A Mentally and Morally Lazy Generation

So many indications of Western decline:

For decades now experts and non-experts alike have bemoaned the fact that in the West educational standards and outcomes are plummeting, and there are also corresponding declines in basic behaviours, such as hard work, personal responsibility, accountability and striving for excellence.

We are getting more and more dumbed down, irresponsible, and just plain lazy. As to falling educational standards, and disillusionment with it, let me mention two recent articles. A 2004 piece says this:

In recent years, many of America’s public institutions have suffered a loss of credibility. However, according to recent surveys, perhaps no institution has suffered a steeper decline in confidence than our public education system.

In 2023, Gallup found that nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) were dissatisfied with our public schools. In fact, parents have been withdrawing from public schools with mounting concerns over academics, safety, and woke indoctrination. In 2012, almost 91% of all K-12 students were enrolled in public schools. One decade later, that number had fallen to 87% — a loss of nearly two million students. In its forecast for 2031, the National Center for Education Statistics expects the loss of another 2.9 million students in public schools.

Meanwhile, enrollment in private schools and charter schools is swelling. https://institutefc.org/the-collapse-of-american-education-pt-1/

And an Australian piece penned late in 2023 said the following:

Late last night, the OECD released its 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use reading, mathematics, and science knowledge and skills to meet real life challenges. The latest PISA data on Australian students shows:

 

-Scores in mathematics declined from 524 points in 2000 to 487 points in 2022, equivalent to students being approximately 16 months in learning behind where they were in 2000.

 

-Scores in reading declined from 528 points in 2000 to 498 points in 2022, equivalent to students being over a year behind in learning where they were in 2000.

 

-Scores in science declined from 527 points in 2006 to 507 points in 2022, equivalent to students being ten months behind where they were since Australia first participated in that test in 2006. https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/media-releases/latest-pisa-rankings-confirm-long-term-decline-in-australian-student-achievement

So much more evidence can be presented here. But as others have said – some many years ago now – we are in big trouble. Three quotes will suffice:

“Public education has not produced an educated public.” G. K. Chesterton

“In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.” Joseph Sobran

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” Thomas Sowell

And that is something Christians need to be concerned about as well. Let me share a few stories here. When I was a lecturer years ago the bane of my existence was to mark undergraduate papers and assignments. If things were not so great back then, I cringe to think how much worse they are today.

This general dumbing down impacts everything. We keep lowering standards for things like admission to universities or getting a job. Instead of trying to reverse these bad trends, too many are just going with the flow. This cannot end well.

A social media friend, academic and author – Douglas Groothuis – recently posted this online: “Another publisher wants me to really simplify a book manuscript–add stories, shorten paragraphs, simplify sentences. This never used to happen to me and it’s not easy to accommodate.”

I posted this comment in response:

Sadly, most Christians in the West are being dumbed down like everyone else. People often ask me what this or that means, or what a word means, etc. I usually will explain it, but I would rather say: ‘Educate yourself, buy a dictionary, look it up, and so on.’ Too many believers are unable or unwilling to educate themselves. They want to be spoon-fed. Reminds me of what we read in Hebrews 5:12: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.”

Excellence in every area should be the aim of all Christians. The greatest commandment we have says that we should love God with our minds, along with the rest of our being. How many believers break that commandment of Jesus every single day?

Go with the flow or resist?

How all this can be turned around is the million-dollar question. As for our ongoing mental meltdown in the West, how we respond will in part depend on what our calling or career is. If some are writing scholarly books and articles for scholarly publishers and journals only, then no, they do not want to offer dumbed-down material for the average Joe. They will need to keep upholding high academic standards.

My work is a bit different. My wife would often say that I was good at explaining complex or difficult material to ordinary folks. And there is a place for that. Hopefully what I offer on my website contains enough easy-to-follow writing that all can benefit from, but it is hoped that academics and scholars might find some useful articles here as well.

So in my CultureWatch articles at least I will keep trying to present things on a popular level, but with enough meat on the bones that other folks can also be assisted by it. But things are even harder to deal with now that the internet, social media, AI and the like are all the rage. The dumbing down and laziness I find there is quite alarming.

Thus I understand full well the concerns that Groothuis has. How much more do we dumb things down? Making things accessible and easily understandable is one thing, but where do we draw the line? Will some publishers soon be telling him that he needs to add more pictures to his books as well?

As I mentioned in my reply above, I am often asked by folks what something means, what some event is all about, what a definition of a word is, or even what a certain acronym stands for. A few decades ago one could spend a minute or so and find most answers in a good dictionary or encyclopedia. Today we can simply google it, and within seconds we will get our answer.

But too many folks are either too lazy or too unwilling to do even that. Yes, I know, we are all busy. But if you do not have an extra 10 seconds to do a quick search, then maybe you are too busy. And the value of self-education and continuous learning cannot be overstated. We should all want to excel in learning and knowledge, as in other areas.

So many folks – Christians included – have gone through a modern education system that makes little or no demands on them. It does not teach them how to think nor how to critically analyse and assess things. As standards keep on being lowered, our schools keep on turning out uneducated and increasingly dumber students. Many cannot even read and write!

And with the social media we find other examples of either laziness or folks being way too busy. In my case at least, when I post a quick quote or remark, I will almost always post a link to the article where it comes from in a comment immediately below my post.

Yet on a regular basis I get some folks getting all bent out of shape in what I had shared, and it is 100 per cent clear that they did not bother to look at the article. If they had, it would have explained things, clarified things, and likely answered 95 per cent of their concerns or queries.

But many of these folks seem to prefer to just run with knee-jerk reactions. Every text has a context, and had they taken a few minutes to read the piece, a lot of problems and confrontations could have been avoided. But in our instant-everything age, folks seem to be too impatient to do what is required in this regard.

It shows up in so many other ways. Folks will complain that they cannot ‘share’ some of my posts. I remind them that copy and paste works just as well, even if it takes five more seconds. Or they will get offended by something that is clearly satire. Yes, satire can be harder to pick online, but often the meme or whatever informs the reader that it is satire!

Given that these and other things occur so often on my social media pages, every now and then I need to add a post like this:

Four things that I seem to say the most here:

-Try to ‘copy and paste’!

-It is satire.

-Read the article linked to in the first comment to see the context.

-If you only comment here when you want to argue or pick a fight, you might want to go elsewhere.

No wonder so many folks leave social media. It can be so frustrating at times. But when your aim is to get truth out in the public arena, using as many outlets as possible is worth the effort. Sure, you have to put up with a lot of grief and abuse, but that just seems to go with the territory.

An article like this does nothing to offer solutions to these mega-problems we find in the west: educational and intellectual decline, laziness, the instant-everything mentality, and so on. But the sort of question Doug has asked will be heard more and more.

What do we do in a situation like this? Yes, we want to be accessible to average folks, but we also want them to be encouraged to lift their game a bit. Not everyone is a reader, but many of us can read a bit more. Not everyone is an academic, but most of us should be willing to stretch ourselves mentally.

Not all of us are fast readers, quick thinkers, or experts in logic and the like, but most of us can get a bit of help here if we want it. And some of this does sadly come down to being a bit lazy. Whether we quickly google to get a definition of an uncertain term or actually buy a few good books on a topic we are not too well-versed in, but want to be, there is so much that we can do.

Are we willing to put in the effort? The truth is, we can either just go with the flow and see the dumbing down of our culture get worse, or we can stand against the flow and seek to make a difference in this regard. In many ways, the choice is up to us.

A closing quote by C. S. Lewis nicely ties some of these concerns together: “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.”

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