Idiggory wrote:
Even if I'm wrong, and the army is populated by nothing but intelligent people, the fact still stands that I've never said the army is stupid. :)
And I wasn't disputing that.
Idiggory wrote:
83% of army personnel don't even have a high school diploma, or GED equivalent (which includes 15 college credits). Right now, the lowest army service members have scores as low as 26.
The Army allows more recruits to enlist with a GED than any other branch. In Fiscal Year 2008, only 83 percent of new Army recruits had a high school diploma (or at least 15 college credits), comparted with the Department of Defense (DOD) average of 92 percent.
1. You misquoted, which should have been blatantly obvious to you. Did you really think that 83% of the Army didn't have a high school diploma or GED equivalent?
2. The drops of the standards of recruitment vary if we're at war. It's a historical pattern that you can look up if you want. Since we're a volunteer Army, recruiting standards drop during war time and bonuses and incentives rise. As we leave war, the standards go back up, bonuses goes away and the dirt bags are kicked out. I'm not equating homosexuals as dirtbags, but that's the like when people "come out" during or before a deployment, they make them serve their deployment, then kick them out when they get back. The military WILL use you as number, that doesn't mean that you're the standard.
3. Standardized tests only test how well you can take that particular test and nothing else.
4. You have no idea on the difficulty on the exam to know if "30" or "50" is even good or what it represents. Most people that I know, took the ASVAB during school with no preparation just to get out of class. That's exactly what I did. I had no clue what it was. Others didn't and I'm sure many of them didn't even take it seriously, since they were just wanting to get out of class. People have study classes months out with practice tests and retakes on other exams such as the ACT/SAT/GRE/LSAT.
Most people that I've talked to didn't actually study for the ASVAB, they just took it. For the longest, I believed the ASVAB to be a recruiting tool disguised as a test, just to get your point of contact and tell you how awesome you scored on the exam.
5. Lowering the minimum score doesn't equate to everyone receiving that score. Your link said as low as 26 with a WAIVER. That means, 26 isn't the standard, but for certain scenarios, one can still be accepted with a 26 score and a waiver.
Idiggory wrote:
In retrospect, stupid wasn't the word to use (since I can't comment on how idiotic they are--that was you coloring my opinion). But I'll stand by my estimation that the majority of military service members are of below-average intelligence.
No problem. And I'll stand by my statement that you're ignorant and have nothing to back up your claim. For starters, I'm sure you just looked that information up, which means that you didn't know any of that before you made your opinion(ignoring my counters above).
Secondly, what are you comparing that too? Where are the stats of civilian scores? How can you measure the intelligence of the military based on an exam that primarily only the military takes with no scores of the people outside the military?
You're just being ignorant and prejudice. Anyone can google a stat to support their claim, hence why I argued against statistics. Here's a stat from 2006.
In the wake of Sen. John Kerry’s public gaffe regarding how smart our soldiers in Iraq might or might not be; the question in the minds of most voters ? beyond whether not the Massachusetts Senator’s comments were intentionally maligning American soldiers or not ? seems to be “how smart are our soldiers?”
The answer is, “very.”
In the modern American military, between 93 and 95 percent of current recruits have high school diplomas, compared with 75 to 85 percent of their military-age civilian counterparts. Those averages are based on far too many studies to cite here, but no one on either side of the political fence is disputing the numbers ? though some may not want to promote them as much as others ? yet it is only one measure of just how smart our young men and women in uniform truly are.
According to a U.S. Department of Defense document, Who is Volunteering for Today’s Military, “nearly two-thirds of today’s recruits are drawn from the top-half of America in math and verbal aptitudes.”
You haven't provided any reason why you established your belief that majority of the U.S. Army is "below intelligent". You just made some crap up and went with it. That's cool, just don't proclaim it as being the truth.
Edited, Jul 3rd 2011 3:58pm by Almalieque Edited, Jul 3rd 2011 4:00pm by Almalieque