I’m back from the laundry, I’ve sent out my Newswithviews column… and throughout the Western world, we are told, IQ levels are falling. I do not mean to imply a correlation. It’s not my fault, honest.
A study by Norwegian scientists reports that IQ levels have been falling consistently since 1975 (http://www.theweek.co.uk/94224/why-iq-levels-are-falling). Uh-oh. But it’s not just Norway. In the UK, remarks one scientist, “What 25% [of science and math students] could do in 1994, now only 5% can do.”
Is it okay for us to say “We told you so”?
They don’t know why people are getting dumber, maybe the tests are at fault, they hope, or maybe it’s smart phones and video games and other high-tech gizmos “hindering the development of young people.”
Have any of these folks had a look at our schools and colleges, our movies and TV, lately? Consume enough “education” and “entertainment,” and you’re probably lucky if you have any IQ at all. How smart are you going to get, wallowing in Gender Studies? Watching movies based on freakin’ comic books? Reading (if that’s the word for it) “graphic novels” instead of real books? That is, if you’re reading anything at all.
Welcome to Stupidworld.
Of course the article anded by saying this is nothing to be concerned about. Sheesh! What a thing!
I have heard that many businesses now write training materials down to the 3rd grade level. I don’t doubt it.
My cousin, who preferred not to go to college, became a supervising engineer for a company that build railroad turntables and bridges. He was appalled–this was years ago–by his newly-out-of-school subordinates who produced unworkable, unsafe plans and inevitably told him, “The computer says it’ll work!”
I know.
I once had an employee with a fresh degree. He was afraid that a hacker would knock us offline in a denial of service attack, so he took us offline. In other words, his solution placed us in the same place we would have been had there been a successful attack. College education sure isn’t what it used to be.
Why did the Gender Studies major throw his clock out the window?
He wanted to see time fly.
Man what our contemporary society is doing is a problem!
A comedian recently on the Huckabee Show was telling how he went to his high school reunion and his math teacher was there. So he went up to the math teacher and told him when you multiply numbers to the higher powers you add the higher powers rather than multiply them. Then he told his former teacher, “I haven’t been able to use that information for the last 25 years.”
So far in my life, I have yet to find any occasion to use a quadratic equation. A good thing, too–’cause I never did understand that.