All of the objective evidence shows that American students are getting dumber and more ignorant, including steadily plunging SAT scores on tests that have to be continually “re-centered” to conceal the dumbing down. But amid this crisis, the number of A’s being handed out to students continues to grow, with an A being the most common grade today.
According to recently reported findings by two researchers in the field, the number of graduating seniors who have an A average has skyrocketed from less than 39 percent two decades ago to almost half last year. During that period, the average grade point average (GPA) rose from 3.27 to 3.38. At the same time, though, average SAT scores plummeted from 1,026 to 1,002 out of a maximum possible 1,600.
The handing out of higher and higher grades to dumber and dumber students has had the perverse effect of helping high-school graduation rates reach record highs. Last year, federal data cited by USA Today, which first reported the story, showed that more than 83 percent of students graduated. This year should be similar.
The same phenomenon is taking place at colleges and universities, where A is now the most common grade — and where three times more A’s are being handed out than 50 years ago, back when students were actually expected to learn something of value.
The well-documented trend of giving higher grades to dumber and dumber students is being referred to by critics and analysts as “grade inflation.” Indeed, that is also the term used by the two researchers responsible for the latest findings, Michael Hurwitz of the College Board, which produces the SAT, and Jason Lee, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education.
But of course, this is hardly a new phenomenon. In fact, to conceal the ongoing dumbing down of Americans, the College Board has continually adjusted the SAT — a process dubbed “re-centering” — to make the average scores stay about the same, even as, by any objective measure and by the SAT’s own standards, students continue getting dumber. This process has been going on for generations.
More than a few experts in this field have pointed out that the dumbing down of American children is hardly a giant accident, though. Instead, it is a deliberate policy, first launched by socialist humanist John Dewey, almost universally recognized as the most important founding father of America’s current government “education” regime.
Among those who have exposed this agenda are Charlotte Iserbyt, a senior advisor at the Reagan administration’s U.S. Department of Education. When she realized what was going on — and obtained the documents to prove it — she launched a historic effort to get the word out. Her book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, exposed the evidence she collected to a massive audience.
Another key figure who helped expose the calculated onslaught against true education is award-winning educator John Taylor Gatto. In his book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, Gatto exposes much about the true nature of the pseudo-“education” regime that has been making Americans dumber and dumber for generations.
With students being deliberately dumbed down by government schools, and the schools hiding that by handing out A’s to students like condoms, it is time for American parents and taxpayers to rise up. This dumbing down — and the rest of the agenda — literally threatens Americans’ future as a nation and as a people. The time to act is now.
