Data Points

This might be my most significant blog yet!  It is one of those blogs that unify almost every thing.  It is the type of thing that drove people like Albert Einstein to look for some kind of unification principle that connected all of science. He was close as was Sir Issac Newton. I am not in the class of those guys, but I do have some ideas that are very worth reading.  Look at my title and you might get an idea of what this blog is about.  "Data Points".

I am an old person who has traveled more and been involved in more significant situations than most people.  I also have a very good memory and a high IQ in the area of spacial reasoning.  If you don't know what that is, then look it up.  Over my many years I have collected billions of "data points".  At the time I had no idea if any of my "data points" were significant, but I kept collecting them and now I can explore relationships within that billion "data points".

Have any of you ever heard of "scatter grams"?  It is a plot of points in an X-Y graph that looks like a bunch of random dots.  Rather than being a round circle, it can turn out to be oblong, not a straight line.  What that graph shows is that there is some kind of relationship among the points.  It may not be a strong relationship, but there is some kind of relationship among the points, but what is it?  The next step is to try to "fit" a line to the data and see how close the relationship of the points are to your line.  The most common way to do this is with a "least square" linear line fit.  The degree that your line fits the data points is call "correlation".  You can even go one level farther and see if the "data points" fit a curved line better than your straight line.  You could keep this going to where your line equation intersected "all" the data points.  It turns out that the order of the equation is one less than the number of points.  Here is what this means.  If you have two points, a first order equation can be found that intersects both of the points.  An example would be Y = A + BX.  If you had three points, then an equation of the form Y = A + BX + CX** would connect all the points.

The reason that I showed the above is that us humans also do much the same thing in our minds.  When we have a lot of data points, some of the more intellectual people see relationships among the data points. Just because they do not see a "perfect fit" does not mean that there is not a relationship.  This can be because the data points have a degree of error or that there are variables affecting the data points that the human is not aware of.  The world is very complex and there are many forces that affect the data points.  These affects can come and go without us humble humans noticing.

Us humans want to understand the world that we live in and look for reasons why things are the way they are and why they change.  I think that we all know that if something changes that there must be a reason.  Issac Newton formulated it in his equations that we still use today.

I think that we can all agree that with age a person gains "wisdom".  You could also look at the older person as more experienced.  Most of us value experience and defer to it in serious situations. Exactly what is this "experience"?  It is a collection of "data points".  Not all older people are equal.  Some have more data points than others and there are others who have the special intellect to find relationships among the data points.  If you have been following my blog, then it is clear that very young people who have few data points have a much smaller chance of correctly determining the relationship between data points than what an older person can.  Historically, the opinions of older people was given greater weight than those of younger people.  Now. I think that you can see why.

I have noticed that "most" liberals "tend" to think in terms of straight line relationships.  Further, they expect "all" points to be "perfectly" on the line.  Now,  let's look at my last sentence.  I used the term "most" because not "all" liberals think this way.  Notice that I used "tend" because, again, it describes that my data point's shape only favors a single direction.  As an older person, I need a way to share my interpretation of my data points even if they do not represent some kind of "perfect" picture.

Think about voting, for example. If the above is true and the objective of voting is to come up with the correct or best decision, it seem clear that adding more younger voters is a contradiction  of the basic objective.  Going to college is a normal way to gain more data points, but there are even more data points to be gained out side of college and over a life time.  I contend that data points gained in college are no more significant than those gained during an observant life.

I challenge all of you to think about the data points that you have collected and to discuss them with others without the fear that they might not "all" align with a simple minded straight line.  If your data points do not reveal a "perfect" relationship or model, they may still contain significant knowledge.  Remember that there is "almost" nothing in the real world that is "perfect" and because of that fact we all need to learn to deal with conclusions from our data points that are also not perfect either.  Only stupid people ignore the store house of information that is contained in their personal data points.  We all paid a lot for those data points so we should use them when we can without fear!

PS--Some time ago, I was talking to a of group of my friends and commented to them that Police cars normally have old fashioned small hubcaps.  All said that they had never noticed.  I told them that I noticed the different type hubcaps and that "most" seemed to be on Police cars.  My friends had two problems.  The first was that they were not very observant and the other was that they did not have a special ability to "connect the dots".  I would expect that they did not have a large set of "data points" either, nor an ability to organize them as I have pointed out above.  Think about yourself and see what you come up with?

PS--Collecting data points is very critical.  As I have collected data points, I classify them into at least three buckets.  Those that have clear proof, those that seem logical and those that appear to not be correct.  Over time as I collect more data points or facts, I shift my data points from bucket to bucket as I learn more.  Nothing makes the process fail faster than to "mix" bad data points with good data points.  Look at the Catholic Church when they claimed that the Sun rotated around the earth.  As long as people felt that data point was "correct" it prevented them from correctly connecting many future dots.

PS--Life and the world are very complex and even though we might have a lot of data points, there is not finite mathematical model that can correctly connect all of them.  For that reason we have to resort to some kind of "search" algorithm.  Exactly how does that work in a person's brain?  when you did and think about things, what your brain is doing is "searching" for a model that connects as many of the data point as one can.  It can be like the picture where the "light bulb lights up".  You have just found figured out some new thing.  Interesting isn't it?

Artificial Intelligence

There is a lot of talk about "Artificial Intelligence" today, but it looks to me like most of those talking heads do not know what they are talking about.  This blog will try to shed some light on the subject.

Since the beginning of human history there has been a gradual shift, driven by Darwin, from rewarding physical skills to rewarding intellectual skills.  Look at the Neanderthals who were bigger and stronger than modern humans.  They are not around anymore.  They were replaced by a group of modern humans who were more intellectual and who could use and make tools.  I would like to remind you that this business of making and using tools is still alive and well to day and it is only accelerating!   As I have pointed out in prior blogs, Darwin provided us enough intellect to get the job done, but that was when the rate of change was much slower.  What is happening now with artificial intelligence is that it is a means of increasing the "efficiency" of the utilization of the limited intellect that we have.  Are you following this?

Think of the impact of when the human race created a written form of their language.  Think of the impact of that and how the special intellect of a few people could be multiplied.  Think about books and the printing press.  Those were changes that allowed the human race to get more mileage out of the limited amount of intellect that we had.  How about schools which mostly just teach people of lower intellect how to solve problems using algorithms that were invented by people of higher intellect.  Have you ever invented a new algorithm for any thing?  I did not think so.

Now, exactly what is artificial intelligence? It is a set of basic algorithms that can directly apply knowledge and intellect all by themselves.  There is no need for a less intellect human interface.  It is a lot like algorithms that we used to teach in our schools so our kids could apply new algorithms.  We don't need the kids any more.  I have developed "expert systems" which are a subclass of artificial intelligence.  I would take my best trouble shooter and extract from that person how they solved complex problems and put that process into a computer program.  With that program, I could then hire lesser intellect engineers who would then use these programs to quickly solve problems that they were not able to solve with just their own knowledge or intellect.  This is what we are talking about.

In the old days, I used to design machines that were controlled by "cams" that could machine any part accurately and quickly.  The very cheap digital computer obsoleted those methods of machining parts.  Rather than using "cams", we now use a program stored in the computer that can do every thing that the special purpose "cams" could do.  One of the limiting factors in those days was the need for a human to take parts from one machine and put them into another.  Now, we have robotics that can do the same things that humans used to have to do.  There has been more change in this area in the last 25 years than there was in the last 250 years.  That is the kind of rate of change that I am trying to make you appreciate.

Here is the big factor.  The value of people of low intellect is going "down".  That is a fact and it is not going to change.  The value of those of high intellect is going "up" and it is going up faster than it ever has.  That is a fact too. As I pointed out above, the efficiency in the use of intellect will make intellect even more valuable and that means those of high intellect will earn even more than those of low intellect.  I don't know how this is going to end up, but unions or government polices for the low intellect people will not be the solution.  I just hope that those of high intellect who will be the even bigger earners of the future will figure out how to humanly care for those of lower intellect.  I also hope that those of lower intellect will not revolt against those of higher intellect and screw up the system for every one.

Artificial intelligence is "not" new, it is just a continuation of historic human progress!

PS--There is a lot less of really high intellect in the human race than most people think.  Most of us just learn algorithms and then think we are smart because we know how to use them.  The really smart ones are the ones who come up with new algorithms or new useful inventions.  How smart do you think Pythagoras was when he figured out that the spacings of the frets on a guitar was a function of the 12th root of 2?  He did it without pencil or paper too.  If you have read many PhD dissertations, you might have noticed how little new worthwhile knowledge that they contain.  Most do not contain anything that would really indicate that the person was one of these really smart people who discovered a new algorithm.  When one does show up, the lights get much brighter for the human race.  AI might be one!

PS--I feel that breeding patterns affect intellect and it is clear that humans of lower intellect breed more than those of higher intellect.  Muslims also allow breeding among close relatives.  This is the main reason that there are so many mentally retarded Muslims and those who have birth defects.  In a prior blog, I proposed that if the human intellect is going down, it asks the question, "When was the intellect of the human race the highest?"  Will the lower intellect humans end up like the Neanderthals? 

When Did Our Public Schools Change? #4

Just moving along looking for the answer.  This time, I am going to look at our students.

Let's stay with the concept that it was better before.  That means that we need to look at things that are now different from how they were years ago.  Now, how are our students different?  Some time ago I wrote a blog about the writings of John Locke on "how to raise children".  His writings were from back in the 1700's.  Before that Darwin was in charge and you know how he did things.  You can even look far back to the Spartans and how they raised their children.  I think that you know the stories about how the Spartans did not baby their children, but raised them in a tough and demanding environment.  The idea was to raise strong children who could become strong warriors and deal with a tough cruel world.  That does not sound too bad does it?  Now let, look at how the student has changed.

I contend that the first big change came with the book by Dr. Spock on how to raise children.  I wrote a prior blog on this subject too and I will give some high lights here.  Spock was an urban Jew from New York City who attended Columbia University.  He wrote his book before any of his own children or grandchildren had lived their full lives after having him and his wife as their parents.  That means that he had little data on how his own child raising turned out.  Further, with a sample of "one", how strong of a conclusion can one draw in an area that has so many independent variables?  Not much!! The writings of Spock should carry about the same weight as those of Jewish psychologist Freud and we know now that 99% of his work in psychology has been discredited. The bottom line, is that Spock's book marks the change from spankings to "time outs".  This is the birth place of our current population of "snow flakes" who can't handle the heat of the kitchen of a childhood growing up in the real world.  It happened in the USA first so that is why our children are now the biggest "snow flakes" in the world.

Unlike the Spartans of old, our children can't compete on the playground or don't want to compete for fear of  failure.  Our school teachers who only have a short term view, accommodate their students with higher grades than the students deserve.  This make both the student and their parent feel that they are much smarter than they actually are.  Remember all the bumper stickers claiming that their child is on the honor roll?

Kids used to play games like baseball and other games all by themselves.  They did not need the help of a parent or a paid coach.  They were able to organize and do it all by themselves, but not any more.  Games like dodge ball have been eliminated because it was felt that it encouraged aggression. The modern parents also demanded expensive facilities for the games and in many cases, uniforms.  Rather than keeping score, everyone is a winner!  It is common knowledge that we learn more from failure than we do from winning, so why have we tried so hard to eliminate failure?  It does not make any sense.

Rather than spending time playing physical games, modern kids play mindless games with their thumbs on little electronic boxes where there is "zero" human contact or the real physical world.  If it does involve human contact, it is by remote control where the child is not in the same room with their contact.  99% of the body to body communication that normally went on with physical contact was eliminated.  How much was this 99% of communication worth?  How has it changed the development of the child?  What kind of relationship does one have with words printed on a computer screen?

Have you ever heard this one?  "I don't need to know all that because I can look it up on my computer."  It is true that you can now look up almost anything on your computer, but it is not the same as knowing it.  How can a child judge the credibility of what a person is saying or what they read on the internet if they don't have some knowledge of the subject?  I talk to people all the time about complex subjects and frequently have to reject what many say because my brain contains verified facts that contradict what the person has to say.  How can a young person judge the credibility of a news article if they don't have any first hand factual knowledge of the subject?  It is not possible and I contend it is the main reason that our children seem so gullible and vulnerable to the arguments from liberals.  If one were only to look at efficiency, it is clear that it only takes a millisecond for a person with factual knowledge to know that they are being fed a line of bull shit compare to the time it would take a person to consult "Google" for the correct answer.  That is if they were to even do the follow up.  Are you starting to see how our children are getting easier to be mislead?

How about "curiosity"?  Exactly what is that?  Do you think that our children are more or less curious than they were in the past?  If I have heard this once, I have heard it a thousand times coming from our kids today and that is, "Why do I need to know that?"  If the kid needs a reason, there is something wrong with the kid.  I feel that a normal kid has the attitude that the more one knows, the more they want to know.  For most kids of old, they knew that there was a lot they did not know and they felt that it could caused them to be left out of  much of life,  Kids today think that they either know everything or that they don't need to know any more.  When kids used to play in the woods, they were actually "exploring" or "searching".  They did not know exactly what they were searching for, but it was fun and interesting to do.  It fed their curiosity.  Is curiosity now dead?  If our kids do not get it back, I fear that things will continue to just get worse.  Who caused it?  Is exploring on TV or by computer too easy to be fun and challenging?  That may be the problem.  Us humans do not value things that are too easy to achieve.  Maybe we need to make things more difficult for our children as advocated by John Locke and the Spartans!!

When Did Our Public Schools Change? #3

Just moving along searching for the answer.  We know the problem, but are not sure about the cause.  This blog is more of the original search.  This time, I am going to see if IQ has anything to do with it.

First, we all need to agree on IQ.  What it means and how it is measured.  The population of the USA is defined by a "normal distribution" of IQ with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.  Now, exactly what does that mean?  It means that our population including our kids have the following distribution of IQ's.

*  16% have an IQ of less than 85
*  34% have an IQ of between 85 and 100
*  34% have an IQ of between 100 and 115
*  16% have an IQ of greater than 115

Notice that this adds up to 100%!

Here are my ideas about the impact of the above.  Let's say that historically mostly the top 16% went to college and our teachers used to come out of this same group.  That means that historically our one room school teachers clearly had an IQ well above 100.  Even if our teachers were selected out of just the upper half, it would mean that our teachers had average IQ's above 100.

Since 1945 or the end of World War II a much larger percentage of our high school graduates went onto college.  As more and more of our children have gone onto college, the actual average IQ of our college students has actually gone "down".  Do you follow that?  That means that teachers selected out of this new group actually have lower average IQ's.  This is a fact.  I don't have any data here, but I assume that females have the same distribution of IQ's as the total population. Historically fewer females went to college than males and they were of even higher IQ's than their male counter part. Let's say that historically most of our teachers were selected from the top 16% which were above 115 IQ's.  This point alone shows that historically our school teachers had higher IQ's than teachers today.  It has even an additional factor to consider and that is today females have many more options that reward higher IQ's.  Some of these are Medical doctors, Lawyers and Engineers.  When these individuals are selected out of the "pot", it "lowers" the IQ's of those left in the pot.  Is that clear?  It means that we have at least a double selection process going on, but in the wrong direction.  There is a good case to be made that teachers today have average IQ's "below" 100.  I know that many of you feel that is impossible, but do the math and see what you come up with.

There was a study just a few years ago using public school teacher on the East coast and that study showed that those teachers actually had an average IQ below 100.  I you think about it, that does sound logical and possible.  Now, consider the student population.  By definition, the average IQ of our current students is still 100, while the average IQ's of their teachers have gone down and gone down so far as to be lower than the average students that they teach.  This is difficult for many to understand because we all know current students who seem smarter than students years ago.  If that is the case, how can this be?  It is a problem that we all have and that is to focus on "out layers" and not the average of any group.  There is a case to be made that the modern public school does a much better job teaching these top IQ students while doing a poorer job for the average student.

For manual activities differences in IQ has marginal impact, but as the activities shift to more intellectual activities, the impact of IQ becomes much greater.  In the case of teaching, I is my position that just a small change up or down in the IQ of teachers can have a very major impact on the effectiveness of their teaching.  I think that I have built a very good case for why modern teachers have lower average IQ's than those in the past and why the quality of their teaching has also declined.

One of the good tests for the above is to compare how well teachers or students do in basic math thru about 7th or 8th grade.  Up to that point most of the learning was devoted to leaning algorithms for adding, multiplication, division, decimals and fractions.  It is not until the students are presented with "word problems" that things start to get shaken up.  Many students who were "A" students in math up to this point have major difficulty with "word problems".  I contend that is mostly a function of IQ which was not revealed until this point.

The main problem that we have with modern education is that its purpose is to prepare the students for the "new" future which is more intellectual than in the past.  While this is happening the IQ's of our teachers has been going down.  In the past we had a surplus of IQ, but not any more.  Have you noticed that many of your Medical doctors are from India?  Starting about 1975, 50% of our new Medical doctors were from out side the USA.  Our importation of  Medical doctors has gotten even worse.  What is happening is that we are skimming the highest IQ people from less developed countries.  It used to called the "brain drain" back in the 1970's.  Places like India don't have a higher average IQ than the USA they just have more people and less demand for those with higher IQ's.

In this case, I do not know the solution other than that we have to get more mileage out of the lower IQ teachers that we have.  Things are not going to get better!  What we can't allow is for students to "not" develop to their full potential.  We have to start dealing with "type #2 error" better.  Don't know what that is?  When selecting teachers, we can not risk rejecting a "good" teacher.  In the past, we had more IQ than was needed and we could allow a few good teachers to drop thru the cracks.  Not any more.  Our current policy with public school teachers is that they need to graduate from a "teacher's college" and have some kind of certification.  That means a lot of potential good teacher are rejected while we keep poorer teachers due to seniority or tenure. Most countries of the world do "not" have teachers colleges.  They just have "regular" colleges where they get their teachers.  Getting rid of teachers colleges would be a good first step. Teacher would then have to compete with the higher SAT scores required by "regular" colleges.

Well, I am not there yet so I will keep searching for the cause in future blogs.

PS---This is a repeat from an earlier blog about "home schooling".  In my area between 10% and 15% of children are home schooled.  The average student who is home schooled scores higher on the college SAT test than the average student who attended public school in our area.  I know this is true for the whole USA as well.  Many of the parents who have a child who is "a little slow" often opt to home school.  I think the reason is that our public schools do a much worse job with these "slower" kids.  I am disappointed that there is not more focus on exactly "why" home schooling does such a much better job than our public schools when the parents are often "not" college graduates.  This should tell all of us something!

When Did Our Public Schools Change? #2

I don't have the answer yet, but I have made some progress and that is what this blog is about.

This time, I want to focus on the student.  Just like my basic objective for the USA which focused on the "median" person or family, here I want to focus on the "meidan" student.  You know from my other blogs that if the objective gets too complicated, it becomes worthless.  So here we go.

I like to start with the one room school house because I think that some thing in the past was the reason that our students seemed to have done better in the past.  Some thing changed all that and that is what I am trying to understand.  Now, in the one room school house we had kids from first grade thru 8th grade.  In my case, I went to a two room school that had first thru fourth in one room and in the "big room" we had fifth thru eighth.  In that situation, the teacher who had Johnny in the first grade could expect to be dealing and teaching Johnny for "four" years.  That meant that the teacher had to formulate a long range plan as to how to teach Johnny.  Like most kids, each have subjects that they are better and worse in and Johnny's teacher knew this and had to deal with it.  If the teacher was successful Johnny might "bloom" at some point and become a very good student in many new subjects.  As you can clearly see, the teacher in the two room school has a very different relationship with the student and I contend that this is a much better situation than we have to day in our larger schools.  Are you with me on this?

Before I leave the one room school I would like to point out that the administration of the school was by the parents of the students and their elected school board who took a direct hand in all phases of school management.  That is very different today.  Today the schools are managed by "former teachers" who often were active members of their teachers' union.  It has been my observation, also that a disproportion of current school administrator were PE teachers or athletes or coaches of some kind when they were in school.  I have not observed PE teachers as having been cut from the best intellectual cloth.  This is not a small point.

Today, teachers only deal with a single class of 20 to 25 kids who are all of the same age or grade.  This means that the teacher does not have the long term relationship with the children that they are teaching and thus they can not see or learn from how the kids in their class progressed or did not progress.  This is clearly a big change from the one or two room schools of the past.  In the past, the teacher graded the paper and assigned very few "true" or "false" type tests.  As was often the case in the one and two room school, the older students graded the papers from the younger students.  I feel that this constituted a great learning process for both.  I think that you can start to see how these small changes have had a very serious affect on our schools and the quality of education.  In this new situation, it maybe that the very best students actually do better.  How can that be?  The teacher can focus "more" on the single grade class and spend more time on a single subject.  As good as this sounds, it is often canceled out by promoting kids by "age" rather than their success in the prior grade.  This means that many classes have student who are not qualified to be in that class.  It gets better.

As I pointed out above, the "big room" had students from fifth thru eighth, but in most modern schools by grade seven kids go from room to room where the teacher only teaches "one" subject.  This sounds good, but mostly for the best students.  Further, the teachers who only teach one class can be of a much lower intellectual class.  This was proven by Henry Ford and his assembly line where workers who could not read or write could put on :"lug nuts". You could make a case for this kind of specialization, but I feel that it short changes the many "connections" that exist in the process of education.  In what class did you hear about Henry Ford or Madame Curie?  How about Isaac  Newton or Eli Whitney?  If  they were mentioned at all, it was in a "single" class where their was no connection to other subjects.

There is a common expression about specialized education and that is, if you do it long enough, you will end up knowing every thing about nothing and that is what premature specialization in our schools have created.  The minds of kids develop at different rates and thus it is foolish to try to specialize too early in school.  I have found that by age 12 and 13 many of our children have opted out of potential careers by their selections of classes in school.  I feel that the curriculum should be the same for all kids thru high school.  We should eliminate the "easy" classes that students take just so they can graduate.

Are you starting to see a picture of how our public schools and educational system may have declined?  How many of these "new" programs that have been introduced into our schools were never "double blind" tested?  Do you even know what that means?  I contend that "zero" were thus tested and that is part of the problem.  If the school curriculum was full 100 years ago and we "added" something new, what was eliminated?  There is no free lunch here.  If you add some thing, something else has to go.  Look at sports 100 years ago compared to today.  The time and energy that has gone into sports in our public schools has had to come from some place,  Where?  In a prior blog, I tried to find out who introduced, so called, "new math" back in the 1960's.  I never found out who was the mother of that one.  I do know that our math scores started going down about that same time.  Interesting?

I am still searching for the "cause"!

When Did Our Public Schools Change? #1

I think that I am going to need some help on this one.  Some of us are old enough to recognize that our public schools have changed significantly from when we were in school.  Some thing has happened to our public schools and I am searching for the cause.  You know me, I recognize problems and I recognize attempts at relieving the symptoms, but my real concern is the "cause"!  That is the point of this blog.

I know that it happened slowly and like grass growing, most of us did not even see that it was going on.  I suspect that there were several elements that caused the change and some are more significant than others.  A principle that I have recognized for some time is that when you have several functions operating in the same direction, big things can happen.  Most of the time there is some kind of push and pull, but when it all becomes either push or pull, things start to change.  That is what I think may have happened.  Now the big problem is to figure out exactly what those functions were and why they changed direction or played out.  The other thing that I have discovered after all these years of observation is that things don't change much until you get to some kind of "tipping point".  All the factors may have been at work, but until they reach that "tipping point" life goes on with out a notice.  Are you starting to see how I may need some help?  It is one thing to theorize about the factors or functions, it is another to identify them and lean how they operated to bring our public schools to what they are today.  Are you ready?

The first big item is the shift from rural to  urban.  Did you even notice?  It has happened all over the world.  England was mostly rural up until Columbus discovered America and the "potato".  There was no industrial revolution in England.  People were all trying to grow food on the farm.  In this case the "tipping point" was when the "potato" came and a single farmer could grow enough food to feed 10 people rather than just his family.  Every thing else for the industrial revolution was ready to go, but for a good food supply.  The fact that most Europeans were stunted for lack of food is addition proof of this point.

I bring up this point because here in the USA, up until about 1900, most of the people lived in rural areas or very small towns.  It is 2018 and that was just 118 years ago.  That is not very long in human history.  Think about how many thousands of years the human race was mostly rural.  2018 is just the blink of an eye by comparison.  Up to about 1900 kids took up the same profession as their parents when it started to change.  Like most changes, it started out very slowly.  By 1929, it was clear that urbanization was on the way.  Realize that was only 89 years ago!  The USA was on a roll toward urbanization until the economic crash of 1929 and the following depression.  Urban people were much worse off than rural people during the great depression so urbanization slowed for a time, but did not stop.

Next came 1940 and world war II.  People were drafted to fight in the war from both urban and rural, but the impact was greatest on the rural portion.  Why was that?  It was because those who were drafted from the urban areas returned to their urban homes after the war while few of those from the rural area ever did.  1945 was when things really started to change for the USA.  It was not only in the acceleration of the shift from rural to urban, it was a major change in family income.  Since in the rural setting, most people produced their own food and much of what they needed, the urban people had to earn money to them purchase what they needed.  As far a money was concerned, it was clear that the urban people had a lot more money, but were they actually wealthier?  Earning money was the new focus of the country!  It is clear that it was a special time where most of the world was destroyed and needed any product that we could produce.  It was easy times, caused by a single event that had never happened before in human history and was not likely to ever happen again.  Think about it as an "event" out of the blue rather than trying to take credit for it.

The other thing that happened was the resettlement of all these rural soldiers after the war.  They were now thrust into urban areas and along came the "GI Bill" to encourage them to go to college or tech school to gain skills needed in this new urban industrial complex that was the aftermath of the war.  The "GI Bill" was a good thing, but it opened the door to even greater acceleration of change in the USA.  The human race has accommodated change in the past, but never at this rate.  Think of how things changed from 1945 to 1965?  That is just 20 years.  In 1965, IBM was by far the largest computer company in the world and US Steel produced record ton of steel.  I recall that in 1960 our colleges were turning away kids who wanted to  become engineers and scientists.  It was not uncommon for a freshman class that have 5,000 engineering students would only have 2,000 sophomore engineering students.  That was because our colleges were over crowed with students who wanted to become engineers.  That has now changed.  Most of our colleges graduate fewer engineers today than they did 50 years ago.  Think about that?  What about school teachers?  I will get to that.

While all this was going on from about 1965 to today, two more things have changed.  Like I pointed out above, urbanization has made it more important for families to earn money. This has allowed urban women along with may rural women to join the work force. Just like the men, women went to college in great numbers, but rather than following teaching or nursing as they had done in the past, the smarter ones went into the professions like Law, Medicine and Engineering. Like most things that are "good", there is often a "bad" side.

Historically many of the smarter men and women went into teaching, but after about 1960 the shift started where both men and women of lower  intellectual ability who wanted to take advantage of college were not qualified for the more intellectually demanding professions.  This left them with teaching as their only alternative.  As I mentioned above, over 50% of those who got into college and wanted to become engineers were rejected as unqualified.  Many were accepted into teaching which had much lower standards.  This was some kind of "tipping point" where a significant percentage of people who would have become teachers in the past opted out of teaching.  This left a vacuum that was filled by lesser competent people.  I could say the same about auto mechanics or cabinet makers because they were also subject to the same kind of loss of their most competent members.

Like I said in the beginning, it might take several items lined up in the same direction to have caused the shift in our public schools that we have seen.  My next point is parenting. The human race has been doing parenting with a model where the father works for or grows the food and the mother cares for the kids and the home.  Historically, kids spend 90% of their waking hours in the presence of their parents where they learn the lessons of life.  Again, in about 1960 that has seriously changed.  Now, many mothers send their kids to nursery school as early as one or two years of age where they associate with young children like themselves with one adult divided between 20 or more kids.  These adults are mostly concerned just about getting thru the day without injuring any of the kids, where as, the mother would have been concerned about imparting life lessons to just one or two kids.  My point here is that our kids have been changed!  This is before they even start first grade.  In my day Kindergarten was an option, where as, now it is almost mandatory.

Are you starting to see the picture?  Our kids have gotten worse while our teachers have also gotten worse.  That is a "double".  When two stars line up like that, big changes can take place and fast.  The problem that I still have is it seems to have gotten much worse than I can attribute to just our kids going down hill at the same time our teachers have.  There must be more.  Next, I want to take a look at what happened to our teachers while they were in college.  There are far too many who are bleeding heart liberals for it to have all been some kind of accident.  Like old Newton, there has to be a cause there some place.  My next blog will explore that area.