Ten percent of American high-schoolers graduate without basic object permanence skills.

[freshwest]

23. When I started college back in the stone ages at the age of 18, it was written on the bathroom wall!

This was all common knowledge at one time. Everything you said - I learned before I graduated high school.

My problem with this learned regressive mentality, is that as old as I am, we were taught evolution in public schools in the South in 1950s. There was no drama, no contesting it. That was normal -scientific advancements were good.

We were taught before we left the lower grades, about hydro-electric power, atoms and current. This was basic stuff. We were taught civics, different ways that countries were governed. We learned the names of all the Presidents, what wars and other events during each term; what happened from before the Revolution; labor and civil rights history; difference in styles of government, even the dreaded socialism. We were taught the Humanist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Mein Kampf and the development of language. We wer taught about the New Deal programs, and a lot of things that kids aren't taugh now. This was not advanced studies, this was basic information to finish school.

We learned the names of all the world capitols, states, provinces, oceans, rivers and climates as part of geography and all of that. We were there to learn from 8 AM to 3 PM with no fooling around. No A/C. No television, no computers, no movies.

That was in the sixties, and then in the eighties I'm talking to a high school kid who was the son of my best friend. So, it was one of those, 'what did you learn in school this year' summertime talks. He wasn't shining me on, either, I knew this kid very well. He proudly informed they'd just finished that year - 10th grade he was - and now knew everything that had ever happened in the history of the world - all the way up to that year.

But he didn't know the president's name, or the capitol of the state we lived in. The conversation went to geography, and he asked me the name of the country north of the USA. He finished school and then went into the service to get college, and he's now into pharmacy at a hospital.

But I've talked to other kids, and they aren't getting the hard stuff, my own was in class and I find out they've got them watching movies that have nothing to do with school all day long one day a week, and outings that have nothing to do with school another day a week. I look in the history book, and they've got thirty pages of Hollywood movie stars. I was... WTF?

And this was before the wacky religious schools and home schooling and charters. I believe the GOP, conservatives, etc. want to create a dumbed down class of people to control them. The ones whose parents will make sure they get a real education with science such as Obama is encouraging are going to rule over these people eventually. And they won't even know what they're missing, either.

I get very discouraged seeing how bad this is in some states. I live in a blue state in a liberal district - but the fundies and baggers are getting more powerful.