The Science of Conspiracy Theories

Dumbing of Education conspiracy

Dumbing of Education conspiracy

This conspiracy has been proposed because of the idea that governments want their citizens to be smart enough to be economic slaves but not smart enough to free themselves from this type of bondage, and the way that they're doing this is by degrading the school systems by emphasizing memorization and not creativity. They call this idea 'Dumbing Down', and you see it in the way that the media oversimplifies intellectual content. This 'dumbing' effect has permeated our education systems.

This is one that I could easily understand. As far as I am concerned the schools have become factories for destroying individualization and turning out a bunch of robots. Not all school systems are doing this, but teachers that are bucking this insidious trend are being punished. What is seen now is an anti-intellectual bias in both the schools and in the students that attend them. This trend has been going on for quite some time. The attitude among many students is that it's not cool to be smart. This leads to the practice of not reading. The statistics on this are appalling. More than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book during a one-year period.

What is disturbing to me is that there is an anti-science bias among young people. If this continues the U.S. will slip as the most technological country in the world, unless it employs more foreigners. Part of this appalling trend is the result of 13% of high school teachers advocating creationism (the Earth is less than 10,000 years old). Even more amazing is that 18% of Americans still believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Our educational system is creating a world of dummies.

What has happened to our education system? It wasn't that way sixty years ago; although signs of it were appearing even then. What's really surprising about this is the fact that the U.S. spends more money per student than any other country. It's around $11,800 compared to 4 to $5,000 anywhere else. Despite this the U.S. ranked 27th in school education achievement (as of 2012). This is worse than Cuba. What's even crazier about this is that U.S. universities rank high in the world. However, 25-34 year olds with university degrees rank 12th. Nearly 50% of graduate students are foreigners. What's going on here?

One suggestion is that it's the fault of teacher unionization. Unionization leads to lazy teachers that are protected by corrupt unions. My trouble with unions is that they protect slackers and the lazy. However, it is true that teachers unions have been at the forefront of educational reform, like rejecting the standardized tests that force teachers to commit students to rote memory instead of promoting creativity.

The other problem is that pursuit of higher education results in unbearable debt. The student debt in the U.S. is at an all time of high of 1.3 trillion dollars and climbing. This is because of government-backed loans. Anything the government gets involved in usually ends in disaster.

The main theory is that this dumbing down is deliberate and that they're using a hidden compulsory curriculum. Several books have been written on this very subject. I think that it would be difficult to untangle this theory, but one thing is for sure, education is not getting any better.

Thanks for reading.