Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

You make a valid point, but it is the American people who allowed a handful of corporations to take over the US media. While I do blame the government/media, we still stood by and watched it happen

Originally Posted by MeadHallPirate

*checks his poll while munchin' on popcorn*

aye.

i rather expected that option "2" would be victorious, but i'd never have guessed it would have the wind at its back to such a degree.

such a grim view 'o the american public.

the bulk 'o USPOL, no matter what side 'o the fence ye all fall on, must believe that this country be truly without hope.

- MeadHallPirate

Originally Posted by MarcATL

Yet a good chunk of the USPO folks got offended when Bill Maher called it and said Americans are stupid.

Isn't that...stupid?

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

Let's take a look at our high school students............

One third of these American high school students could not identify the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as coming from the Declaration of Independence and even those who identified the phrase correctly could not articulate the document's significance; some who found the phrase familiar thought it came from the Gettysburg Address.

Three quarters of the students did not know when Abraham Lincoln was president; three of every ten could not place the Civil War in the proper half-century. More than a third could not place the writing of the Constitution in the proper half-century. Map questions revealed only the most elementary knowledge of American or European geography; many girls, black and Hispanic students had trouble locating Great Britain. For the most part what information or misinformation students had about world events and great works of literature seem to come from movies and television rather than from school.

Fast forward to last week's New York Times article. Twenty-five years after the wake-up call of "A Nation at Risk," twenty years after the depressing answer to "What Do Our Seventeen-Year Olds Know," the news in 2008 is that our schools still aren't doing their job and that our high school students remain ignorant of basic U.S. and world history and literature. The familiar story reported by the Times: Fewer than half of today's American teenagers today asked questions from the 1986 survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World "some time after 1750." (The Times adds to the last sentence "not in 1492," in case some of its readers might not know the date either. After all, they are products of America's schools.)

Other results were equally appalling when one considers that these are the citizens who will choose the next generation of the country's leaders - and who might even be among those leaders themselves. About a quarter of today's high school juniors were unable to identify Hitler as Germany's leader in World War II. The rest guessed he was a munitions maker, an Austrian premier or the German Kaiser.

Who Is To Blame for American Teens Ignorant of History and Literature?

I could post more, but what's the point. If you do not understand how ignorant most Americans are, then either you don't live here, or you are blind.

The ignorance of the American masses is overwhelming.

Allright, one more piece..........

While critics tend to rely on the three-decades long decline of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to document the dumbing down of American education, more alarming is our performance against the students of other industrialized countries. By virtually every measure of achievement, American students lag far behind their counterparts in both Asia and Europe, especially in math and science. Moreover, the evidence suggests that they are falling farther and farther behind. As educational researcher Harold Stevenson notes, although "the U.S. is among the countries expending the highest proportion of their gross national product on education, our elementary school and secondary school students never place above the median in comparative studies of academic achievement."

Part of the reason is that neither our schools nor our students spend very much time at it. The National Education Commission on Time and Learning found that most American students spend less than half their day actually studying academic subjects. The commission's two-year study found that American students spent only about 41 percent of the school day on basic academics. Their schedules jammed with course work in self-esteem, personal safety, AIDS education, family life, consumer training, driver's ed, holistic health, and gym, the typical American high school student spends only 1,460 hours on subjects like math, science, and history during their four years in high schools. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Japan will spend 3,170 hours on basic subjects, students in France will spend 3,280 on academics, while students in Germany will spend 3,528 hours studying such subjects - nearly three times the hours devoted in American schools.

Dumbing Down Our Kids, Losing the Educational Race by Charles J. Sykes; statistics, comparisons.

Originally Posted by MeadHallPirate

*considers*

haha, aye MarcATL, aye...

but imma sure that mr. Maher didn't mean us sailors on the mighty USPOL.

he meant the rest 'o the land.

*puts his foot down*

- MeadHallPirate

Originally Posted by theGhoul

I don't agree and it is partially the reason why I think Fox News/CNN are run by the govmnt. Those media ownership laws were passed to monopolize the press and centralize it. To control it. After Ted Turner lost CNN, it became like Fox, a bullhorn for conservative Republicans. When the pols took the media lobbying money, and gave them tax breaks, the fix was in. From then on, CNN/FOX sided with the govmnt and censored against the peoples views. Uncle Sam was crammed down your throat and govmnt accountability went to the toilet. After the corrupt, stolen election of 2000, the Supreme Court common crooks got away unscathed and NeoCon war mongers then had two propaganda outlets.

Originally Posted by MarcATL

Shhhhhh!

Don't say that!

RWers don't like to hear that kinda talk...it makes them furious. They find it un-American.

BTW. its so damn refreshing to see at least ONE person that's aware of the EMINENT danger of Monsanto.

And you have folks afraid of Obama...its Monsanto that they SHOULD be DEALTHLY afraid of...that's our damn food. The world's food. And they just sitting on their stinky fat duffs screaming at Obama while Monsanto is quietly setting up a nice lil trap for us all in the future...right under 99.9% of our noses.

The next couple of decades are going to be a real dandy.

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

You are too partisan to see the truth. Anyone who thinks CNN is a bullhorn for conservatives is blind.

Period.

Originally Posted by Retro Fit

Government accountability has been gone a long time. But I agree that the gov in the last 9 years has gotten much more mainstream with their abuses. It seems to me they want to legitimize their criminal behavior, to sway the public mindset to accept their distorted World views.

Originally Posted by theGhoul

Sheeyit, bro. The TV networks treated W. like he
was a war hero, the savior of 9-11, cause his daddy was CIA.
All the NeoCon warmongers got a free pass from criticism
because they cloaked themselves in the flag and false
patriotism after 9-11 like Fox News. And criticism from
the Iraq war? Forget it homey. There was none.

Originally Posted by theGhoul

I don't agree and it is partially the reason why I think Fox News/CNN are run by the govmnt. Those media ownership laws were passed to monopolize the press and centralize it. To control it. After Ted Turner lost CNN, it became like Fox, a bullhorn for conservative Republicans. When the pols took the media lobbying money, and gave them tax breaks, the fix was in. From then on, CNN/FOX sided with the govmnt and censored against the peoples views. Uncle Sam was crammed down your throat and govmnt accountability went to the toilet. After the corrupt, stolen election of 2000, the Supreme Court common crooks got away unscathed and NeoCon war mongers then had two propaganda outlets.