by Christyl Rivers

Created on: September 23, 2010   Last Updated: September 25, 2010

It is hard to know if we are dumb or not, we are fed so much drivel, sparkle motion, and distraction in the USA.

It is said that fewer than 23% percent of college graduates can find Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan on a printed map.  Also circulated are deplorable facts such as only two out of five voters can name the three branches of government.  That the Japanese, Koreans, and other countries whoop us with math and science is a cliché, and that fewer than forty percent of high school graduates know how to construct a complete sentence is also reported. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, NAAL, reports that the average American can only read at a seventh grade level.  More disturbing are reports that fully one third of high school graduates never read another book in their lives once out of school.  Is America a bunch of idiots?

If one followed our short attention spans, complete lack of knowledge about world events and the lack of objective media in America, it would be easy to think so.

Americans seem more taken with bright and sparkly things than we are with real knowledge, and this is a hazardous situation.  Reality shows feature loud and obnoxious people, even Discovery and NatGeo seem to have gone all tabloid on us. What is going on?  It would seem not only that people don’t know much, they don’t want to know.

Reasons why we are in need of doing better for our kids are multi-factorial.  There are standardized tests that reflect only how effective students, and their teachers are for enhancing performance on standardized tests.  There is a mandate to graduate as many students as possible for schools to get funding. There are overcrowded classrooms, and distractions like gangs, guns, drugs, in schools, not to mention the school atmosphere of raging hormones, cliques, geeks, freaks, jocks, Goths and chics.

Americans always seem to come in behind other developed nations.  Yet we are not stupid.  We have the same mental capacity, what appears to be lacking is motivation, and how motivated can we be when the truth is out there, but not given to us freely?

We have grown complacent, some out of frustration, and some out of confusion, and all of us out of patience, with being lied too day after day.  What do you see when you turn on your television?  Lots of ads, lots of drugs to sell, lots of reality shows, lots of tabloid reporting, and very little real information.

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