Why American students are getting dumber ...

And increasingly obnoxious. 

It’s not entirely their fault.  It’s part their parents’ fault, too. 

Yet most of the blame falls on our politicians and especially our K-12 public education system that went off the rails starting about 40 years ago and continues to devolve.  Now we’re all suffering from the results and, if left unchecked, we will continue to suffer for years to come.  

The downward slide started with the idea that the most important thing was to make every student feel good about themselves.  It became more about boosting self-esteem than learning.

That’s how we got social promotion in our schools. That’s how we got the dumbing down of the general curricula. That’s how we got rampant grade inflation. 

Students no longer advanced to the next grade solely because of academic performance, but because holding them back would hurt their self-esteem.

For that reason, teachers and school administrators became reluctant to hold failing students back a year, even though repeating a grade was often in the best interest of a failing student. That’s because the next grade up has always built on mastery of content from the previous grade. When that doesn’t happen, students can fall further and further behind and never catch up. 

But something else happened as well.  The role of teachers – or at least how they perceived their relationship with their students – changed dramatically.      

Teachers no longer wanted to be authority figures in the classroom; they wanted to become “friends” with their students.  Pals.  Buddies. Some didn’t want to be Mr., Mrs., or Miss so-and-so; they wanted to be on a first-name basis, especially with students over 16.  At the very least, they wanted students to like them personally, rather than just respect or fear them.

Before you think that never happened, think again. In the late-1960s it had already started.  I remember one young English teacher who showed up in my home room when I was a senior in high school to ask me why I didn’t seem to like her.  I was stunned; I’d never had a teacher do that before. It wasn’t that I was doing poorly in her class or causing trouble – I made straight As in her class – and she was an okay teacher, it was simply she worried I didn’t like her.

From that day forward, I had zero respect for her. 

When teachers prize your friendship and self-esteem, and the happiness of your parents, over your performance in the classroom, that’s corrosive to the process of teaching and objectively measuring what students have learned.  Poor test scores and bad grades hurt your friends’ feelings, and often meant confrontations with angry parents. It was far easier to let kids slide and that’s what a lot of teachers did, with the blessing of administrators.   

This led to a whole generation of students who graduated from high school – if they didn’t drop out first – with a diploma that meant nothing except attendance.  Too many were functionally illiterate: they couldn’t read at their grade level; they couldn’t do basic math. 

Despite this, some of them graduated with “honors.”

But they felt good about themselves. That’s all that mattered.  They were happy.  Their parents were happy. Teachers were happy because they moved students through and out of the system.  Big-city mayors touted their success in improving graduation rates in their schools, which, while still dismal in most cases, were artificially better than before.  Marginally. 

Everybody got a trophy – in this case a diploma.      

No one seemed to care the K-12 public education industry was pushing out too many students ill-equipped to fill out a basic job application.

Making everybody feel good about themselves was what public education was all about anyway, right?  That’s what the teachers’ unions espoused.  That’s also what Education majors in college at that time were being taught.  Students would learn better – and more – if you only used positive reinforcement and compassion in the classroom. It was bad to be judgmental.

You’re probably think that no way did colleges teach future teachers that.  Aren’t teachers the best and brightest among us – otherwise they wouldn’t be teachers, right?

Few will ever admit this – teachers especially – but a lot of Education majors haven’t been that challenged on their way to becoming K-12 teachers. There are exceptions, of course, like those that earned degrees in Math or Science or another subject before they became teachers. But many got more generic Education degrees from probably the easiest programs in their college or university.  I know that was the case when I was in college.  I suspect that never changed. 

In my university, even in the 1970s, it was almost impossible to fail Education courses; about the only way you could fail was not show up to any classes and not take any exams.  If you failed an exam you could take it over and over until you passed.

That happened nowhere else in the university. 

Predictably, then, when my state instituted more rigorous mandatory testing of teachers not all that long ago, an appalling number failed. This wasn’t something new. For four straight years teacher test scores declined.  Some teachers lamented that they had to retake the test as many as six times before they ultimately passed.  Yet instead of trying to bring up their scores by better mastering their subjects, they blamed the test itself as being “too hard” and went to court.

I remind you folks, these are the same people teaching your children and grandchildren. The same ones on whose watch American student test scores continue to fall compared to other nations.  These are the people who will be instructing the next generations, too.  The overall message: if at first you don’t succeed, demand a re-do until you do; if you still fail, sue to lower the standards. 

Remember this the next time you hear that today’s teachers are woefully underpaid and overworked.  If we only spent more on teachers and reduced class sizes we’d get better results. 

Well, we’ve done that and scores continue to decline. 

But there were clear signs this wasn’t working out as planned. Not all students were learning better and more.  In fact, objective standardized test score averages kept declining. And still are.  As early as the 1970s more and more colleges and universities found the need to provide remedial reading and math courses for incoming freshmen. Think about that.

What was the response from politicians and the teachers’ unions? 

Smaller class sizes.  More classroom aides.  Better pay for teachers.  Better training for teachers.  Improved facilities.  More creative teaching techniques. Always the same stuff. 

Nothing about addressing the real reason for declining test scores: teachers weren’t doing their job to actually educate the kids and apply real standards to determine what the kids learned.  Just as important, many parents were opposed to any objective measurement of how well their Sue or Johnny were doing; they either didn’t want to know or were afraid of the results. 

Probably because they suspected what they’d learn. The myth would be destroyed. 

When some states tried to implement standardized testing of all students to decide whether they could move to the next grade or graduate the outrage from a lot of parents was off the charts. There were lawsuits, accusations of racism, and organized protests to halt the testing.          

The entire premise of the American experiment and the rights and freedoms we enjoy is based on an informed and educated electorate.  That’s why K-12 public education here is free.  To everyone.  Regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion or whatever.

But if you can’t objectively measure if our K-12 education system is doing what it’s supposed to, and we continue to lower the bar to make even the most illiterate students feel good about themselves, we can expect our population to get dumber and dumber. 

Worse, they’ll vote.