At age 60, I estimate that I personally have taught, advised, and
mentored more than 2,500 college undergraduates over a period of 37
years. From 2007-2009, I also served as Interim Director of KU's
Undergraduate Biology Program, the single largest undergraduate teaching
unit at the University of Kansas, with 22 staff members who serve more
than 1,400 undergraduate majors at any one time. I thus have had a
large student population from which to form my perceptions of their
capabilities and academic performance.
Rather than being "stupid" in the literal sense, I believe that Alyson
actually intended to suggest that our children are increasingly less
well educated, in the sense that they acquire an ever-declining
knowledge of the fundamentals (this has sometimes been referred to as
one component of the "dumbing down" of America). To me, this decline
has been quite evident and quite pronounced. This trend also has in my
opinion led to progressive pressure upon educators by students to reduce
the rigor of their lectures and exams, and also has led to more frequent
battles with students (and their parents) who think that they "deserve"
a certain grade.
While I believe that each new Freshman class in America always contains
some of the very best and very brightest students whom one would ever
wish to teach and mentor, I would argue that the frequency distribution
of these incoming students /with regards to their overall performance/
is continually shifting to the left. During a recent business trip, my
seatmate on the plane was a young (ca. 35 year-old) teaching
professional who was just moving out of the university environment and
into the private sector, and she expressed to me an identical
perception, based upon her own personal teaching experiences in a
Southeastern university. Even our Graduate Teaching Assistants in the
biological sciences at KU are beginning to remark that _/*on average*/_
the freshmen with whom they interact each year are coming in
progressively less well-prepared, especially in the areas of
communication and math. Are they on average less intelligent? I doubt
it. Are they on average less well prepared for the college curriculum?
Absolutely. On average, do they have progressively poorer study and
exam-taking skills? You bet! I have lost track of the number of young
people who complained to me that they had a 4.0 GPA in High School, and
yet are struggling to get B's and C's at KU.
The availability of online and other preparatory resources has probably
assisted young people in continuing to scoring well on standardized
tests such as the SAT. However, my experiences during the education of
my three daughters (ages 36, 24, and 18) have allowed me to view
firsthand the perceptible decline that has in my opinion occurred in the
quality of their average peers' preparation and attitude towards
learning. I lay much of this decline at the feet of their parents, who
seem to care progressively less and less about knowledge. I recall a
particularly notable incident from over a decade ago, when my youngest
daughter's grade school Principal retired. The new Principal
unilaterally decided that Science Fair projects for grades 2-6 should
become completely voluntary, rather than remaining as a formal
requirement that had long been embedded in this school's outstanding
science preparation curriculum. On the day of the science project
evaluations, I expressed dismay about this undesirable change to another
parent, who at that time was almost 20 years my junior. Her response
was to shout across the room to her husband, "John (not his real name),
this guy thinks everybody should have to do a science fair project, and
/that this is all about learning science/!" and she then turned to me to
say, "If everyone has to do a project, that lowers the chance that our
child will win the Best Science Project award. That's unfair
competition." And she walked away.
Sincerely,
Val Smith
Val H. Smith
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045
On 1/17/2010 12:03 PM, Jane Shevtsov wrote:
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Alyson Mack<alym...@gmail.com> wrote:
the sad truth is, our children ARE becoming more stupid every year. The fact
Do you have any evidence for this claim? IQ scores have been rising
pretty steadily for a century. (Look up the Flynn effect
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>.) SAT scores are the
highest they've been since the 1960s, although a somewhat larger
percentage of high school students are taking the test. There are
always fluctuations, but are there any measures of intelligence that
have been showing a consistent decline?
On a different note, who here has read _The Demon-Haunted World_ or
_Why People Believe Weird Things_? They're both relevant to the larger
discussion of critical thinking.
Jane
On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 5:11 PM, malcolm McCallum<
malcolm.mccal...@herpconbio.org> wrote:
At what point does the scientific community realize that the current
surge in patent medicines and nonsense medical devices are seriously
eroding the nation's confidence in science?
This is not directly related to ecology, but ecology is science and if
people misuse science to sell products that are medically irrelevant
it certainly must affect all science.
For example, if the average person sees a supposed physician on TV
parading products that "absorb fat out of your body" or send "magnetic
impulses into your joints" or provide the "healing effects of light",
he/she does not necessarily recognize the difference between
commercial claims and scientific ones. Further, if that person is
suckered in to buy this sucker bait, he/she is certain to find, once
any placebo affect passes, that it is shear snake oil. Consequently,
these folks see these advertisements with supposed nutritionists,
phds, MDs, etc. and learn not to believe what they say. Along comes a
scientist claiming extraordinary changes such as climate change, ozone
layer issues, problems with pollution, and endangered species...on TV,
even in commercials. Why should they believe them? It looks and
smells just like that snake oil aunt Martha bought off TV that did
nothing but moisten her skin.
Does anyone else see that a deeper problem exists here? These
products are much more harmful that simply misleading people, they are
more than simply false advertising, they really should not be allowed
to make the extraordinary claims that they do. Some of the products
are harmless, some are dangerous simply in the fact that folks choose
to depend on these prior to seeking real medical advice, but all have
a serious potential to erode the general public's view of the
scientific community.
--
Malcolm L. McCallum
Associate Professor of Biology
Managing Editor,
Herpetological Conservation and Biology
Texas A&M University-Texarkana
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