1. A school enrolled 120 pupils and the number of boys was two thirds of the number of girls. How many of each sex were enrolled?
2. Who first discovered the following places: Florida, Pacific Ocean, Mississippi River, St. Lawrence River?
3. Locate the Erie Canal; what waters does it connect, and why is it important?

The three questions above are just a small sample of an eighth grade examination from the year 1912. It is also the reason why my fellow classmates let out an irritated groan as I handed each of them a copy of this test during CCP.

“Please guys,” I begged, hoping they would participate in my experiment to determine if the literacy in Americans decreases as time passes.

They looked at me with blank stares. I finally understood how my teachers felt.

“Please,” I added again.

And they all huffed and looked down at the test on their desks. With reluctance, they took the test from 1912, the same test that eighth graders took in Bullitt County, Kentucky schools.

And then they finished the tests and handed them to me.

I graded them and the results were as expected.

Only a few of them passed the exam, with most of them giving up on the test altogether.

But at least they tried. That is quite admirable.

As a nation, the intelligence in Americans is quickly declining, leaving the elders to know more than Generation Z. According to the Educational Testing Service, adult Americans have difficulty in solving problems and have difficulty in understanding communication and numbers. Compared to the rest of the world, America is falling behind when it comes to testing and intelligence.

It is a sad reality, but Americans are becoming dumber.

According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Americans students are not the brightest crayon in the crayon box. The OECD has a program called Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA evaluations education systems worldwide by testing fifteen year olds and up. PISA has sections on mathematics, problem solving, and financial literacy. The average of the OECD testing is a score of 334.

What did America receive?

The lowest score of all 65 countries that tested, a score of 323, which is way below average. Canada is above us in the race with a score of 336. Japan second with a score of 342, and Sweden winning the race of intelligence with a score of 346.

And I think the saddest part of finding out that we, Americans, are below every other country wasn’t shocking to me.

A part of me knows that people are beginning to pull away from intelligence like it is some deadly disease. According to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, 77-percent of public school students did not know that George Washington was the first president and they didn’t know Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence. Twenty nine-percent of people couldn’t identify Joe Biden as the vice president, and 44-percent of Americans cannot describe the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights–the most important part in the constitution that provides the first ten amendments that give us our freedom and certain citizen rights; such as the right of a trial, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to not be searched without a warrant.

This is our history, people. We need to know these things, because without our history, the history that made our nation what it currently is,is nothing then. It is like it never happened and where would we be if it didn’t?

Furthermore, 18-percent of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth. And people are wondering why we are below average in all of the worldwide testing that we take.

This decline is treacherous, upsetting, and almost shameful. Sixty-eight- percent of public school children in the U.S. cannot read proficiently by the time they hit the end of third grade. And barely 50-percent of students are actually ready for college level reading.

Perhaps that is because the lack in reading among students. The amount of 17-year olds who read nothing (unless it is required by school, but let’s be honest here; even then they don’t read that) has doubled over the years. And 55-percent of Americans between the ages 18 to 24 read a book for pleasure while more than 40 percent of Americans under the age of 44 will not read a single book this year.

With that being said, what is the cause for the lack of intelligence in Americans? Is it with the lack of a challenging curriculum or perhaps the lack of care in people?

I’d say it’s a combination of both.

People are do not care about education anymore. It is like anyone can graduate because the curriculum isn’t challenging enough and anyone can get a job. Because of this, people do not want to learn. People do not want to understand. Since we have such advanced technology, people feel that the technology can be the brain for us–but isn’t that the most scariest thought ever? Isn’t it scary to have a thing that humans create be the brain for us when we can possibly be just as smart as that human made creation?

Read a Ray Bradbury book and you will have the same fear I have with that idea of technology being our brains.

Anyway, each of us have a brain and a mind for a reason. I believe that everyone of us are extremely intelligent and have such amazing potential to succeed in anything that we do. We have these fantastic brains to learn and to understand. We have these brains to increase in our intelligence, but how can we do that when we are not exposed to enough challenge from the curriculum and when we do not push ourselves?

Learning is not just about expanding in our knowledge. It is also about expanding in the type of person we are.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Intelligence plus character–that is the true goal of education.”

You can have both. You can have an amazing character, but still have all the intelligence that is needed. We just all have to care about the future and we have to push ourselves into wanting to learn. We have to have the determination to want to succeed and take all we can learn.

What is going to happen in twenty years from now when technology is all we have left?

As the years go by, so does the Americans’ intelligence, so where are we left?

What will happen to our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren?

Will we become a Ray Bradbury book, with the technology taking our intelligence?

Perhaps read and you tell me.