@Holly Saunders Checking the chart, I fail to correlate a connection between % receiving fluoridated water, and known (generally) level of academic achievement. For example, if we take a poor, itinerant wanderer in one of the lesser-developed countries, he will almost surely exhibit apparent cognitive ability in some way, yet most surely was not fed fluoride. Frank
I do believe that there is a deliberate agenda to create stupid people, perhaps because intelligent, educated, and aware people don't make good slaves. During the slave days, it was illegal to educate a slave, even to the point of teaching them to read and write, because educated people aren't satisfied with a life of slavery. Since someone is sure to point it out, I'll concede that situations today are not exactly as they were prior to the emancipation of the slaves in the latter part of the 1800s. The goal today is not to produce a generation of people who can pick cotton but to produce people who will believe what they are told to believe, and be blissfully unaware of the conspiracies that are going on all around them, even to the point of acting as cheerleaders for the very things that are keeping them down. Today, this is not achieved by preventing people from attending school; to the contrary, it is brought about through the educational system, at all levels.
@Ken Anderson For once, I am in awe of your post! How in hell did you get it worded so, well, meticulously correct, in form, functionality, and probably true fact? As I grew up, mindful of my Grandpa's (paternal) always-present admonition that his kids (all 5 born here, my Dad the first), become immediately fluent in English upon entering the school system. Grandpa came here from Czechoslovakia in 1892, at age 16, alone. He must have received good schooling there, for he was already an accomplished tailor. His firstborn, my Dad, born in 1901, was raised, as were the following 4 children, to adhere to the "work ethic", be proficient in the English language, (though they spoke Czech at home), and take full advantage of the freedoms available here, and detest those restrictions imposed upon their own father in Europe, namely religious persecution by the Catholic Church.. My Grandpa would writhe in his grave could he read your OP here. Frank
I have been saying this for the longest time, much to the disbelief of all my friends..I'm very pleased to see someone else has the same opinion..
Makes one wonder how we all got so sharp witted and avoided the dumb-downed educational system and products on the market to make us that way.
It does make me wonder at times if H.G. Wells wasn’t a bit of a soothe sayer. The Eloi do exist and there are more of them being produced every day. They live happy and free from any encumbrance that might enlighten them as to their eventual demise, the prey of the Morlocks. No knowledge of where their food comes from and are able to play all day without a care in the world. Whatever education they receive is regulated in order to keep the Eloi interested with only those things that will keep them fit and clean for exploitation. Nothing else really matters except that they must learn what to do and think when the Morlocks sound the Pavlovian horn and like the time traveler, only we of a previous and much different age can see what is really happening.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know the U.S. educational system changed DRASTICALLY in the 1970s. Many or most of us were old enough to avoid the pitfalls, but those who followed us have been dumbed down by design. Although there was some manipulation going on prior to 1975, it became much more focused after that. The Vietnam War was a major turning point in American social structure, and many of us supported the changes only to learn the consequences at a later time in life...when things were fully implemented. You can detect the manipulative changes by studying the textbooks of the past, and learn something of what was taught and how it was presented.
My family came from Sweden, but none of us were taught to speak the language. When my parents got together with my grandparents, they'd speak Swedish if we weren't in the room, but they'd switch to English if we were around. My dad used to tell us that he learned to speak English in the army but I learned later that he was lying about that since he attended the one-room schoolhouse down the road from our house. He also told us that he quit school after the third grade; another lie, since he graduated from high school.
I expect that they hadn't perfected the system yet. Nevertheless, if you think back to the books that were recommended, you might realize that a lot of them had a leftist message. Fortunately, most of us probably had teachers who still believed in education, though.
I'll just throw in my thoughts, minimal as they are. I'm not keen on the fluoride conspiracy, but there is definitely a deficit in our children's education. To me it starts with emphasis being taken off the basic skills... readin', writin', 'rithmetic. Too much classroom time is wasted (gasp) on social skills, activities, participation trophies, peanut allergies, yadda-yadda... We allow the inmates to run the prison and entitled children run rough-shod over the teachers with helicopter parents threatening lawsuits. It is common practice to promote students even if they FAIL the curriculum ... good heavens, we don't want to hurt their feelings!! So shuffle their ignorant butts through the system. "Back in my day," ... my parents advised me to behave at school and OBEY the teacher or there would be consequences. They taught me to respect my elders and to pay attention at school. Can you imagine your parents whining on social media about your peanut allergy and suing the school district while posting the story on Youtube and setting up a Go Fund Me?? No??? ... me either. So maybe a huge part of this begins... at home. In my day, we didn't "go viral," thank goodness.
I have managed to live my life, and even be qualified to teach, without ever once, to my knowledge, taken an IQ test.
Good evening to all- I find this conversation quite interesting. A couple of observations: First, IQ tests are notoriously inaccurate measures of intelligence. So much of most standard IQ tests depend on a person's language skills, and a person who does not speak the language the test was written in or presented in will score very poorly. I can't take any IQ test because I was trained to administer them as part of my job, so I'll never know my IQ- and that's good. Next, I taught school for nearly 40 years, and I never saw any concerted efforts to "dumb down" material. I did see classes presented on different levels to meet the needs of the students, but the advanced and college-prep classes I taught from time to time were just as tough as any classes held anywhere. Finally, I had a great many foreign exchange students in my classes through the years. they were all very superior kids- poor students or unmotivated kids don't make the trip to the US- we only get the tip top students who come here. I asked one of the foreign students the biggest difference between her school back home and her school here. She said, "In Sweden, the teachers do nothing and the students do everything. Here, the kids do nothing and the teachers do everything." I found that quite interesting. Good night to all- Ed