Lower standards, failing knowledge, rising ignorance; I'm afraid most of this is true. Susan Jacoby provides an excellent point that America forgetting their own history. Can you name all of the U.S. presidents or the ammendments of our Constitution by memory? If you can, kudos to you, but I'm sure most of us can't (including me, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure I seem hypocritical writing this). Now that I think of it, it is pretty bad of us not to know our own rights or leaders.
Jacoby blames our public school system and the need for curricular standards. I, however, believe it is not the school's fault, it could be ours. School teaches us what we need to know to prepare for our futures. I believe it's our ignorance that gets in the way. Remember those history tests that needed to be taken over and over again like the states and capitals or the ammendments? We'd bang our heads on the desk and groan, "Not this again..." Maybe it's because we just don't care or that we have more important things to cram in our brains. We should make a goal to be less ignorant.
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I agree that our own ignorance is causing a decline in our knowledge. Take for example homework, if there is alot of homework some people would normal not do some of it or at times none; other times they don't do the homework assignment because of other preoccupations like sports, famly matters, etc. Perhaps in the future our ignornce will increase more because there will be easier communicating devices, more accessable entertainment, and other things that we will become to involve in that we don't really care about our own history or anything that is really important to know to get a better future.
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