"Kids these days just aren't being challenged enough," a veteran teacher laments to me.  "It used to be that they had hard work.  You could expect them to rise to high expectations.  Now I have to water down everything." 

Are we really dumbing down our education?  Do teachers fail to challenge the current generation of students?  Have we grown soft resulting from the self-esteem craze of the seventies and eighties?

The reality is that education is not easier or harder than it was in the past.  It's simply different.  We live in a sedentary, amusement-driven culture, so PE classes have become easier than when there were more children in shape.  As we transition into a digital and image culture, the world of print grows more foreign - hence the documented decline in our youth's vocabulary (which, incidentally, corresponds to the decline in our media's vocabulary, professional vocabulary, etc.) Many students have a poor concept of goegraphy and have not memorized many historical dates.

On the other hand, students can grasp concepts quickly, synthesize information instantaneously and use higher level thinking skills better than previous generations.  More students graduate and a higher percentage excel in courses such as Anatomy and Physiology, Physics and Calculus - classes that were once relegated only to colleges.  True, they have not memorized specific dates, but they know where to find the dates in Google and many of them have a working knowledge of how to identify the bias and innacuracies on the web.

Furthermore, graduation rates are higher, because there is a push to reach every student.  What this means is that lower-level students now recieve remedial work; which seems better in my opinion than dropping out.  In addition, teachers now realize the need to differentiate instruct for Special Education and ELL students and to include multiple inteligences.  What traditionalists fail to realize is that education has not improved or declined, but transformed as we've moved into a globalized, digital culture.

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