Raising the Dumbest Generation in US History

[mojo84]

My brother in law was a member of Mensa. Only about five people knew. It wasn't something he bragged about or shared openly.

[WildBill]

I have never taken an IQ test but it's obvious in am not worthy to be associating with you brilliant and humble folks.

I haven't either, not a legitimate one anyway, and I don't think it's a particularly good idea to do so. Whether the results are low or high I don't see the psychological effects as likely to be constructive.

Also, while I won't say they have no value, and while am skeptical of how accurately they measure innate intelligence, they do measure something potentially useful.

IQ, SAT scores and GPA are just numbers. How the numbers are used is more relevant.

[sugar land dave]

IQ, SAT scores and GPA are just numbers. How the numbers are used is more relevant.

I agree. Without insight, creativity, and desire to acomplish, those numbers lose relevance and become measures of wasted opportunities to better the lives of mankind.

[VMI77]

I have never taken an IQ test but it's obvious in am not worthy to be associating with you brilliant and humble folks.

I haven't either, not a legitimate one anyway, and I don't think it's a particularly good idea to do so. Whether the results are low or high I don't see the psychological effects as likely to be constructive.

Also, while I won't say they have no value, and while am skeptical of how accurately they measure innate intelligence, they do measure something potentially useful.

IQ, SAT scores and GPA are just numbers. How the numbers are used is more relevant.

Yes, for instance, IQ and SAT scores are highly correlated, and either is a good predictor of the likelihood of successfully completing college --assuming the requisite effort is made.

GPA, not so much. In my opinion GPA is more a measure of relative effort --some combination of effort and intellect where effort is the larger factor. For instance, being more intelligent may allow you to obtain a given GPA with less effort than those of less intelligence. Conversely, greater effort may enable a person to obtain a higher GPA than someone of greater intelligence. In both cases this assumes the GPA is determined within the same curriculum or major at the same institution, and even then such comparisons have their flaws.

There was a guy in my engineering class who had nearly a 4.0 GPA without breaking a sweat. When everyone else was studying he was goofing around watching TV or reading novels. He graduated #1 in the class. We had guys that spent every minute of their free time studying and barely managed to break a 2.0, and many combinations in between.

[The Annoyed Man]

Leftist professors are Saul Alinsky acolytes...making certain students remain unschooled in American history and hateful toward Capitalism and the Constitution.

A four year degree from almost any university is laughable.

Those who earn degrees in science aren't exposed as much, but sadly, they're still exposed to some of this poison.

A bigger culprit than Alinsky is a "historian" by the name of Howard Zinn, who wrote "A People's History Of The United States". That book has been accepted as THE standard for teaching American History to college students, and it was written by a man who completely, down to his bones, hated the United States of America.

Ah, Zinn. Even the flaming red socialists at Harvard and Stanford agree that his book is revisionist claptrap. It's not a textbook, it's a trade book. At best it's been used by half a dozen universities as survey material, not as a textbook. Not a single state in the Union lists it as an approved textbook for secondary education.
Yes, I know that Sen. Santorum made some political hay with his remarks at the NRA national meetings last year. They were, regrettably, not strictly accurate.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... -history-/

I don't know about Santorum, and was not quoting anything he said. What I was quoting was what I was told by my liberal professors of humanities parents. I don't know Santorum from Adam, but I know my parents quite well, and I'm fairly certain that they would not have lied to me about the importance of this book in modern academia, in as much as they held Zinn in high esteem.

Also, regarding high school, I would not have even thought of that application. But your response prompted me to look at the listing for it on Amazon.com, just because I wanted to verify the copyright date, and lo and behold, here is the first review on the list of reviews:

1,146 of 1,269 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsA teacher of American History's POV
By Amazon Customer on February 1, 2000
Format: Hardcover
For several years of the last decade, I taught Advanced Placement U.S. History at a high school in northern Virginia. When I began the course, Zinn had already been assigned by my predecessor, and I needed a counterpoint to the main text (Bailey and Kennedy's bombastic, traditionalist, and short-on-social history "Pageant of the American Nation"). Zinn's deftly written book provided a fortunate antithesis to the "march of presidents and industrial titans" approach to American history. I found many chapters of this book to be such excellent stimulants to class discussions that I extended their use into my non-AP U.S. history classes, where students, many of whom could not otherwise have cared less about history, found themselves reading an interesting and provocative historian for the first time in their lives. Many of the best discussions I ever had with my classes (both AP and "regular") began with assigned chapters from Zinn. From there, it was an easy step to move on to the idea of historiography (the history of how history has been interpreted) and to decoupling my students from thinking of the textbook as revealed wisdom.

It may not be listed as an approved book by any single state in the union for secondary education, but it is being used none the less for that purpose.

[sawdust]

........From the same wiki link on IQ above....someone can be pretty far down the scale and still be functional.

Type of work that can be accomplished:

Adults can harvest vegetables, repair furniture IQ 60
Adults can do domestic work IQ 50

Well... I repair and refinish furniture, so I my IQ must be between 59.51 and 60.5. My checkbook seems to confirm this.
Well... Since the finish has to be removed, does that make me a male stripper?

[Oldgringo]

I have never taken an IQ test but it's obvious in am not worthy to be associating with you brilliant and humble folks.

Be not dismayed, I did take an IQ test or two somewhere along the line, I'm not worthy either.

[chandler583]

I completed my core curriculum at Blinn College in Brenham, it's a small town with a nice campus and a small student body. The government, economics, and history professors really did enjoy what they are doing and genuinely care about their students learning, sadly a majority of the students feel the professor is just being hard on them for no reason. My Federal and State government (2 different courses) professor really taught me quite a bit about how the government works. My experiences differ than many most likely as I was reading TIME magazine and listening to Rush Limbaugh in high school.