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In defense of kids (my wife is a teacher...) 1) Back in the good old days (1973, when I graduated from HS) a child could come to first grade and be taught how to read. Nowadays, they teach reading and counting in pre school. Are kids dumber? No. 2) Same good old days... I learned how to type in 7th grade. (This bit of inspired genius on the part of my parents was a last shot at getting someone to be able to read what I wrote... because I flunked Palmer Penmanship for two years running!) My kid learned how to type at the tender age of eight on a computer. 3) Geography point: In 1980, whilst merrily blowing your tax dollars earning a geography degree, I spent a grim semester drawing maps. If you think it's easy, try freehanding a scaled map of the coast of Maine... tracing NOT allowed. In 1992, my eight year old called up the same map on the Net... and proceeded to use data manipulation to enhance the coast of Maine. 4) In 1974 I joined the US Army. This was right after Vietnam, and the Army was widely reported as taking anyone who could walk and breathe at the same time. (The walk and chew gum test was a career ender for a lot of volunteers.) In 1988 I commanded a company of recruiters in Arizona. The standard for enlistment was a High School Diploma and passing the physical. Those kids weren't dumb... and they were making probably their first adult decision in their lives. I don't doubt for an instant that stupid people exist. (I collect a lot of them for a living.) And the argument that Americans, or people in general, are becoming stupider has been going on for years. In 1968, my father worried about my choosing Spanish as a foreign language... he wondered why Latin wasn't offered at the High School level. And for really stupid people, all I have to do is turn on CNN, watch people on the Gulf Coast with water lapping up around their homes... saying dumb things like, "All I want is my electricity back." Erik
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