The Lobotomy Factories

CBS reports:

It’s an education bombshell.Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.

In my TEDx talk, I discussed the decline in our educational system. I said:

[Our textbooks have been dumbed down. The average 8^th grader is now reading from text books at the 5^th grade reading level. The literature text required in 12th grade English classes is nowadays simpler than the average 8th grade reader published before World War II... 

There was  a 50 point drop in Mean Verbal SAT scores between 1962 and 1979.... There has been another 10 point drop since 2000, when internet access went mainstream...

The number of US adults capable of reading at the 10^th grade level or above dropped from 54% in 1949 to 20% in 2003. The number capable of reading at even the 6^th grade level dropped from 83% in 1949 to 52% in 2003. In other words, more Americans could read at the 10^th grade level in 1949 than can read at the 6^th grade level today.

This is despite the fact that in 1949 the average adult had only 8.5 years of education, while in 2003 the average adult had 12.5 years of education. Four and a half years of additional education have not been enough to compensate.

What do you call a school system that results in four out of five of the graduates being unable to read, write, or do math? A lobotomy factory.