And there it is. A new study has found that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the average American citizen is now on the decline for the first time in nearly 100 years. Again, is it any wonder?

Of course, there’s no wonder. We can start with the left’s insidious drive to dumb down public school education, curricula standards, and elimination of minimum graduation requirements, all in the name of promoting so-called equity and inclusion.

Or, as it was called in saner times, the soft bigotry of low expectations.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the study, published in the psychology journal Intelligence, Analyzed the time period between 2006 and 2018. Unsurprisingly, the study’s authors noted that the greatest decline in IQ occurred among Americans between the ages of 18 and 22, and “may” be due to poor quality education. I know — try to control your shock and amazement.

Look, when you “teach” (indoctrinate) students to believe that getting the right answers in math is “racist” — rather than the process used to get to the wrong answer — it’s just a matter of time.

According to the report, the findings could indicate “that either the caliber of education has decreased across this study’s sample and/or that there has been a shift in the perceived value of certain cognitive skills,” according to the report.

Why not both?

So we must ask ourselves, what’s changed? Did teenagers and young adults simply just get dumber for no apparent reason, or can we point with specificity to the dumbing down of public education — and the declining educational quality of teachers who first believed that mixing their personal politics into their classroom “instruction” was reasonable and that finally full-blown woke was a “moral” requirement.

I’ve written previously about the decline in honors programs across America. In one recent example, the Culver City School District in Los Angeles eliminated honors curricula from high schools in the name of racial equity. The district rightly faced a backlash from parents of honor students who lost opportunities to enroll in accelerated programs. One parent observed:

It’s not working and we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

The hateful parent is obviously a racist. [sarc]

In August 2021, then-Oregon Gov. Kate Brown eliminated statewide math, reading, and writing proficiency standards for high school graduates. A Brown spokesman at the time offered this lame excuse: “SB 744 gives us an opportunity to review our graduation requirements and make sure our assessments can truly assess all students’ learning.”

Translation: Eliminating basic requirements makes high school graduation more equitable for people of color.

Colleges and universities across the country, from Harvard to Princeton to Columbia University, and of course Berkeley in California have lowered their admission standards and eliminated entrance exam requirements.

In the case of Harvard, three entrance exam minimum requirements exist, with the top requirement for Asians, followed by white applicants, then applicants of color. In addition, Harvard says that biases arising from subjective criteria such as “likability” could be eliminated by emphasizing objective measures over exam scores. That doesn’t even make sense, and it’s utterly insane.

Meanwhile, real-life Dumb and Dumber continues to play out across America — compliments of the Age of Woke.