“…but I was struck speechless by this complimentary thunderbolt! Never have I heard a compliment so well-phrased, or so richly deserved!”
Plus, Russians are white. That’s pretty important, too.
Funny how the Trump voters are able to create an alternative reality in which Putin is happy for his subjects to own firearms. Because, no:
And, six years earlier:
Or, in this case, excretes a gem.
One of the things the Russians use to great advantage in their subversion of our democratic republic is the woeful state of education of our citizens. Few Americans could point to Crimea on a map, let alone explain the structure of Russian “government” – meaning egocentric Americans assume they run things over there the same way we run things over here. It’s a huge mistake on our part.
So true. And what you describe is the state of affairs for the past few decades…before the Trump/DeVos determination to gut public education had its real start.
In spite of all the problems facing public education today, this really isn’t true. Educational attainment in the US has been steadily growing for decades, and services available for people with intellectual disabilities have grown from “sit in the corner and be quiet” to a robust system of intervention, special services, and research into learning disabilities.
It’s not nearly enough and there’s a lot more work to do (especially with regard to disabilities), but the idea that the American public is getting stupider is not supported by evidence.
A quick search of “Americans,” “compared with,” “nations,” and “on a map” produced some hits on the topic:
There’s more, but I want to keep to fair use in quoting this article. And there are plenty more (particularly if you take out the ‘on a map’ search term–it opens the search up to American ignorance on a host of topics.)
I don’t like to link to paywalled-sites, but there appears to be a good article on the subject at the New York Times called “America the Clueless.” Worth a look for those with subscriptions.
It’s certainly a good thing if services for those with disabilities have improved–but that says little about the educational success or failure of the American system for the mass of students.
Did you even look at the graph I linked to? Do you understand that it’s possible for a subset of people to be bad in a subject like geography while still demonstrating vastly increased educational attainment over the past 60 years? Do you think knowing the capitals of the Baltics is, by itself, a meaningful measure of general knowledge, analytical ability, and reasoning?
Because people who do actually know how to measure that stuff are in agreement that they are significantly improved over only a couple generations, and are getting better. Not just here, but all over the world.
But friedo, all your graph measures is how Americans compare in education to each of their own generations. How meaningful is that? How educated are they in relationship to the rest of the world? This matters more, in my opinion.
Moreover, I’m not sure that completing a college education is a good measure of overall general knowledge. I’m continually shocked at the things college educated Americans don’t know.
So many things that used to be taught in schools are no longer taught: Civics and evolution, to name just a couple. People no longer know how to handwrite. Spelling, grammar and understanding of word definition is poor and continues to decline. How do we talk to the rest of the world when we can’t even understand what we’re saying to one another? Hell, we can’t even agree on facts anymore. There are an awful lot of people in this country who don’t know how to identify a fact if it bites them in the ass. They just believe what they want to believe.
I wasn’t trying to start a rabbit-hole conversation in this thread. But I do think it is painfully evident that a depressing number of Americans are poorly educated when compared to populations in other first world countries. Tell me you can’t peg a Canadian on this board even before they spell the word, ‘behavio(u)r.’
It is meaningful if the question we are trying to answer is, “are Americans more or less educated than they were in the past?”
Both of these things are taught in schools.
Do you have any actual evidence of this, or is this your opinion?
No shit. For example, you just made up a bunch of things about education which are not actually facts.
Not the point I was trying to make, if you go back and read my original post on the matter.
Not all schools, and I was shocked to learn it. I originally heard this from a student who is the daughter of friends of mine. I went on to ask a variety of youngsters in school more recently than me and found that the lack of education in the 2 particular subjects I mentioned is common in many places. Sorry I can’t cite you to anything more specific. Do you have a cite that demonstrates otherwise?
Also, do you believe evolution is taught to homeschooled and/or charter school students, both of which avenues of education have become more common in this country?
I made nothing up. You need only look around this message board to see the decline in the things I listed, and it’s far worse on other message boards, other social media sites and in work communications. If you don’t see it, that seems rather willful on your part.
Here are some links, since you are demanding them:
Kids Who Can’t Handwrite (CNN)
America’s Spelling is a National Disaster (Psychology Today)
Vocabulary Results Aren’t Pretty (Huffpost)
Sherrerd also cited you to several articles that demonstrate the sad state of American education in relationship to the rest of the world. Did you read them?
You’ve offered nothing substantive to support your contentions beyond a graph that shows more people have availed themselves of the American education system than in decades past. This says nothing whatever about the quality of such education in relationship to other countries – and that was the point I was making, which you seem to have missed. As a nation, this lack makes us vulnerable to manipulation such as the Russians have visited upon us.
Do you have cites that demonstrate the USA is ahead of other developed nations in the area of education?
It could be innocent, perhaps they played each other in golf and Cohen won a six figure bet because Donald penalized himself for an obscure rule violation.
Every day goes by the smoke gets thicker and dirtier and the probability of there not being a blazing fire gets smaller and smaller. I think before 2020, Cohen is going to taste freedom for the last time in his life. Apparently this entire criminal enterprise has been on the FBI’s warehouse long before any 2016 campaign was considered. Donald was right about one thing- it’s going to be HUGE!
Mueller investigation,* today you are one!* Happy birthday!
Cue balloons, confetti, music (what songs?), ice cream (2 scoops for everyone!), party hats…
We’ve already got the clowns, magicians, and kool-aid. :rolleyes:
Well I know of at least one self proclaimed artist who seems very pro-Trump, but I’m not sure that he’s good. I don’t think he’s very successful since he says he’s starving.
“I prefer artists that aren’t starving.”
I’m going to tell my students that, in my best Donald voice.
Millions of dollars of suspicious transactions have been scrubbed from a federal database that should never have anything removed from it.
I’m skeptical. A whistleblower would alert another government official or agency, or at most release the info to a respected media source. A guy who releases someone’s records to a lawyer for a an opposing plaintiff is not a whistleblower.
Umm. They had better check their backups. They do have backups, right?
Haw haw haw
If a chicken finds a fox raiding the henhouse, does the chicken go running to another fox?