The deliberate dumbing down of America–The past century of reforms
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Have US education reforms over the past century led to the dumbing down of America?
This 12 minute movie will take you on a brief journey through US education policy as seen through the eyes of a mother to a little girl named Maya. In a society where we trust in professionals, it shows how parents, by failing to question school policies, have allowed the educational system to become laboratories of experimentation.
The journey of Maya is sort of a fast forward of several education programs collapsed into the life of one little girl. It begins when she goes to school and her mother notices that the teacher doesn’t correct her spelling. The teacher explains it is a new system of education called “Whole Language” where children use “invented spelling.” Whole language made its way into the school system in the mid-1980s.
Then in the advanced math classes, Maya doesn’t have to learn the right answer to math problems. Under the new advanced method of math taught in the advanced classes, students don’t need to have the right answer. They only need to have an explain why their answer is correct. By the late 1990s, the use of manipulatives had made its way into math education. During those years, it became unpopular to teach children the multiplication tables by memory.
EAG News has the full article
