Make thinking sexy again.
Did you know your political views are dependant on your intelligence? Scientist have proven that there is a link between intelligence and your political views. University of Minnesota Twin Cities conducted the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (SIBS) with over 300 families between 1998 and 2003, with a follow up study done 2017 to 2023. This study proved they could predict political views based upon IQ and polygenic scores for cognitive performance, finding that higher IQs and cognitive scores were associated with liberalism and lower authoritarianism within families.
America is having an intelligence crisis; teachers are sounding the alarms through social media about the staggering illiteracy rates of high schoolers. This is also demonstrated through the political and economic standing of our country right now.
National Center for Education Statistics conducted the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a large-scale study, for the United States between 2022 and 2023, which showed both literacy and numeracy rates were dropping since the 2017 and 2012 studies. The NCES states, "Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased from 19 to 28 percent and in numeracy from 29 to 34 percent."
This study also showed that these scores were directly affected by social economics, income and race. For both literacy and numeracy, the White–Black and White-Hispanic score gaps were larger in 2023 than in 2017, showing a decline in literacy rates for marginalized groups. Proving even further how deeply racism is sewn into our society; schools with predominantly Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students receive less funding than predominantly white schools. According to House.gov's EdBuild 23 Billion Report, "there remains a $23 billion gap between white and nonwhite school districts, even though they serve the same number of children."
Education is being gutted even further while we are at record level highs of adults who can't read above a first grade level. The decreasing literacy is why we are sliding into fascism, because without the ability to read for yourself, you have to trust what others tell you. That is why it seems impossible to get through to most of the MAGA supporters at this point. They are reliant on the information being fed to them, they believe Trump because they don't know who else to. They believe that those who hold powerful positions of authority are right because they don't have the ability to know otherwise.
Thomas Gray's famous line, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," perfectly encapsulates this predicament. Those who choose to follow the reports of Fox News, and worship the ground Trump walks on, truly do believe he is going to be the one to save them. What other hope can they have without the skills to educate themselves? Which means the burden remains on those of us who are literate and capable of cognitive functions.
Can you imagine a world where no one is capable of stringing words together, to the point that they can't even say a food order? That is the direction our current Secretary of Department of Education and former WWE co-president, Linda E. McMahon, is pushing our country. She has implemented extreme funding cuts, along with integration of AI as a teaching model, having human teachers act only as supervisors of a factory line. These kids utilize ChatGBT for every thought and question, and the only amount of time they are willing to wait or spend on any task is two seconds.
The constant immediate drops of dopamine we have taken in through TikTok and social media feeds, we have grown from the pleasure of searching for answers, wondering, and imagination. We want instant results and success, if it flops, abandon ship immediately. The truth, frustration and boredom are the two most crucial factors of learning and cognitive development.
In 2012, I was pregnant with my eldest child and wanted to be as prepared as possible, and started working on an AA in Early Childhood Development (ECD) at Sierra College. It truly was an obvious sign that I was on the spectrum, must get research from the most trusted source and have a certificate proving I am proficient in the field of child care taking. During the pregnancy, I remember how much my professor would emphasis to me that frustration is necessary, you shouldn't rescue a child from their own learning experience.
This same teacher also was highly opposed to the cry it out method for infants, so this was never about ignoring a child's needs. This was about not being the type of parent who does so much for they kid, they child never learns for themselves. The type of parent who will call their kid's employer because their adult child is too scared of a phone conversation. Children require boredom and frustrations, and yet we keep shoving screens in their faces to keep them "behaving" in public spaces.
In 2012 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation for screen times was 2 hours or less for all elementary aged children. Then by 2015, when I had my youngest child, that had dropped to be for only two years and younger. Now, the AAP has given up completely on trying to regulate screen time, now trying to push "balance" use and "social media literacy training." And this isn't because they truly believe screens are helpful to small children, we have numerous studies proving otherwise. One in which my eldest was a test subject, she was one of the few children they included in screen studies because her use was heavily restricted, she wasn't allowed to see a movie until she was almost 18 months old. We then limited use of screen time to less than two hours a day.
My eldest was typically out performing their peers due to having a higher recognition of real life objects, and how to use them. Children who were given screens and "baby programing" struggled with recognizing items even though they had witness them used in shows. My eldest understood because they spent more time physically exploring their environment in comparison to their peers. Infants development depends on the use of their senses to fully understand their surroundings and objects.
They are sponges, but if you are only feed their visual sense and auditory senses but nothing else, then they only understand it in those settings. For example, a child who sees a ball being used on a screen, and hears the ball bounce off the ground, the sound isn't making a clear distinction of the source. Every sound is coming from a speaker, so the child might miss the connection between the ball bouncing and the sound it makes. A child who sees a ball being played with in person though, they can tell that the sounds is being made by the contact to the ground, and hear people referring to the object as a ball. The child may try to chase the ball, noticing how fast it can roll, touch the surface, smell the rubber, and taste to see it leaves a slightly odd flavor behind. Now it is fully integrated into that child's memory bank. This may seem small, but without these critical thinking skills being developed we are reaching a critical moment in which society is tipping into dependency on technology that wants to betray us.
Professors, college level professors, are now describing students having an inability to string conscious thought together. Mid sentence they lose their train of thought and have to ask for help as to what they were even speaking about. So how can we move the needle back towards progress while being pulled so far back in time? We need to meet people where they are, and I don't mean in accepting bigotry or their political ideology. But we do need to give them the skills to find out for themselves. The solution is to teach them how to read, how to comprehend and interpret written language.
If you are a parent, it is especially important to remove AI from your children's devices. Talk to them about the importance of utilizing their brains, this may seem basic common sense but we no longer have a society that understands what was once commonly known. Read with your kid beyond picture books, and don't stop at the reading part, ask them questions afterwards. Encourage them to analyze storylines and metaphors. Engage their senses in order to activate their neuro pathways by asking questions involving smell, taste and visualization.
One great way to do that is through comic books and graphic novels. You are being fed more sensory information and allows the reader to become more immused into the storyline. They can feel, see and empathize with the characters emotional expressions. This also helps in improving emotional intelligence as they begin to learn how to read body language while reading inflection be expressed through font styles.
Volunteer as a tutor, read open source (copyright free) publications on streaming platforms, host a poetry club, or even post vocabulary like Beverly Mahon. The reality is that we won't be able to get out of this political mess until people have the ability to think for themselves again. This doesn't require being just academically smart, because reading alone isn't enough.
Critical thinking skills are used in cognitive intelligence when planning out a sports play, in visual-spatial intelligence when designing a physical space, in linguistic-verbal intelligence when freestyling a rap or having a debate, in logical-mathematical intelligence when selling a weight-based product, in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence when doing construction work on a building, in musical intelligence when noticing a melody you heard in a different song, and in interpersonal intelligence when empathizing with another human even though you have never had their experience.
The less we use our brains to think, the less our society will have a chance of living in a free democracy. Education has always been the strongest tool against authoritarianism. It is time to start equipping our minds to become the weapons of thought against this fascist machine. Make thinking for yourself sexy again.
