The Dumbing Down of America

After completing my first semester at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, I went to my mail, opened the envelope containing my transcript, and with chagrin saw that I had received a C in Introductory Sociology.  I had counted on at least a B in that class as I had believed my scores on tests and papers had merited that grade.  As I felt quite strongly and believed I had a good case, I made an appointment with the instructor to review the grade he had given to me.  In preparation for our meeting, he had his book of grades in front of him and went over all my marks in relation to my classmates.  Although most of my grades had been B’s, they were not any higher than many of my classmates so, in effect, he had marked down my final grade, as he had done to other students, for the semester to a C.   When I complained that this way of grading was misleading, he responded that he needed to grade in this manner or otherwise the dean would have him over the carpet (indeed, not a red carpet).  Feeling cheated with little more I could say, I angrily departed from my instructor’s office.

We all know the system of grading I was exposed to as an undergraduate no longer exists.  The average grade point average (G.P.A.) at Yale recently was 3.8, that of Harvard, 3.6 where a 4.0 is an A or the best possible G.P.A.  one can have.  Moreover, because it is that much easier to receive an A, data reveals the amount of studying college students do each week has decreased from twenty-four hours a week in the ‘60’s, to about fifteen hours per week today.  If students know beforehand they will receive an A, there is little incentive for them to diligently carry out their assignments.  On the contrary to my instructor who downgraded my B’s to a final C, today’s college educators appear pressured to give students better grades following the trend set where they teach.

But grade inflation is only part of a much wider more pervasive problem in how we educate today’s youth.  To my surprise, I have read that junior high and high schools are no longer assigning pupils entire books to read but rather excerpts of those books.  Books I had to read in high school such as Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native or A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, I cannot imagine would have equaled the experience I had if I only had to read selected excerpts from them.  How one reads selected passages of a play by Shakespeare rather than the entire play, and gain the same amount of satisfaction from that cursory reading makes little sense.  Of course, it takes a certain amount of discipline and prolonged effort to get through difficult literary masterpieces. 

Unfortunately, schools currently prioritize short passages to prepare their students to take standardized tests.  The incentive for teachers is that their students obtain high test scores indicating they have progressed well.  The focus is on outcomes or the skills necessary to receive high test scores rather than allowing students to enhance their intellectual growth developed by reading a full-length novel.  Social media has reinforced this cheapening of education where young people read pieces or bites of information that agree with what they already may believe.  The jury is still out on how social media may be rewiring our brains but, without a doubt, the reading habits of our youth have been altered. 

Jonathan Haidt, a prominent social psychologist, pointed out in his well-researched book:  The Anxious Generation, social media reached prominence in 2010 when Instagram was launched.  According to Haidt, adolescents and younger children that had full access to social media in 2010 and afterwards suffered the most.  The lucky ones that were born much earlier did not bear these ill effects.  The limited attention span that our youth experience in reacting to the stimuli presented by social media in conjunction with their being asked to read passages rather than entire books cater to what I would call: the shallowing of their minds.  Short-cuts in the learning process have begun to replace deliberative thinking so essential to the development of the minds of our youth. 

Perhaps it is no coincidence that 2010 also marked the year that cursive writing was no longer regularly taught in elementary school.  It was removed not because it lacked value but rather because schools prioritized digital readiness.  Studies have shown that students that take notes by hand have better access to what they learn than those that type their notes.  From my own experience, I know that when I have written notes during a lecture, I feel that much closer to the material than if I type it.

When we add Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to the mix above, the problems illustrated in the above become even more intense.  Full disclosure on that:  I did use A.I. to frame some of my ideas in this essay, but I have rarely used A.I. in previous blogs.  I mention this because the easy access to AI will make it most difficult for all of us to avoid.  Recently, I read an article in the New Yorker by Hua Hsu, a professor at Bard College, titled:  The End of the Essay.  After interviewing several students, it was clear that the temptation to allow AI to do the creative thinking in writing compositions was too great to avoid. 

In some ways the problem A.I. causes in higher education reminds one of way cheating is unfair as it gives unfair grade recognition to an undeserved student.  A student toiling for several hours on an essay who receives the same or lower grade than a student who utilized A.I. to create his essay cannot help but feel cheated.  Are we far off from the time students need write an essay about a particular subject and upon turning their papers in, the instructor discovers they are all very much alike?   Hua Hsu pointed out that college instructors and professors have circumvented some of the negative impact from A.I. by employing in class blue book exams, a throwback to past grading procedures.  One professor cited in the same article stopped using take home exams and rather went back to administering in-class exams, an assessment method he had not used for years. 

The improvement for most of the 20^th century in IQ scores in America and many other countries is called the Flynn Effect, named after James R. Flynn, who documented this phenomenon.  The increase in IQ scores was attributed to better education, nutrition, and public health.  Unfortunately, the past two decades has seen a reversal of the Flynn Effect where IQ’s and academic scores have gone down.  It is well documented that American youth are consistently performing below grade level in their reading and math scores along with lower IQ scores as compared to previous generations.

A number of factors have come together to produce both a less educated and a less intelligent trend in our young people.  This problem is not only evident in America but as a free society, it is perhaps more evident and more difficult to confront than in less permissive countries.  Jonathan Haidt has suggested that schools ban the use of smart phones during class time.  He also has recommended children do not have access to smart phones and social media until they reach a certain age.  Here parents will need to enforce certain limits on their children, and in so doing, will need to be more present than ever in the lives of their children.

On the other hand, the availability of A.I. is so new that no one knows how this tool can best be beneficial without impeding the critical thinking skills so necessary in the development of the minds of our young people.  The founders of A.I. have gained much wealth in a short amount of time.  Let us hope that these same people, our leaders in the future, will explore intensively the ways to manage the potential negative repercussions of their discoveries.  Finally, although I employed A.I. as an aid to this blog, nevertheless, I spent several hours in the writing and editing of it.