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People keep saying that, but it’s bullshit. In many countries outside the US, people can only do a degree if they’ve proven that they’re intelligent.
But intelligent people can be really stupid too.
(Academic) education is not intelligence, and certainly not wisdom.
The worst part is this education doesn’t protect you from falling for certain loopy ideas. Critical reasoning is a skill and like all skills it needs to be learnt and maintained.
I heard that after the Vietnam war with most the protesters being college students they made an effort to remove lessons that teach critical thinking and problem solving to make people more compliant and less likely to do that again.
So current education is more about regurgitating information unless you go for your doctorate I would think. Dont know in that one, just a guess.
maybe for public k-12 yea,theres definite attack on that. but private instituition have thier own curriculum, and its not the same at each school, some schools have better teachers than others, and better resoruces for experience in stem field. the more elite ones though have a different mentality, it breeds elitist/entitled graduates.
This is conspiracy nutjob thinking.
The federal government does not control university curricula. It doesn’t control what professors teach or how they teach it. Professors often have tenure, and can barely be fired by their own university for being subversive.
I thought education was standardized across all levels, didnt know universities had the leeway to do whatever with that curriculum. Thats interesting.
Certainly not. At least not in the US. Afaik, what is taught in public schools is defined by various levels of government. For example, the federal government sets standards for levels kids should achieve in reading at various ages, and mandates testing for this. The states define what should be taught in history classes in broad strokes (should be taught US history, world history, etc) but typically don’t get into the details (you must teach the battle of Gettysburg). Then school boards, or sometimes the schools themselves, choose textbooks to teach the topics. The textbooks are written by private publishers - information from one book to another will be largely the same, since it is mostly well established facts, but emphasis might change between books as much as the authors want. For classes like English, teachers can typically assign whatever books they want - though for classes with standardized tests (like AP classes), teachers must stick to a (fairly large) list of approved books so that test graders will be familiar with them when evaluating essays.
At the university level, the government typically has even less influence. Really, anyone can claim to be a university - hence Devry and Pheonix. But if you want to be a university anyone gives a shit about, you need to be accredited as a university, and accreditation happens via a non-government organization which exists to maintain the standards of university education. Core classes at the undergraduate level tend to be fairly standardized - not by any central planning, but simply because the knowledge is fairly standardized in any given field and universities often must transfer credits for students from other universities. Professors - especially tenured professors - can teach more or less whatever they want in their classes, but class curricula are typically set by department committies to ensure continuity in students’ education. And professors typically stick to the curriculum that has been set, since (1) it is probably a decent definition of what the students need to learn, (2) they don’t want to catch flack from their collegues next semester when the students dont know something they should, and (3) cranking through the syllabus is faster and easier than being subversive, and they have grants they need to write.
That makes sense. This is a very thorough explanation, thank you very much for taking time to explain that, I appreciate it. Always up to learn something new! :)
Np!
“book smarts” and “street smarts” are two completely different things. My sister is book smart. skipped a couple grades, went to university twice, once for her degree and again for her masters. She’s by all means well educated.
She’s dumb as a bag of rocks. She’s really good at studying. she’s a pro at it. but none of that knowledge is ever retained for extended periods of time. Once its “useful” i.e. for a test/exam/SAT/etc then it’s tossed out of her head. I can’t recall what she earned her masters in but if you challenge her to talk about it today she can’t. that’s the primary reason I can’t remember is because she literally is unable to talk about it.
Her brain is a cassette tape😆
She’s by all means well educated.
but none of that knowledge is ever retained for extended periods of time.
She is clearly not well educated.
She has been educated but of none of it sticks she herself is not educated and certainly not well educated.
what is her profession in?, like her current career?
she’s a teacher…that’s what scares me more. she’s teaching kids. And the even MORE scary thing is she hates kids. she refuses to have her own because, and I quote, she “can’t stand children”. Essentially she’s good at cramming/studying the lesson plans and then info dumping it on the kids. Now trying to get her to actually understand or teach you what’s she’s actually dumped onto the kids well after the fact? good luck. I tried that once. One week she taught the kids some subject on earth science, tectonic plates I believe, I asked her a week later at a family dinner about it because she brought it up. she couldn’t explain it. it was out of her mind already.
Sounds like she’s good at cramming, not studying.
College tutor here. Held a 4.0 GPA and graduated with honors on an academic scholarship. And I am very much the stoooopid type of person. I would be your worst nightmare as a co-worker. Well, maybe not “worst” but definately on the wrong end of that particular bell curve.
Now let’s dive into the question!
There’s a lot of different kinds of stupid. Some stupid people can be taught. Others just don’t get certain concepts but other times, they pick up things very quickly. Some can learn, but if the knowledge sits dormant for too long, it disappears. Some people just don’t care - if something isn’t interesting to them, they don’t pay attention.
I think what we’re seeing is a HUGE rise in ADHD. All of the above can be signs of a hyperactive mind. We know, of course, that screen time - especially doom scrolling - increases ADHD. People who practice meditation and/or exercise and get the fuck off their screens aren’t as susceptible.
I speak as someone who daily watches with horror as my social skills, wits and mental acuity slowly but surely move left on the x-axis of that bell curve we talked about earlier. My attention span wanes with a constant bombardment of information. I ingest a meme, but before it’s thoroughly digested, I’m on to the next. I read a comment and jump to a conclusion, imagining my clever response but fast losing interest and deleting paragraphs of wordsmithy in a single stroke.
WE ARE NOT STUPID! WE ARE ADDICTED! AND IT’S KILLING US!
Also, this is a contagious condition, so get the fuck off Lemmy and hug a tree. Lemmy will still be here when you return. Thank you I love you good night!
slowly but surely move left on the x-axis of that bell curve
well good news, since it is happening to all of us, you may actually keep getting worse, but keep your place on that curve 😆
You major in like 1 specific thing… it doesn’t turn your brain into an Artificial General Intelligence
It’s even worse when you find out they’re not acting.
I had a manager once. Very talented electrical engineer. Completely and totally refused to believe that anything about space, rockets, etc. was real.
wow, im not surprised. i was in a forum where these people had MS/MA degrees in stem. but refuse to follow proper research, and believe in a pseudoscience like chronic lyme(they all convinced they had lyme permanently), most of symptoms sounds like a mental illness, psycosomatic disease. there seems to be a correlation in believing pseudoscience(flat earther, fake diseases) and undiagonised mental illnesses.
I am an expert in my field. Because I devote all my time and brain to being so. I am average to terrible at everything else. So many of us like to think otherwise. I don’t get why. I’m tired at the end of the day and I just wanna be bad at shit lol. Ego?
It absolutely astounds me that all the idiots currently running America went to Ivy League schools and have degrees. I thought for sure they all went to clown college. What exactly to they teach at Harvard and Vasser?
Ivy League schools are just places to make connections with other rich people, so they can land a seven figure job right out of college and think they’ve earned it
they also tend to produce elitist graduates too, some professors from my CC went to one of the ivy league schools and his attitude reflects upriging fromt he schools, pretty arrogant towards the student, and why they are not passing gen chem.
I went to school for business like a dumbass, so I didn’t learn shit about shit. That and genetics made for one dumb bitch.
Yeah some of them are.
Having rich parents makes it pretty easy to get a higher education. And you can pay people to do your homework.
A lot of rich kids cheat. Like. A lot of them.
Masters and PhDs is where it starts to get harder to fake it but occasionally you still get a few that make it through who are nepo babies.
PHD is probably the hardest , MA is probably the easiest one to still fake it, since its not an MS.
Nothing to do with rich people. Good education is free in Germany and people who have a higher education can be just as stupid.
Depends on what you mean by that.
Stupid as in not grasping some concepts quickly?
Education is just a narrow overview of a particular field. Once you’re out the narrow scope of what you’re taught - it’s all about your general knowledge. I know a world-class physicist who does not comprehend basic things about society, economy, relationships etc. And, working in a scientific field, I see plenty of such examples.
Stupid as in unable to aggregate data and synthesize understanding?
The state of modern tech and media more broadly eats heavily into people’s attention span. People have harder time concentrating, and it gets so much worse when they need to aggregate all the sources they have. They just don’t have enough short-term memory to keep it all together.
Stupid as in making weird life decisions?
Everyone’s life experience is drastically different than yours, and, seeing only the surface, people often downplay what others went through and how it shaped their thinking. Sometimes it introduces genuine logical errors into the behavior, and sometimes it just comes from a much different perspective than you can imagine. In their world, the decisions they make makes sense. In your world, you also normally make sense for yourself, even if you’re actually irrational in one thing or another. This does, by the way, include all the typical political rants - high-ranking politicians and their numerous advisors are unlikely to all be stupid. More likely, these people pursue different interests from what you imagine.
Overall, the word “stupid” is heavily overused and applied to a lot of different things. So, it always makes sense to clarify, or else it looks more like a rant rather than a genuine question.
Complaining about people being stupid is as old as the world itself, yet it’s not very productive or done in good faith. Before claiming anyone stupid, try to ask them for their perspective and the way they look at a problem. And if you’re able, unpack what you think is wrong.
Certification is given to anyone with the money for it
There’s no major correlation between IQ and wealth
i’m a mechanical engineer. i know something about electricity and physics. i also have a degree in international trade.
until 2 yrs ago i didn’t know how eggs get fertilized and yesterday my wife had to show me how to remove olive pits while preparing ouur cooking.
by all accounts i’m a dumbass with 2 degrees in specific fields that i don’t encounter in day-to-day life. i have no idea how to survive in this world. i am sure others feel the same.
Marcin Jakubowski talks about this in his TED talk; theoretical physicist realizes he cannot DO anything, becomes farmer, founds open source ecology.
This is the best answer.
Marcin Jakubowski talks about this in his TED talk; theoretical physicist realizes he cannot DO anything, becomes farmer, founds open source ecology.
