People are getting stupider?

MOnica I challenge your assumption that people like me, who do not value IQ tests, also do not value intelligence! Without bright able and intelligent people where would we be? What I don't like is that some people value academic intelligence higher than other equally important intelligence which the world needs just as much.

Callgirl1’s post about her hairdresser not knowing about the Norwegian fjords reminded me that last year I told my cleaner that my family were going to Copenhagen for a long weekend. They had no idea where it was and I don’t think they had even heard of it.

When my mum was in a residential home one of the girls who had just been dispensing all the tablets was chatting to me it came up that my son lived in NZ Oh she said that’s near Canada isn’t it?
We had a uni graduate at work who was going on a tv quiz she put a world map up on the wall near her desk to try and learn some countries She actually hadn’t a clue where anywhere was
I had a big world map on the bedroom wall for the kids and grandkids to look at at bedtime, by the time they were three they knew all the continents and different countries that had familiar shapes like Italy the boot, New Guinea the dinosaur, India the triangle South America the ballet shoe on points etc etc and we used to play quizzes in the car

Unnecessary comment feelingmyage

I agree with posters who said that a lot of people are unaware of what is happening in the world around them. Does not mean they are of low intelligence. I do think for a lot of these so called celebrities they trade on appearing stupid as it gives them more publicity. One could argue that it was stupid to want publicity on these terms.

PECS it is not people like you, it is British society as a whole that has always been anti-academic and anti intellectual. There will always be those members of the society who are not anti-intellectual, but taking British society as a whole it is institutionally anti-intellectual.

TerriBull
Re Joey Essex. I can assure you that it's all an act. He's amazed that people fall for it

I’m loving this thread. BTW, what’s that nut on top of a walnut whip called?

We are training children to pass exams - not to learn. Very sad situation to be in I think - they are not encouraged to do anything other than the curriculum dictates. I have always read to my GC and when walking with them I point out the birds/animals/trees/flowers and other 'interesting' things as we go along and encourage them to ask questions. We have had some very interesting conversations at times

"Dumbing down" is not a new concept. It's been going on for years, and when popular culture is firmly fixated on what passes for entertainment, is it any wonder that "general knowledge" is the first casualty? Conversation is also a dying art, and the current standard of both spoken and written English is appalling , even from "Auntie BBC" on occasion.
At the risk of sounding elitist, I would also note that those of higher intellect who make up the professional classes are either breeding later or even not at all these days, whilst those who are perhaps less gifted in that department are still producing children, as ever. So the gene pool is weighted in their favour, with inevitable results for society at large. A depressing prospect, and I can't see it changing for the better in my time...

I agree that education is too narrow now. The Target driven Curriculum forces children to focus on their “targets”. Areas outside the core curriculum, such as art, music and even PE are seen as unimportant time wasting by many schools.
As we age we are luckily able to widen our general knowledge through reading books and newspapers, watching tv news, documentaries, travelling and just life! Older people usually have a far better general knowledge than younger people.

One of the guy's on Love Island is training to be a DOCTOR! God help us.

micmc A link would be really really nice to back up your ‘breeding’ statistics.

Try not to worry about your 9 year old grandson Grandma....my 11 year old grandson has been an avid reader since the age of 4, as was his mum , my daughter. He has become the first 5 million reader ever in his school ... that means he's read 5 million words....and has been tested on the books he's read with a 30 question paper afterwards! He got his first phone at Xmas and was overjoyed with it, he does play games but only allowed 1 house per day by his parents....and as long as he is allowed time to 'save' what he's playing...is very happy to put the phone down again. It is never allowed to go into his bedroom with him and goes on charge downstairs overnight. He takes it to school as emergency only! The school confiscates all phones into the office and they are given back at 3.30. They can't even get thier hands on them at lunchtime. If they need to make a phone call to parents or guardians the call has to be made in the office and the phone headed back to staff! They seem o have the situ well under control as do his parents at home. Parents giving clear guidelines is the order of the day, and rules adhered to. My daughter is very strict about phones AND tv watching. 1 programme a day before bed and that's it! The upside is two very contented ...well read kids with a great curiosity about the world. Another thing is....there is NO computer anywhere in house. All online stuff can be done from mobiles these days.

Loved the Love Island comments! ? I don’t feel too bad voting Leave considering we older ones were first told that the young ones were against it in large numbers. The majority of that age group didn’t even bother to go out and vote & with discussions like those above that I’m rather glad they didn't get involved!

I will quote from another blog called Quroa

"Richard Feynman was universally regarded as one of the fastest thinking and most creative theorists in his generation. Yet it has been reported - including by Feynman himself - that he only obtained a score of 125 on a school IQ test. I suspect that this test emphasized verbal, as opposed to mathematical, ability.

Feynman received the highest score in the country by a large margin on the notoriously difficult Putnam mathematics competition exam, although he joined the MIT team on short notice and did not prepare for the test.

He also reportedly had the highest scores on record on the math/physics graduate admission exams at Princeton. It seems quite possible to me that Feynman's cognitive abilities might have been a bit lopsided - his vocabulary and verbal ability were well above average, but perhaps not as great as his mathematical abilities.

I recall looking at excerpts from a notebook Feynman kept while an undergraduate. While the notes covered very advanced topics for an undergraduate - including general relativity and the Dirac equation - it also contained a number of misspellings and grammatical errors. I doubt Feynman cared very much about such things."
Posted by Jethro Cao

OFSTED take note!!

A different subject

I bought my son a computer when he was 8 years old - back in the early 80s. He played games for hours - in fact I've never seen him do anything else on one. I do not believe in banning play of any type as long as it's not physically harmful. Play is the gateway to learning and all bar a very few children have very inquisitive minds and will follow a learning path of their own given guidance but not instruction!.

He has had many computers since then - most he now builds himself. After doing a Computer Science degree he now has a very well paid job in the industry.

IQ scores are taken across a range of abilities and averaged. Just because you do exceptionally well on one test does not mean that that is your overall level of ability.

The story about Feynman proves nothing.

DS and a friend had educational assessments done and one child had a lower score than the other because he was dyslexic. On the individual tests they did equally well, except for the one that tested reading and spelling skills. Then one child got a lower score and a lower average. It is how averages work

Maryeliza 54.. Google "Reverse Darwinism". Lots of stuff out there.

The juxtaposition of this thread with the one immediately following ( until it gets deleted) says it all!

Sorry, oops not "Phobias" , the one about buying assignments.

Someone I know vaguely was going on holiday to a very well known Greek island. Having said the name, she asked Dh whether it was in the Canaries!!
She is a JP!!

I have a bit of a thing about maps and satnavs. . I'm sure reliance on satnavs and consequential inability of so many to read a map is contributing to general dimness. Dh loves our satnav but I always take the A to Z in case, and work out the route in advance - needed fairly often when the satnav has proved less than perfect.
I recently worked out a far better route than our previous one for our twice-yearly drive from Calais to near Dijon - worked out entirely from the map. (Of course Dh now thinks it was down to him...)

Dh used to have a fantastic sense of direction. (Unlike me, none at all, which is probably why I like maps!) He could literally visit a city for just a few hours, go back 10 years later and find his way.

Since having satnav on his smartphone for some years he relies on that when walking around a city, and his sense of direction is far from what it was. I swear that reliance on that gadget has caused his sense of direction to atrophy from lack of use.

mic on google I could find people who believe the earth is flat - I was talking about a specific link- maybe the ONS which supported your contention?

There's a lot of snobbery on here today, and when people start talking about 'breeding' and 'class' a lot of unpleasant theories that I thought were dead and buried spring to mind. It's been nice, but I don't think Gransnet is for me. Good luck to all and goodbye.

MAWBROON

What's your IQ?

Geography is taught nowadays, at least here in Denmark, as a subject that deals with climate change and weather and with natural phenomena such as earthquakes, fault lines etc. rather than being about countries and their cities, produce or industries. This means children are woefully ignorant of the things we knew when we were at school, but when I was 11 I could not have told you where the St Andreas fault line is, or what it is! Most schoolchildren know all about it today.

More stupid versus stupider: really belongs in Pendant's corner, but both are grammatically correct. The rule is that adjectives containing two or more syllables are compared using more and most: more intelligent , most intelligent, but that commonly used words of two syllables, which you must admit, stupid is, can be compared using either form.