The Dumbing Down of the American Education System

Every day I experience something new that makes me terrified of the future of the United States. Today, in my HIST 536 course... yes, a graduate-level class, I was forced to plow through such drivel I had not experienced since my sophomore year in high school. How anyone can graduate high school, let alone a university without possessing the basic skills of grammar (even with today's dummy-proof Microsoft Word grammar and spell-check) is beyond me.  After re-reading three lines, I just wanted to gouge my eyes out.

Here’s an exemplary juicy piece:

We would have never known about the Universe and it would not have opened a door for greats we would never have known what Gravity is and how it worked and we would not have any idea what Plato and Aristotle was talking about or we would never understand what they are trying to tell us.

Are you kidding me?!?!?!  Will someone please keep any sharp objects away from me!

I have often thought about using my eventual MA in European History and possibly a PhD to go on and teach undergraduate history sometime in my future…. I am beginning to reevaluate this.  If 90% of my time would be used to rip apart people’s basic English composition skills and fight school faculty on the inevitable backlash of whiny little, entitled 99%er, OWS, Emo-brats complaining of my unfair treatment, I would have no time to teach kids about the history that I love.

This dumbing down of education is equivalent to massive counterfeiting or destructive inflationary monetary policies. Handing out degrees to kids who would have catastrophically rocked out just ten years ago cheapens the ones who demonstrated the requisite intellect and work ethic to achieve previously high standards.  I feel like I cheated the system.  Because I am full-time military and did not pursue a degree in conventional class settings, I got mine through an online university.  I’ll share a secret…. I got a 4.0, while working full-time and completing 36 semester hours in one year.  No, I didn’t bust my butt that incredibly hard, but I was in no sense of the word challenged at all during this time.  I put in the minimum amount of effort required to achieve an A in my classes and that worked out to approximately 3 hours of work every week.  Now if I feel like I cheated the system, I can only imagine how some folks feel in the civilian sector with degrees from prominent universities of yesteryear, when some of these little punks show up with their own degrees.

But no, EVERYONE HAS to go to college (and then of course, pass, because failing would not be FAIR), no matter what the destructive results.

Today’s Master’s degree is the Bachelor’s degree of my dad’s generation.  If things continue, the Master’s degree of my son’s generation will be the equivalent to a high-school diploma from 1972.  And who comes out on top in all of this?  Teachers’ unions and the Democrat party to which they donate.