Zdobywanie widzy na amerykańskim uniwersytecie ciągle uchodzi za dobrą inwestycję w przyszłość - bo przymiotnik "amerykański" ma nadal sporą siłę rażenia. I rzeczywiście, są elitarne uczelnie amerykańskie ( Ivy League), które nadal gwarantują zdobycie gruntownej wiedzy. Jednakże wiele wskazuje na to, iż są to wyjątki, które tylko potwierdzają regułę zasadniczo odmienną - że amerykańskie uczelnie sprzedają za duże i prawdziwe pieniądze fałszywą wiedzę i .....iluzje. Wśrod owych wielu symptomów mogących stanowić solidny materiał oskarżycielski - poziom wiedzy amerykańskich studentów jest najpewniej najmocniej przekonywującym. I jest on taki a nie inny nie tylko ze względu na drastyczne obniżenie poprzeczki merytorycznej. Do jego korupcji przyczynia się także ideologizacja nauczania na uczelniach amerykańskich. Szczegóły zawarte są w podlinkowanym materiale, z którego cytuję najsmaczniejsze kąski. I przestrzegam przed postawą typu "schadenfreude" - bo problem jest nie tylko amerykański ma charakter uniwersalny i dotyczy także Polski.

"Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students- six of 32-actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in "A People's History of the United States," a frequently assigned textbook."

"They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets," Pesta said. "Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as 'fairness.'"
Pesta also noted that, early on, his students' "blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know." But over time he said he increasingly saw "a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our 'racist and sexist' history and our 'biased' institutions."

"Let's start with the 2006 geographic literacy survey of youngsters between 18 and 24 years of age by National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs. Less than half could identify New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Sixty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and three-quarters could not find Iran or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not locate even one of those four countries. Youngsters who had taken a geography class didn't fare much better. By the way, when I attended elementary school, during the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. maps, and our assignment was to write in the states. Today such an assignment might be deemed oppressive, if not racist.According to a Philadelphia magazine article, the percentage of college grads who can read and interpret a food label has fallen from 40 to 30. They are six times likelier to know who won "American Idol" than they are to know the name of the speaker of the House. A high-school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler. Not a single student knew how."

"Reported by Just Facts, in 2009, the Pentagon estimated that 65 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. were unqualified for military service because of weak educational skills, poor physical fitness, illegal drug usage, medical conditions or criminal records. In January 2014, the commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command estimated this figure at 77.5 percent, and in June 2014, the Department of Defense estimated this figure at 71 percent (tinyurl.com/guz7pqy)."

"To accommodate less college-ready students, colleges must water down their curricula, lower standards and abandon traditional tools and topics. Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein writes in his book "The Dumbest Generation": Tradition "serves a crucial moral and intellectual function. ... People who read Thucydides and Caesar on war, and Seneca and Ovid on love, are less inclined to construe passing fads as durable outlooks, to fall into the maelstrom of celebrity culture, to presume that the circumstances of their own life are worth a Web page."

walterewilliams.com/dumb-american-youth/

www.thecollegefix.com/post/29719/