Take a look at this video called “Lunch Scholars” if you want to see what the future of America looks like. A reporter asked high schools teens a variety of questions, and the answers were stunning. How many states are there in the U.S.? 51? Who is the vice president of the United States? That Clinton guy? Or is it bin Laden? And one of my favorites: How many countries border the United States? There are too many to name. See for yourself…
Thanks goes out to The Blaze for catching my attention with this video. The story was first reported by the Huffington Post, and it notes that “Austin, an intrepid young student-reporter, embarks on the noble mission of answering the question, ‘How much basic knowledge do American high school students really have?’ The answer, however, may not be exactly what you want to hear.”
The Huffington Post points out this dismal fact: “U.S. students place behind 31 other countries in math proficiency, and behind 16 other countries in reading.”
Is this the future of our country? If so, maybe I should move to Canada or Mexico or one of those other countries that border America!
Well, when the POTUS thinks there are 57 states what can you expect?
Not sure how many O’Bomba thinks there are, but he went to 57 of them when campaigning.
DOOMED! DOOMED!, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!!!
I think you are right. This country is so doomed when the basic knowledge level in out students has sunk this low.
Not only are people ignorant, but they don’t proofread what they write anymore, which makes them look as dumb as those they are criticizing.
lcpeterson57 ,
Well excuse me for living. I was typing in the dark and typed out instead of our. I guess you are perfect and never made a mistake in your life. Go back to your fantasy world.
Turn on a light! Yes, I’ve made a mistake here and there, but I try to proofread before I submit my thoughts. My point is that in reading all the comments to the story, I find a lot of folks have forgotten basic sentence structure and punctuation. Don’t even get me started on spelling! Law suite? Yikes!.
This is what happens when you hire teachers based not on what they know, but on which party they contribute to and how Liberal they can vote. The kids just reflect the stupidity of those who are teaching them. This is why the federal government needs to bow out of education and the Dept of Education be dismembered and totally eliminated.
You cannot count on government schools to educate our children anymore! I won’t even get started on teacher tenure…
Love the video…
This is why I homeschool. Sigh!
Homeschoolers will most likely be the salvation of our country, if enough people get out of the public unschool system where morons run rampant and teachers have to follow idiotic curriculums, like teaching all religions EXCEPT Christianity, and promoting LGBT and Planned Parenthood propaganda. If I could do it all over again, I’d definitely homeschool!
Isn’t public education just wonderful? They don’t true history, the Constitution, do not discuss Congressional leaders, don’t teach math, reading, nor writing. Why not? Because unfortunately most teachers don’t know enough to teach any subject, thanks to teacher unions. The unions are why I and others have dropped out of teaching because we want to teach! What a concept? Today’s youth is ill-or non-educated, can’t read, write nor do adequate math, do not keep up with current affairs, and are plain spoiled and then we wonder why we have to hire others from other countries. Duh! Get rid of the government and teacher unions, do the moral checks we had to do many years ago, and get learned people to teach learning. I so value my education and my teachers (none of whom belonged to teachers unions and most had Masters and Ph.D.s back in those days that really meant they were educated unlike so many teachers today – degrees, yes, knowledge, no.) Common sense even less. And riddled with sexual molestation, sexual acts, shacking up, illegitimate children, and so forth. Thank you, parents everywhere for not being interested in your children’s getting a good and great education but parking them in kiddie schools, pre-schools, and playtime Kindergarten. If you don’t want to raise children, please do the favor of not having any! KISS!
Better get a refresher on sentence structure! It’s a struggle to read your rhetoric.
I use to think that these videos were faked because it seemed unrealistic how anyone still in school could be so dumb. I’m now beginning to believe that these people are the real thing, and that we can thank a dumb downed system and unqualified teachers for the results.
Jay Leno gets the same thing when he talks to people on the street. He was asked on one show about how many they had to edit out to get the ones they put on. He said that was all the people he talked to except for one guy who answered all the questions right but refused to sign the release. The guy probably realized he would be on the show with all those dumb heads and didn’t want to be associated with them. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t want to be either.
Further evidence that our schools are propaganda centers for the left operated by ‘government employees’ … not community centers of education staffed by ‘teachers’.
Our schools have really dumbed down our kids!
Thanks for this video. However it was almost hard to hear what the students were saying with the music so loud in the background.
Very sobering indeed.
Our school system is not for educating…………it is for #1. giving teachers an overpaid job with too many perks and #2. controlling the next generation of voters by indoctrinating them in liberal ideology.
This isn’t new………..ever see Jay Leno ask his questions to the idiots (adults) on the streets? Parents have to look at homework and see that it’s done. Not always an easy job, we raised 4 children and because we really watched what they were learning and we talked around the dinner table, all are conservative today. The youngest is 47 and I’m proud of them all!! I will pass this particular article along to them. I’m sure it will disgust them as much as it did me!!
Some of these geniuses may be eligible to vote in November! The rest will be voting in a few years. Makes you wonder whether we shouldn’t have a standardized test for voting registration.
I’m going to go home and ask my three-year old these questions. I bet he’d do better than these muppets. But he can’t vote.
Oh, but the Liberals will moan and groan about having to pass an American intelligence test because it will “disenfranchise” certain socio-economic classes, and that it’s every American’s right to vote. HA! The very fact that half the people who vote have no idea who is on the ballot and/or just vote for whomever they were told to vote for is the reason we have so many unethical politicians in office today.
Videotape your toddler when he gives you the correct answers, so you can win $10,000 on America’s Funniest Videos and start that scholarship fund! God bless you for being a caring, concerned parent.
After 45 years of the teachers unions dictatorship we have now 3 generations of illiterate nincompoops voting for Mullah Obama and for the eco-commies of the Democrat Party. The simple and incotrovertible rule for all unions:
1) Given time every union will fall into the hands of either the Mafia (less dangerous since these can be bribed) or the communists;
2) The unions will then destroy the industry in which they “work”: see steel, automobile, textile, electronics, apparel, appliances, plumbing supplies, lighting, etc.;
3) Government employees unions are by definition criminal conspiracies against the people, and should therefore be routinely prosecuted under the RICO Act laws.
Teachers unions have brought our education from the first place in the world to the level of Zimbabwe.
Why insult the people of Zimbabwe?
Back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia under Ian Douglas Smith it probably had quite a good education system and was improving. Rhodesia was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. Unfortunately, due to international pressure and despite Smith’s objections (he was labeled a racist), in 1980 a “one man one vote” policy was instituted. The people elected Mugabe and there hasn’t been a fair election since. Zimbabwe is now a collapsed socialist country ruled by a despot.
An interesting case study in why democracy fails when you have large numbers of poor, uneducated masses who are promised something for nothing. And proof that the founders were right to put in place a representative government with checks and balances.
Now we have our own uneducated masses believing false promises. Will we get our own tyrant? Looking at the next generation of voters, it seems inevitable.
Marc Jeric , Don’t you mean incontrovertible rule for all unions instead of incotorvertible ?
It’s not just students. Jay Leno regularly gets such stupid answers when he goes “Jay Walking”
I would imagine the school was in Washington state, since the question was asked about the capital of Washington. Would have been funny if the student with the Olympia t-shirt hadn’t known that one.
btw, little known fact: There are actually three countries that border the US. In addition to Mexico and Canada, the Queen of Hawai’i ceded a small piece of the Big Island to Britain shortly before signing the treaty to join the US. So it is attached to the US, but you can only reach it by water.
And is it any wonder why an Ohio HS is passing out Pro Communist pamphlets to it’s students or the cowardly OWS fools are destroying public property and burning American Flags while complaining that THEIR rights are being violated?
This is more proof of the need to end the Dept of Ed and homeschool your kids
The biggest problem we have in this country — the reason we’re so close to losing our freedoms — is that the American people have not been taught the truth about our history and form of government. How can they appreciate something they don’t even know they have?
My History Chant is a big step in the right direction. It’s a 45-verse jump rope rap that teaches kids more about American history and government than is known by the average college graduate, congressman, or president. It’s one solution to 16 years of miseducation, and it can be memorized by an eight-year-old kid in only a few hours!
Best of all, it’s available online in its entirety, free of charge: http://politickles.com/blog/?p=5042
The price was marked @ three for $ 0.99. I picked up two and went to the cashier. Cashier didn’t know what to charge. She sent me back to pick up my third one. Let’s get rid of the Department of Education. They are not earning their pay.
To be fair, many times when items are priced as a “package deal” such as you describe, it’s to induce a higher total sale, or to move a greater quantity (albeit at a lower profit margin). Yes, you may have wanted two widgets, and they were priced at 3 for 99 cents, but the regular price may have been one for 45 cents. Do not assume the retailer would sell you two for 66 cents; it doesn’t work that way, depending on the particular “deal”.
If the regular price of a 20 oz. soda is $1.29, and the deal is 2 for $2.00, I am not going to get one for $1.00 either.
Alas, in the bigger picture, you are correct in your observation of youth not being able to do math in their head or make change without a computerized register, not thinking outside of the box and generally not being able to assert themselves to creatively solve problems. rrrrgh
I can only pray that the kids who were paying attention got edited out. How many times I have heard someone say that our kids deserve to be left a country as great as the one we inherited. The only one in this video who deserves anything is the kid who made it. Let the social decay continue.
I live here, my daughter just graduated last year. She took a college chemistry course and she had to drop out because she didn’t have the basics to understand it. I just got a ballot in the mail (because we have all mail voting) and it is a levy for the schools in our district. They want more money for their schools so they continue to not teach our kids. Our small school district has a very heavy union present and they despise anyone who claims they are conservative and I mean despise! I have another daughter that graduated 2 years ago and discovered we will have to pay about $ 2000 to bring her up to standard. WA state’s educational standard is a joke, but they don’t want to be reminded of it or they get very insulted.
This video of these kids is not a suprise to me . Most of them are ignorant, inconsiderate, selfish, self-asorbed, and basically out to lunch. Luckily, I have 3 grandchildren in Iowa that are beyond their grade level in intellect. and have very high scores on their ITBS. They are also being taught morals and value in life. So there is hope, just not for the left coast.
It is important for parents to realize that every moment they have with their children is a teaching moment. You can’t rely on any school system to teach them what they really need to know.
I’ve also noticed that with the advent of internet email/Facebook and cell phones, people no longer care to proofread what they write and just assume that sentence structure/typos/incorrect grammar don’t matter. When I was educated in the 60s and 70s, you got lower scores for writing with errors. People will judge you by the words you use and how you communicate. So, it’s not just the teachers’ fault, but also technology’s fault. Of course, I’m sure the homeschooling parents make sure that their students are “a cut above” the average texting, twittering, social media zombies.
Just got off the phone with a friend of mine from Chicago. He doesn’t know anything about the Georgia court case against Obama’s eligibility and he also believes the birth certificate copy Obama published isn’t a fake. He’s a 59 year old republican too. It’s not just the kids. Most Americans have their collective heads in the sand. Just too busy to care. I give up.
We need to do away with the Department of Education and ALL teacher’s unions. Schools need to be able to FIRE teachers that can’t teach.
They can – or they could if they had capable administrators who were more interested in what goes on in the school and classroom and were less concerned with how the public will vote in the next budget election. Contrary to popular ignorant gossip, teachers can be fired. It just takes a principal who is allowed and willing to do their job.
@kikk – it depends on where you live, I guess. About 30 years ago it took 7 years to get rid of a teacher who was dealing drugs in my little corner of Wisconsin.
Now do you see why so many people can be tricked into voting Democrat?
More enlightened VOTERS. It’s no wonder we have the morons that are governing this country.
And then people wonder why we homeschool our children!!!!!
My six year old can name the capital of every state in the union and knows there are 50 states and her three year old sister is fast catching up. What exactly are they teaching the kids in school these days?
Maybe you should volunteer to spend some time in a classroom on a weekly basis helping the teacher and the students. Then you will be able to answer your own question – and do something worthwhile at the same time.
@ kikk She/he is doing something worthwhile, she/he is homeschooling her/his own kids and raising them to be worthwhile citizens.
This person is supposed to do what with her/his kids while out at the local education indoctrination center volunteer teaching kids whose folks haven’t bothered to teach them any manners or anything else worthwhile?
How about it kikk? Do you?
We could save billions of wasted dollars, if we stopped throwing money at public schools. Unfortunately, these dummies are the rule, not the exception. I’ll bet they know how to put a condom on a banana though. They can probably quote Al Gore’s movie word for word.
All you good parents look at what you’re wasting your money on when they go to college.
Bring back the draft.
You really want people of this level of intelligence defending you, your family, and your country?
I believe it’s not always lack of intelligence, but lack of desire to learn. Put them in the military and they’ll learn fast enough if it means their lives!
@kikk – my you are a busy little beaver, aren’t you? How about if the army just uses them as ammo for the big guns?
Although we would like to think this is an exception to the rule, It is not….It IS the rule.
So many of our high schoolers are under-educated and it’s not just the teacher’s fault. The kids today have too much going on in their young lives to concentrate on education.
Generally both parents work, or it is a single working parent home. Kids don’t come home and do chores or homework anymore as we were expected to do. Many of today’s parents (not all) do not place responsibilities on their children because they either 1) feel guilty because work keeps them away from spending time with their kids.. or..2) they don’t want to make their kids feel like they have to spend their free time doing chores..so the parents do it themselves.
Kids from elementary school through high school have too many outside interests. They play sports, not just one ( my grandson plays 3 sports), they have friends they need to be with, they are constantly on their cell phones, video games, computers! Where do they find time to study or do homework? Parents take them on their word and when their report cards reflect indifferent grades, just accept that their loved ones are doing the best they can.
My daughter works for the Board of Education (not a teacher) and tells me that the problem also lies with the quality of teaching. Many are allowed to teach today even if they failed the qualifying tests and agreed to take them after the present school year. What does that tell you?
Well said, and well written!
Makes me wish I had become a teacher like my parents. My father loved the field of education–I mean really loved it! His students were some of the lucky few who got a teacher and professor who loved to learn new things and teach other to appreciate them. I got my interest in gardening from him, as well as photography and writing. I lacked confidence in my abilities, but I might have been an excellent teacher if I’d tried. Makes me sad how many jobs are filled by incompetents because of hiring quotas and lack of good candidates.
The biggest problem affecting the education of upcoming generations is that parents don’t commit to a marriage covenant for life and courts make it too easy to destroy the family–the most secure place in which a child can develop. Our country is full of selfish, greedy, hostile people who destroy lives all around them in the name of the god “Self”. We need to get back to wholesome family values, decry premarital sex and teen pregnancy, and promote citizenship and responsibility. Oh, and deport all the “freedom from religion” atheists!