Babs mentioned dumbing down education in a post, but I didn't want to veer her thread off topic so am starting this one: The main company I work for does not allow this, but a side company either does or hasn't noticed it: around 25% of orders are requests for us to do their school work- high school, mostly college, and I've even seen requests for Ph.D dissertations. I know there are also sites/companies that are specifically for this purpose- 'we will write your term papers for you!' Many of these individuals make no attempt to hide the fact that they want to hire people to do their work- some go as far as to copy/paste the actual assignment as it came from their teacher/professors. One I noticed today had the title 'What I hope to gain from my college experience'- clearly a college-entrance essay. Evidently the answer is not 'Learning to do one's own school work'!! Even when I need the $, I won't do these types of orders- I won't help people cheat. But the additional point: what does it say about how much they are learning in school/college when they hire other people to do their papers for them?
It used to be doing something like that would be cheating...and you could fail the class for doing something like that or even get expelled in some cases. Times sure have changed...and not for the better in my opinion.
@Janice Martin @Babs Hunt A strong case could be built for laying the blame on P.C. But if I go into developing it, I will be labeled in a derogatory way. So, see, if I drop it, I seem to "fit in" with prevailing status quo. Individuality is then gone. Worse than papers written for the purpose of developing expressive ability would be the bartering of standard exam results where it is known beforehand what exam is going to be administered, and selling correct results. Applies more to technical than self-expressive subjects. Late in his life, Dr. Albert Einstein was quoted as stating, "If Science continues it's present course, we will have created generations of idiots". Such judgmental ability is prescient. He was likely right. Frank
I think that education has been requiring less and less for some time now, and when they started the "no child left behind" agenda, it has only hindered actual learning and education. Back in the 50's, when I started school, any child who did not pass their grade was held behind and required to take that grade over, which then put them a grade behind where they should have been for the rest of their school years. Now, they just push the child on through to the next grade, even when they have not learned the necessary things required to go on to the next level. There is no way a child can learn higher math skills when they do not know how to multiply and divide properly, or other basic skills. It seems like most schooling is now some kind of social training , rather than truly study and learning more things in school. Another thing that makes a huge difference is how well nourished the child is, and this is actually true from the moment they are conceived. We here in America have had a huge epidemic of iodine deficiency for many years, and iodine deficiency causes a child to have lower IQ, and even to be mentally retarded when it is bad enough. This can happen when the mother was pregnant, and even if the newborn baby has enough nutrients, it cannot always change what has already happened before the baby was born. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...-deficiency-affect-childs-brain-function.aspx