By Matt Agorist
The US Department of Education just released the results from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and they are perilously disappointing.
PIAAC is a cyclical, large-scale study of adult skills and life experiences focusing on education and employment. Nationally representative samples of adults between the ages of 16 and 65 are administered an assessment of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology rich environments, as well as survey questions about their educational background, work history, the skills they use on the job and at home, their civic engagement, and sense of their health and well-being. The results are used to compare participating countries on the skills capacities of their workforce-aged adults and to learn more about relationships between educational background and employment and other outcomes.
When comparing the most recent results of US adults and those in other countries, America looks terrible.
In spite of being only one quarter the size of them, the United States spends nearly the same amount of money on video games as China. One would think since Americans spend tens of billions annually on video games, they would naturally be technologically savvy. However, the results of the PIAAC study show that is simply not the case. In fact, the average American citizen comes in dead last for being able to perform simple technological procedures.
“Clearly, we have some work to do in this country,” says Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of the government’s National Center for Education Statistics.
When it comes to basic technological skills like using email, buying and returning items online, using a drop-down menu, naming a file on a computer or sending a text message — Americans rank dead last.
But it’s not just daily technology tasks that Americans fail at accomplishing, they also scored terribly in math and literacy.
According to study, Americans with a high school diploma performed about the same as high school dropouts in other countries.
So what’s the problem? Is it lack of spending in the education department? No.
The United States spends more money on education than any other country in the world, yet the average high school graduate can’t even compete with dropouts in other countries. In spite of the ever increasing DOE expenditures, US students continue to trail their rivals on international standards tests.
“We need to think seriously about how to get them functioning better,” says Carr.
However, no matter how much money and time the bureaucrats in D.C. throw at education, and no matter how many times they “revolutionize learning” (i.e. Common Core) that function is more of the same — ignorance.
Imagine what will happen when Americans get “Free College,” as promised by so many politicians. What good is free college if graduates get out and can’t even tie their own shoes?
Is any of this really a surprise to anyone, though? Just last month, the writer of the hit comedy Idiocracy, Etan Cohen announced that his fictional movie turned out to be a documentary, and he’s right.
It seems that public schools these days are little more than factories to reiterate the state’s version of events and stoke an extraordinary amount of cognitive dissonance. Without being able to hold two contradictory thoughts as the truth, how else could Americans continue to refer to this geographical region as The Land of the Free?
State sanctioned deprivation of rights, liberty, and life, is that what we call “Freedom” these days?
Sadly, when people do begin to question this paradigm of declining education and the state’s usurpation of freedom, blame is quickly associated and directed toward whichever corporate puppet is in charge. American then just go back to sleep — resolute in the notion that they can vote those bastards out, and it will all be fixed.
Boobus Americanus then slips back into la la land, cheering on the increasingly ignorant police state as if they are fans on a football stadium sideline. “My team is winning! USA! USA! USA!”
But your team is not winning, Boobus!
Just for a moment, can we stop chanting that “USA is number one”?
Can we remove the patriotic blinders for a moment and take a look at the categories in which we are actually number one? Because it’s certainly not education and definitely not freedom.
According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released last November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica.
Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46. Yet, somehow, Americans still believe their leaders when they say that terrorists “hate our freedom,” as if the ‘terrorists’ took down the first 45 freest countries and are just now getting to us!
No, we are most assuredly not number one in freedom nor education.
But, we are, however, number 1 in the following:
- Prison Population
- Obesity
- Child Abuse Death Rate
- Hours spent in front of the Television
- Teen Pregnancy Rate
- Prescription Drug Use
- Citizens Killed by police
- Debt
- Crime
- Arbitrary, Immoral and downright evil laws
So, next time your chest begins to fill with patriotic puff, stop for a second and realize that Americans are number one, but in such a bad way.
In the meantime, however, we still have the freedom in this country to inform ourselves and others. Only through a lesser ignorance will this massive dumbing down of citizens be curbed.
Please share this information with your friends and family so that Americans can see that the government’s answer of throwing more and more money into the failed Department of Education is not the answer. Personal responsibility, desire for knowledge, and respect for your fellow human — these are the things that prevent such a tyrannical level of ignorance.
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist
Good article. There are a few points I could nit-pick at, but in toto, I agree with Mr. Agorist on this problem of American idiocy.
Americans are being fed brain destroying neurotoxins on a daily basis, like fluoride in the water, mercury in our teeth fillings, mercury and aluminum (cause of Alzheimer’s), in vaccines, lead in old water pipes under cities like Flint. Lead, which causes mental retardation, was also in gasoline for most of my life. Most Americans also eat highly processed food which is almost devoid of nutrients. Topped off with mind-numbing TV, it is no wonder Idiocracy is coming to pass.
This is on purpose. Our children were sacrificed at the alter of Common Core, diversity, tolerance and ebonics. They’re the products of education being replaced by liberal indoctrination. Educational standards were lowered. Teacher’s qualifications were lowered. Learning environments became social experimentation labs, where discipline was replaced by coddling. Morality, self control, respect of others and common decency among and between students AND teachers have been replaced by defiance, rebellion, egocentricity, sexualization and promiscuity. We may have allowed the lose of a generation, but it can and must end now to save future generations.
So slamming children with massive amounts of homework and thereby depriving them of the time to pursue things that they find interesting is not producing a positive result. Go figure. We are not Japan or Korea or China so adopting their educational models, which lead to an inordinate level of child suicide in those societies, is the stupidest idea ever foisted on the American public.
John Dewey had the best and greatest ideas about education in a democratic society but our “leaders” are more interested in producing cogs for their donor’s wheels and are absolutely anti-democratic. The time for revolution is here or we are lost.
John Dewey was a major agent in the destruction of the American education system. If you have any experience in his insane library classification system you will know I’m right about this without even researching it. He changed the whole philosophy of education in a disastrous way. A quote about his ideas:
He says education but he means indoctrination. He believes the reason kids
go to school is to learn to be part of a group. Dewey had absorbed his
collectivism from Marx, Hegel and other big thinkers of the 1800s and
had, apparently, never doubted it. But how will we reach that brave
new world? That is the tactical problem which Dewey is trying to solve in “My Pedagogic Creed.”
You see the offhand way he tosses aside the traditional school subjects. This contempt for knowledge, for facts, for truths–which Dewey states so openly—has stained the entire twentieth century.
Please note the irony. He is himself hugely educated. But he has little interest in letting your kids join him. Instead, he is obsessed with their “social activities.”
The agenda 2030 plan is coming along fine.
Somewhere from FDA approved vaccines, gmo, and the top down education system the poor kids don’t stand a chance.
More of the same philosophy from gold collar scum that have infiltrated and usurped every aspect from the highest of levels.
Its important to breakdown results like this by demographics.