Video: College Students Can't Identify Reagan

Idiocracy was a pretty dumb movie, but it had its moments. The opening narration offers a cautionary tale for the future:

As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

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The Wikipedia entry for the film describes the level to which humanity has sunk 500 years into the future:

The human population has become morbidly stupid, speak only low registers of English competently, and are profoundly anti-intellectual.

Why wait 500 years when you can go to the University of Maryland and show students a picture of Ronald Reagan, asking them to identify the photo?

President Ronald Reagan is one of the most famous Americans of the 20th century. Between his acting career and his eight years as president, you would think that his face would be instantly recognizable to anyone with even a basic knowledge of recent American history.

You would think.

As it turns out, a lot of college students at the University of Maryland had absolutely no clue who Reagan was when they were shown a picture of America’s 40th president.

A few historically-literate students recognized Reagan right away. But, the majority of those I showed the picture to were completely flummoxed or provided me with wild guesses. Some of those guesses included: John Wayne, Kenny Rogers, George Bush and some guy named Fred Moore. (I have no idea who Fred Moore is, but he sounds like a pretty cool dude.)

Some got close – including one young lady who asked if he was “…some kind of president.”

At a certain point, I decided that informing the students that they were totally ignorant of recent American history would just be too embarrassing. So, when they gave me a wrong answer, I just told them they were right and let them go about their day, having no idea that they know less about American history than a 4th grader who sits in the back of the classroom and eats paste.

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Two or three times a year, a similar experiment is carried out at other campuses and we are shocked, shocked,  I say, that young people attending college can be so profoundly stupid.

Surveys going back to the 1950s show alarming numbers of college students being unaware of when the Civil War was fought, who Thomas Jefferson was, or what the Declaration of Independence is (many confuse it with the Constitution).

I will bet that some of those kids in the video who don’t have a clue who Reagan was are going to make a gazillion dollars inventing something that would never occur to you or me. They will be captains of industry, or tech moguls. They will be lawyers, doctors, or even engineers.

The point being, they are probably plenty smart in the field they have chosen to study. That’s why even though school has been dumbed down, these and other students retain knowledge that is essential to them, rather than information that we think should be essential. It makes them stupid voters and stupid citizens, but we’ve always had low-information voters and probably always will.

It’s sad, but most Americans care little for their past. And while this has allowed us to look to the future unencumbered by ghosts of past failures, it also blinds us to some realities that end up causing us to repeat historical mistakes.

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