About ten years ago I went to see a film by Mike Judge about the decline of the American people into a dystopian future where the population became idiots. The movie was ‘Idiocracy’.
Since then I have watched their view of the future become more and more prophetic.
And now the news is not very encouraging abut the mental make-up of the people of this country….
For the first time in recorded human history, scientists have discovered a generation they claim is actually less intelligent than the one that came before it.
Neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, who previously worked as an educator, argues that people in Gen Z have become cognitively stunted as a result of their over-reliance on new technology, like smartphones.
With records being kept on academic achievement for the past 200 years, this sudden decline from Millennials to Gen Zers was attributed to this rapid digital development, with Dr Horvath explaining before a Senate committee last month that this drop happened despite young people spending longer than ever in school.
Gen Z are the first age group to grow up with easy access to the internet both at home and in school, which Dr Horvath explained has caused a provable loss in skills related to problem solving, reading, memory, math, and paying attention in class.
The Mail reports that Horvath told the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee that this is directly tied to the rise of ‘educational technology’ in school, where teachers rely on tablets or computers in school as part of the learning process.
The neuroscientist claimed that humans had not developed over the course of millions of years of evolution to digest short video clips and sentences and convert them into understanding and memory, without having to work at a novel or think through a complex idea.
On January 15, Horvath told the committee: “More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen.
“Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries.”
Continuing his argument about human evolution, Horvath explained that, as social creatures, we had developed to learn from each other in face-to-face discussions. Not a short YouTube video or AI summary.
Even the act of looking at a screen can disrupt the process through which our brains store information, as well as hurt our ability to focus. He also argued that it was not a case of developing better apps, but returning to how humanity had evolved to process information.
Horvath said: “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.
“If you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly.”
Calling for a sea change in how those in power look at education, Horvath asked legislators: “What do kids do on computers? They skim.
“So rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender.”
(unilad.com)
If this continues then this country is doomed….and as long as we have politicians willing to lie and steal this country is doomed….
Just watch ‘Idiocracy’…..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
The movie was meant to be a comedy and instead it has become a gloomy prediction of our future without substantial change.
Glad my time is limited and I will not see the end results of this stupidity.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
That came true when he was first elected in 2016. But I actually think that it is much worse than the film ever predicted. Because they have added nastiness and vindictiveness to idiocy, and are backing that up with guns, and murders of innocent people on the streets.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree it is worse but the premise of growing more stupid by the generation still holds true and getting worse. chuq
The very fact that voters put us where we are is all the evidence we need of a regression in the evolutionary process… no doubt about that.
A real education not some made up bullshit will go a long way to rectifying this down swing. chuq
There are several factors in this decline, and one that I’ve mentioned before is key: along with the use and abuse of cell phones and computers, it has been always said that a teacher can only impart 90% of what they know to a class. sounds like a lot, but each generation has less and less to impart.
I’ve been privileged to find papers and letters at the state Historical society here in NH that were written by school age kids, probably 10 or 12 years old. one was an essay on “writing in the style of” Thomas Jefferson. Cursive writing. Legible, even after 150 years. No skips, no misspellings, no wandering. Jefferson would have been flattered.
Parents early in the last century were teaching their kids cursive writing and ‘how to write a proper letter’ at age six or seven.
They were taught events, wars, presidents, history; I doubt if any of them got to dissect a worm (don’t ask) or watch their english teacher flirting with the boys in the back of the room.
Education was taken seriously, and even (oh I hate to say it this way) in my day, we could see the difference between the older teachers and the very new ones.
And when you see a ‘man in the street’ interview with random people, “Do you know who is President” they laugh and look embarrassed and simply have no idea unless they ask their cell phone…
I agree the biggest contributor to this decline is the damn cel phone and the internet…..a place where truth is need paramount. chuq
The thing is that there are millions of idiots who somehow managed to get caught in a great cloud of evolutionary progression and were reverted to an earlier mental development state and they elected themselves a new kind of politic administration — knuckle draggers—
It all began, for me, in 1980 when that fool Reagan bounced out of the woodwork. chuq