This article highlights, at last, a key consequence of the dumbing down of eduction :

Is America Becoming an “Idiocracy?”

Here is the part I wanted to highlight :

We are mentally lazy. Our education has conditioned our brains to circumvent deliberative and creative thinking wherever possible through rote memorization and robotic learning of formulas and principles. We have not been taught how to think for ourselves, we have been taught what to think based on what past thinkers thought. We are taught to think reproductively, not productively. We have been trained to seek out the neural path of least resistance, searching out responses that have worked in the past, rather than approach a problem on its own terms. This kind of thinking is dehumanizing and naturalizes intellectual laziness which promotes an impulse toward doing whatever is easiest or doing nothing at all.

The narrow, prescriptive nature of lessons, coupled with equally narrow exam methods and the teaching to these exams kills our creative and exploratory natures. Lateral thinking is almost a lost art …