A LEARNING SITUATION: ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO GET IT?

As a college professor for many years I often told my classes that learning is dependent on three basic things: 1) the ability to learn, 2) the opportunity to learn, and 3) the inclination to learn.  As a professor, my job was to create the opportunity to learn.  I couldn't do anything about a student's ability or inclination to learn.  My dad used to say that you can't hang flowered curtains in a barn and expect the mule to appreciate them, and he was sure right about that.  I worked hard at being a good lecturer, and I tailored my teaching style toward making sure students got the information they needed to pass tests, fulfill other requirements for the class.  On average, about seventy percent of them came away with passing grades.  Back in my teaching days, less than half the students who came to college actually graduated.  Lack of ability or inclination stopped them.  People like me, those professors who expected quality work from them, stopped them.

Education at the college level changed a lot during my 35 years in the classroom, and not for the better.  There's no way of knowing how much it deteriorated, but it went down, and this is not necessarily the fault of higher education.  Some of the problems started far beneath us, and at a level where education is perhaps most critical.  Sociologists have talked about the dumbing down of America for a long time.  Some blame it on government intervention, and so go so far as to say it was by design.  Dumb people are easier to govern, they say.  Government wanted sheeple, not people, and in some ways they got what they wanted.  We could blame this dumbing down process on a lot of things, even technological advancement.  People don't have to think anymore; they have a tiny brain in their pocket and can google anything they need to know.  The educational system doesn't teach youngster to think anymore, and what you learn from ready access is in some ways a lost cause.

Our government institutions have fallen on hard times, and our society declines with the loss of the middle class.  College educated people aren't as well educated as they were in days gone by, and our high school graduates are miserable excuses as an intellectual base of operation.  We are dumbed down now, but I don't think we've peaked.  The worst is yet to come.  Is this a worldwide trend, or is that just America?  I've done some research on that and find that it's happening other places . . . but not everywhere.  We're dumbed down in great part because Americans don't read.  They view, and that's a lot different from reading.  The nations of the world where reading is still a major thing are outdistancing us.  To answer my original question, we aren't smart enough to get it.  We're missing excellent opportunities to learn because we're no longer smart enough to get it, and we're not inclined to get it.   And that means the people who could teach us are losing interest.