I read an article a couple of months back by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse Blog that I thought was kind of interesting, but also incredibly frightening when you think about where the world is heading.
The title of the article, We Now Have Scientific Proof That People Are Getting Stupider, cracked me up the moment I saw the headline pop up on my screen. I mean how many of us have had that exact thought about people at least a thousand times a day? And now, scientific proof that most people are complete morons; Vindication, I knew it!!
So what does this have to do with Survival & Preparedness?
While some of you – especially the ones who email me to politely let me know that my articles sometimes go off the deep end – may be asking yourself what does any of this have to do with survival or preparedness, I believe it’s actually one of the biggest threats to our survival on a personal level, as well as our survival as a nation. The fact is, the world has been slowly getting dumber for some time now, and the repercussions are being felt everywhere.
At the end of Snyder’s article, he posted a standard eighth-grade exam from 1912 (I’ll post it at the end of this article). The exam highlights just how far we have sunk as a nation, and it highlights the very real trouble we are in if things continue to head in the same direction.
Today, most eight graders can barely speak proper English, let alone answer half of the questions expected of eight graders over 100 years ago. From political correctness dumbing down our history books to the new common core curriculum making an even bigger mess of an already suffering school system, today’s kids have far less knowledge than their 1912 counterparts – something that’s pretty ironic since they have more access to knowledge than children from 1912 could have ever dreamt of having.
But to bring this back to what a lot of you who come to this site care about, preparedness, I believe the dumbing down of our world has severe consequences that will have a direct impact on your ability to survive the coming chaos.
The problem as I see it is twofold; first, I believe the dumbing down of our society is intentional, and I think it’s deliberately carried out to make it easier to take our freedoms away. It’s hard to take away someone’s rights when they are taught from an early age what those rights are, and why they’re essential to the survival of a nation; it’s much easier to take away someone’s freedom when they’re dumb, lazy and spend most their life playing video games, watching Reality TV and living off of government welfare.
The second problem, a problem that most of us see every day, is how this affects a civilized society. When morals, history, and common sense are stripped from the education process, it creates a world where chaos reigns supreme. I believe much of the violence and crime we see today are directly related to the dumbing down of our education process. Without education, people have very few options. Without options, people lose hope. When people lose hope, they turn to crime, violence, drugs, and a whole series of bad choices.
This all leads back to where we are heading, and why I believe this threat will affect all of us.
We have a world full of people who are too dumb to see where things are heading, and that makes it incredibly difficult to do anything about it. Over the last couple of weeks, we have witnessed the complete breakdown of our nation’s emergency preparedness, as our government – bowing to political correctness – allowed people infected with deadly viruses into our country.
From encouraging people with Ebola to come into the country because of our lax screening policies to allowing people infected with viruses like tuberculosis and EV-D68 to come streaming over our southern borders, our government is counting on this country’s stupidity to blind them from what’s really going on. Sadly, it seems to be working.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have seen countless people actually defending this government’s policies, because the only thing they were taught in our public school systems was acceptance and political correctness. We have a nation full of people who are willing to put their health and safety in jeopardy because they’re too damn stupid to stand up and make their voice heard.
So what can you do?
Well first, my advice is to prepare. Prepare for the coming chaos, because what’s coming isn’t going to be pretty. Ebola may not become a pandemic, and EV-D68 may or may not be the new polio, but one thing is for sure, we are heading for some serious trouble. The United States is over 17 trillion dollars in debt, we have a world full of leaders who stopped caring about your safety long ago, and we have a world full of people who are too dumb to care about any of it. This isn’t fear mongering; it’s the cold hard truth that most people don’t want to hear. Second, prepare your children to be leaders. Don’t let them fall into the traps of the modern world.
- Make sure they’re always picking up books. Instilling a love of reading is one of the best things you can do to ensure their ability to think for themselves and acquire a thirst for knowledge.
- Find out what drives them and then help foster their talents.
- And most importantly, teach them to have common sense. It’s something that is sadly absent in today’s world.
Listen we’re not all born to be Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla, but we are all born to be good at something. Whether that something is farming, fixing vehicles or construction, we need to start teaching our kids the importance of learning. It’s the quest for knowledge, and the need to be the best at something that built this country; it’s the destruction of those values that’s driving it into the ground. Here is the eighth-grade exam from 1912:
awesome
Your right its all about control. I went to school from 1974 75 to the year 1984 and I watched how they messed up the school system.
Thought I would share something I just saw re: not doing the right thing. Per an article posted today, the dog of the nurse in Spain, who tested positive for ebola, will be “put down” because it has been found that dogs can carry the virus without showing symptoms. In Dallas, none of the animals in the apartment complex, where the man who tested positive for ebola, are being monitored.
Looking through that quiz I noticed a few I didn’t know. I also didn’t care what the answers were. On the flip side to that we know things now there would think is magic. Yes I have met many kids dumb as rocks. Some though are able to write complex computer code. Give and take.
I love this site first of all, I’ve been coming here for probably 4 or 5 years now, I comment on little to nothing, but I am always listening. This is the first article I disagree with..ever.. I do realize some of the population is getting stupider and less educated. For the most part, students are now “smarter”. You can’t compare the early 1900’s to my generation (yes, I’m in highschool). Each generation needs to know something different. It’s like comparing early humans to Mid-evil times. Every generation has to focus on something different. It’s like when I heard one of my teachers that never give us homework say,”I don’t give a lot of homework because when I was in school, we never memorized this amount of information or was even taught it.” And he is a new teacher out of college. He said some of the stuff we are learning now, he learned in Junior/Senior year of college. Yes, I do agree people are becoming “booksmart” and less and less of the population is “street smart”, but to a certain point we need, “booksmart”. “Booksmart” knowledge is what technology is based off of, unless you try to invent something totally new. Maybe, it’s just me who sees the world as “booksmart”, I’ve been to 25+ states and I have seen more “booksmart” more than “street smart”. But I know, when SHTF “street smart” is what you’re going to need.
Yes, I am human and made typos.
Hello Kyle, Booksmarts is a good thing to have, and that knowledge is valuable, however without the method of applying that theory to real world application, it does nothing.
This method is critical thinking, and what many find out is theory doesn’t always work out so well in real world application.
luckily enough for me I was abel to grow up in a country setting so I got to learn some survival skills, and unfortunately when I was young I didn’t care for the school induced curriculum. in fact I made many rebellious speeches in English speech class in highschool. ( funny thing, I got an A in that class.. )
of course my position in school led to a lot of that demeanor, but that is besides the point, we where still encouraged to do the critical thinking parts of the homework for additional credit. as well as from time to time, encouraged to do our own critical thinking essays on the subject topic, and interject our own thoughts with the curriculum as the basis.
I don’t see this as much in todays society, and the unfortunate part of these critical thinking work subjects is it also taught us common sense cause we would be able to test things out and see where they would and would not work. this doesn’t seem to be allowed anymore.
also the lack of the pledge of allegiance in school is stripping our newer generations of their sense of patriotism and why it is important.
these of course are just my thoughts opinions and observations and I’m sure many people have different ones from mine. and that’s the beauty of what our nation used to be, we could all have differing views, but still respect each other.
I’ve always said there is a difference between book smarts and intelligence. You can teach a dog to sit but you can not make the dog understand why it’s sitting it just sits because it’s told to.
You can’t have a New World Order with intelligent sovereign individuals thinking for themselves.
Thank you for your blog. I read it often. I read this article and am amazed at what you comment on. Not because I disagree, but because ideas like this should be and need to be brought up. If we don’t question all the things we read, we all become numb. Political correctness is good in one way because it helps us to remember that we are all humans and therefore equal, But it hurts us because some where along the line people started to believe that if all things were lovely and perfect we would build a better more self assured society which never happened. Instead we all become cry babies over nothing.
I believe it’s no big deal to be inadvertently mocked for my gender, or ethnicity, height, weight, or intelligence. It makes me see that we are all imperfect in and of ourselves. That is no big deal. I am secure enough in myself because I had someone believe in me and care for me. I didn’t look to society to give me my own value. The best thing my parents did for me was to tell me what they saw in me. Instead they told me to have several things I am good at to fall back on when my ” dream job maybe didn’t go the way I wanted”. Great advice. They also told me to look at myself and judge for myself if I was good enough as long as I was comfortable then it was good enough. But if your boss said it wasn’t then do it the way he or she wants because they are paying you to do it their way. Simple. Get over yourselves America.
Thanks again for your articles. Keep them coming. I have learned a lot from your ideas.
Sincerely,
Suz
Was an educator in a vocational high school for 20 years and watched as the quality of students eroded year to year. The United States educational system is so severely compromised by politics, parents, and the legal system that it is almost beyond repair. Every year brings the introduction of new requirements that increase the work load on the teacher without improving the quality of education. The major concern of most schools is how to increase funding through participation in various federal programs. Educational “feel good” projects like “SCANS” or “Project Lead the Way” were well thought out, but usually poorly implemented and offered to the wrong students.
** Check the internet on “Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) and “Project Lead the Way”
** Note: “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) is one of the worst things to happen to public education. Public education is geared to the lowest common denominator and is a detriment to average and superior students. I will not argue this point with anyone, believe what you will, most people do.
Im 14 and in 8th grade and I still dont know how to write cursive