) methods to prevent this.

Why are so many early 20th century mathematicians Hungarian?

Obstacles like TVs, games consoles, computers, mobile phones and alcohol. They are being spoon fed, but only 'eat' what they feel like and spit everything back in your face.

Those kids that spend 5 or more hours a day on that world of warcraft. A game which has no real defined objective. Wasting 100's of hours playing a pointless game, with no reward.

Kids of all demographics smoking and drinking at 16 years old or less. Drinking only to get drunk. Apparently it is cool to snip off the filters of cigaretes in particular groups. Why is it cool to get so drunk you discrace yourself infront of all your so-called friends. I know someone who was hit by a car after leaving a party. She was 15 and her BA was 0.3

I always see aboriginal kids of no older than 12 walking around, smoking cigaretes and cannabis. Swearing profanity that hits you in the face. I watch them at work, across the road riding a pushbike that appeared out of nowhere or running up to cars at a stop sign and opening the doors. These sorts of kids are never going to succeed, but whose fault is it? Who is going to solve the problem? I am not racist but the stereotypes are real, you just need to look around.

Schools are getting so laid back too. I probably was the last of the pull your socks up, tuck in youir shirt or straigten your tie era. Where I work has very few uniform policies and it is private school. I remeber having to stand up when a teacher entered the room. It is basic disipline. I can count on one hand the number of students who say please or thank you when I change their password.


RANT OVER.......

TimC, A strange and sad realization of Martin Luther King's Dream that people be measured by the content of their character.

In any event, it's my personaly opinion that the teeming masses will remain so. I can't think of a historical example of a culture that produced a majority of independant thinkers and achievers.

Here at BYAP we have a self-selected biased sample of people who actively seek knowledge outside the norm for both personal and global benefit

I bet everyone thinks that.

as one whos' children have all but finished school...
I am worried about their futures, these are kids from a rural setting,
but still they don't grasp the basics-- the city ones are mostly lost causes watching people doing horrendous things on a daily basis and don't give a flick...
Materialistic to the core but once obtained could not care less as there is no ownership attached.
Monkey see monkey do!
That is why it is so important that we lead by example...

Tim, Try coming to Kalgoorlie on pension day, The sml coke bottles full of petrol for sniffing is the thing here.(such a waste @ $1.32L)
But seriously, it is not much fun walking to work anymore when you have to run the gauntlet of "you got a smoke you white *potty mouth* "or "you got $2".
My GF and I don't go out at night unless we are in a group or using taxi's.
This is not to say that I'm a racist person, it's just the facts.
I'm sure there are plenty of us white folk who are just as bad (we just hide it better).
IMHO it all comes down to respect and responsibility, this goes for race,schooling and just about anything else in life.
People may ask who is going to solve the problem, that is easy, the answer is all of us, It may be a hard road but we have to start somewhere?

and those who discovered things in mold (penicillin)

Of all the problems that are apparent in aboriginal communities and outback locations.... petrol sniffing is by far the easiest to overcome...

(1) Make sure that "unsniffable" petrol is that only petrol available

(2) Shoot the scum sucking lowlife profiteers that supply it... guess we probably can't do that... so at least as it's a form of abuse, manslaughter at best, or premeditated murder (IMHO) at worst... we should at least jail the bastards for 10-20 years....

It really is no different than supplying "ice" or "heroin" and should be punished accordingly

By sheer ass!

seriously though i'll take a bit from both schools of thought there are those (who are well recorded in history) that possibly broke the mold just by sheer good fortune. Who knows what little thought at what age tuggesd at their inquisitive section of their brain, once unleased created genius.

But there is also the majority of people who might not happlessly stumble onto that inquisitive trigger. And our society does not help these ones.

Rupe, no doubt this will open a can of worms, so i'll prefix it heavily with IMHO removing supply or making stuff unsniffable aint gonna solve anything. Too may times has this been proven................people hell bent on destruction WILL destroy themselves.

MY opinion on the root cause or atleast a heavily contributing factor to the persistance of the causes is the "blame everyone except yourself mentality"

Humanity as a whole needs to shrug off this mindset