The Dumbing Down of America

Recently, I watched on national television as the newly elected congresswoman from Michigan, Rashida Harbi Tlaib, an American born politician and lawyer serving as the United States (U.S) Representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional district since January 3, 2019, as she used an obscene description of the President of the United States. The broadcast media, rightly so, and following the law, blocked out her curse as I thought to myself, she doesn’t represent me. Never, no way, could I have this mouthpiece as my representation in Congress even though touted as the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, and with Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and is one of two DSA members currently serving in the House of Representatives.

I was embarrassed not only for myself but for her and the State of Michigan. What had become of this country and all that it used to represent as I thought back some 65 years and found myself standing in Mrs. Schalk’s second-grade classroom proudly reciting the Pledge of Allegiance?

Speaking of the Pledge of Allegiance, a California College has banned saying the Pledge of Allegiance before their board of trustee meetings, and students are forbidden to recite it in the classroom as their parents and grandparents did years ago. The following heading appeared in the January 29, 2019 issue of Breitbart, an online news source with an accompanying article written by Tom Ciccotta, “California College ‘Discontinues’ Pledge of Allegiance Because of “White Nationalism.” The article conveys that “The President of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the board meeting because of its ties to “white nationalism and claiming the Pledge of Allegiance is racist.”

It’s now been a month or so since we witnessed this utter disrespect for the Office of the Presidency and the flagrant outburst from someone so blatantly lacking in class, demeanor, and discipline. Usually, with age, there comes wisdom, and I have taught myself to let such arrogant and disgusting outbursts by others to dissipate.  Unfortunately, my mind couldn’t make this one float away.  Moreover, it came to me,

It’s the dumbing down of America.  That’s it, I said to myself. Something has changed in our culture, and we no longer have respect for others, national heroes, patriots, or symbolism.

My initial research on this topic led me to believe the phrase, “The Dumbing Down of America” was attributed to gifted students throughout the country implying a stimulating and challenging education in our public school system was not available for them. For me, this was not the proper definition of ‘dumbing down.’ I was inferring something different and unrelated to specific education in the school system. Although, I admit that it is a topic that needs addressing.  I was referring to the fact that today’s public seems to lack tact, diplomacy, and decency.

Born, raised and educated in Montmorency County has no doubt left me with a strong conservative upbringing (okay, call it Republican). However, having spent the past 45 years working in academia or higher education, I couldn’t help but to have taken on a few liberal tendencies (call it Democrat) which now leaves me writing to you in this op-ed as an Independent trying to reason between the right and the left. To top it off, I taught and still teach economics for several universities which makes me an advocate of capitalism or a market economy such as our Founding Fathers desired.

Unlike many educators, I don’t believe our current ills in the system can be cured naturally by someone securing an Ivy league education for themselves and their children. I am not talking about those that may, or may not, have all kinds of degrees behind their name but those of us with common sense, an understanding, and compassion for our fellow man, a sense of honor, dignity, and pride in our work and our country. Those who were brought up knowing their handshake was their word.

Last night, I taught a graduate course in an economic strategy using an interactive zoom session when a discussion got started on politics (of which, I try my best to ignore) but the young man didn’t listen and blurted out, “I don’t vote in elections because no one motivates me.”  He didn’t realize that the only way to change the system or those in governance is to vote them out of the office replaced with new motivating representatives. Voting is our most privileged freedom allowing each one of us a voice in our democracy.

While writing this op-ed, I heard from one of my current economic students, who is now in the fourth week of class. The student is a high school graduate pursuing an engineering degree. To have gotten this far in academia tells me there is something between the ears, he can read and write, but I am not sure he can think.  As he stated, “Dr. Grenkowicz, I don’t have a text for this class, and I haven’t submitted any assignments in the past four weeks because I don’t have a book.” In addition to not even trying to improve his grade and knowledge, this student exemplifies to me that he is lazy, unmotivated and accustom to being ‘spoon fed’ by his teachers.  He has no respect for order, structure, or learning.  Selfishly, one thinks because they enroll in a college program learning is magically transformed onto him or her requiring that they do nothing.

It’s not only the students that cannot think logically; it sometimes is the parents. I once had a mother, a trustee on the local school board, come into my college office with her daughter, and in front of the daughter, she demanded I give the daughter an ‘A’ in her Business Law class rather than the ‘B’ I had given the daughter.  Her reasoning was the daughter was an all ‘A’ student in high school, therefore, she had to be an all ‘A’ student in college, if not, it was the professor’s fault. The lady didn’t ask why the student received a ‘B’ rather than an ‘A.’ She was not interested in hearing about the student’s performance in class.  She simply tried to use her position to intimidate me into giving the daughter an ‘A’ grade. She didn’t get the negative character message she was conveying to her daughter; that reality doesn’t count. These parents are teaching students, even at a young age, that they can get what they want through bullying and lack of diplomacy.

I use the preceding examples as they exhibit a lack of critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas. Critical thinking is your ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking as an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.

You and I know numerous folks in Montmorency County who have been monetarily successful and done so using their developed critical thinking skills and reasoning abilities without having an ivy league diploma to hang on their wall. They have also done so with grace, dignity, and empathy for their fellow man, their handshake being their word.

In the last several years, many of us have been sensing that something is seriously wrong with the current crop of young people. It’s true; they are likely to have the most education credentials any generation has ever received. They also are technically savvy and as such, have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. However, in spite of these factors, today’s students seem to exhibit character that is high in sensitivity often displayed in their reactions to microaggressions and low in intellectual curiosity.

 What gives? Why are our students turning out like this?

The famous author, Camille Paglia had the answer to that question. Paglia, a long-time Democrat, feminist, and college professor, believes the problem started in the earliest stages of education in the nation’s public schools: Paglia stated, “It’s started at the level of public-school education. I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public-school education in the classroom. What has happened is that these young people now getting to college and have no sense of history – of any kind. No knowledge of history. No world geography. No reason for violence and the barbarities of history. They think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of beautiful, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water, and the hot water comes out. They have no sense of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a rich culture. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never exposed to the actual crime of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”

I use Paglia here because, on paper, she exemplifies what the left or socialist democratic party would subscribe to as the perfect representative for their cause, and, yet if you research her writings and speeches, you can’t help but admire her incredulous honesty and truthfulness. Recently, Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, slammed the trend of public schools beginning the teaching of “identity politics.” Suggesting such as that found in “sexual harassment sensitivity training” and “diversity training,” all the while, she suggested, “real education is absent.  We are ‘dumbing down’ our students who can no longer think for themselves.”

If one understands the underlying concepts/ patterns/stories/ behind the history we hopefully learn in schools or via our reading, we then can use that knowledge and our critical thinking skills to grasp better what the future could hold. Thus, preventing repetitive poor decision making. Moreover, how we utilize our historical understanding of events is through the Socratic method. Mostly, we ask questions. We don’t blindly follow anyone but ourselves. “It is a form of a cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.” (Webster’s Dictionary)

To quote Plato, “To plot the future, one must know the past.”

In other words, we think, reason, deduce, accept and reject ideas until we individually form our own independent thoughts not believing that leaders must dictate to us.

One should not forget those lessons learned in our senior-year government class that warned of the ills of socialism. “Socialism is a political system based on the concept that businesses and industries better serve the people if they are owned and operated by the workers and state. The idea sprung up during the Industrial Revolution, when gross inequalities and hardships caused by private ownership, were plain for all to see. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many ‘utopians’ philosophers offered idealist views of the world based on socialism. The word ‘socialism’ first appeared in a cooperative journal in 1827. Remember socialists viewed the profit motive as something inherently evil and selfish and saw capitalists as evil people who would do anything to keep the wages of workers low so they could enrich themselves and live while workers suffered and lived in poverty. Socialists were reformers who made socialist reforms within the frameworks of existing governments, preferably common ones.” (Wikipedia)

Just something to remember is the idea that communism is an extreme form of socialism in which workers seize control of the government by revolution and create a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in which there is no private property, and the state (and thus the people) own everything. Workers and farmers organized into communes or communal work units, hence the term “Communism.”

As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, “We are a nation highly resolved that a government of the people and for the people shall never perish.” For me, his comments were suggesting that love of our country and respect for its institutions and laws was a common denominator that kept us united in respect for saneness.

The ethics of republicanism, a guiding political philosophy of the United States that stresses liberty and unalienable rights as central values, making people sovereign as a whole; triumphed over our differing ideologies. Each time we sway from the principles of our founding, Lady Liberty gives us a gentle shove, moving us back to the right of center. Our commitment to the tenants of our Constitution made us superior to any democracy.

I suggest Congresswomen, Tlaib, Omar and their colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (she’s the one that’s going to tax us at up to 70% to 90%, eliminate air travel and let people choose not to work) take courses in understanding American History and respecting the United States Constitution.