The Dumbing of America

Great Debates
41

Again I refer to Atlas Shrugged, where Ayn Rand envisions a very socialist world of “Bread and Circuses,” and where the intellectual elite finally rebel and stop providing their talent to the world.

When I read it, is was very depressing – and it still is; I don’t want to give the impression that I follow Rand’s dreary philosophy.

But I have to admit this: when I read it, it seemed very far-fetched. Now… well, these days it seems as though it maight not be entirely outside the bounds of possibility.

  • Rick
42

Remember - “Bread and Circuses” is a Roman term, used under the empire, neither a socialist state (strictly speaking), nor a democracy (as if we can’t have both)…
The point is that the dumbing of a demographic until they actually vote for people who are not looking out for their interests is an indispnsible tool in America.

I think hysteria about Marxism, steering Labor away from the Internationale and handing it over to the Mob, etc. are all part of this phenomenon. Thank TV which I think actually does something funny to the viewer. No conspiracy there - an ad exec once said that once the boob tube is flickering in that alpha wave inducing frequency, you can sell anything… But it was done with the press too - Thank W R Hearst.

I do expect rich reps. to want an economy that favors them, makes sense. But where is the simple greed motivation from the have nots? They’ve laid down and gone to sleep. Too frazled to vote? No choices, probably that’s the issue. The middle is now far to the right of where is was in the 60’s and 70’s not to mention the 30’s.

Another issue is monoligualism. With merger mania added in, you can be sure that the revolution WILL NOT BE TELEVISED on American TV. Neither was the Gulf War, etc. like Vietnam was. And speaking one language, Americans will have to belly up to Disney/CNN for all of their information. Just wait, soon, Capitol Cities will merge with Time Warner. At the very least learn French so you can read LeMonde on the Internet, before it’s too late.

43

Please tell me you are kidding. CNN was losing money until the Gulf War, - its 24/7 coverage that glued many viewers is responsible for many fortunes. The gulf war is without doubt the best covered war ever - I mean, there was real time footage of bombs dropping the night it started - that has never happened before.

44

Er… what revolution?

As for your assertion that the Gulf War was not televised on American TV – you must have been watching different channels than I was. CNN made their reputation with that coverage - remember Wolf Blitzer standing bravely in the foreground of AAA fire? Remember the Scuds vs. the Patriots?

But I’m glad this thread bubbled its way back to the forefront! Thanks!

  • Rick
45

Rick:

Cooper is evidently completely unaware of the colossal collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Now all that’s left is that beautiful workers’ paradise of North Korea. All the other ostensibly communist countries are already far along in capitalist economies.

46

I’m sorry Monty, what? Rick was not responding to me, but to RobRoy. Heck, Rick echoed my message - if it wasn’t 8 minutes apart I’d be suing him for plagarizm :slight_smile:

47

Thanks, Cooper. You’re correct. Sorry about that.

48

The Gulf War was nothing compared to VietNam.

Missles in the air at night - doesn’t cut it in showing the carnage. It was a good move to devote so much time to non-coverage like that. When the child company (NBC) told us the “smart bombs” made by the parent company (GTE) hit the target, we could BELIEVE that it was a military outpost cause they told us so.

The revolution - yes, the revolution in Guatemala and Chiapas which was hardly covered on English speaking TV, until it was over…and wahtever revolution occurs in the future (Irian Jaya,etc.), the coverage will be only as complete as a giant media conglomerate thinks it should be. There will not be a market place of ideas presented. You may not mind. I do.

49

It won’t be brought to us in 4 parts by Xerox with no commercial interruptions?

50

People that say things like this will be first against the wall when the revolution comes :slight_smile:

51

How about this.
Hear in New Mexico, teachers are only required to pass thier final exam for their teachers degree with a 67%. In most classes they will teach that would be a D. Our kids are dumb, because we are using dumb teachers.
Don’t get me wrong. Teachers have a hard job. But if they can;t do better that a D average, do we really want them teaching our kids?

Heaven…One to beam up!

52

Sorry about this, royalbill, but your post is as good an instance as any to get this off my chest. Why is it that the people who complain that other people are dumb are the very ones who can’t spell or punctuate themselves? Your first sentence should have ended with a question mark. In your second sentence you mispelled “here” and “their”. I think that the phrase should be “teaching degree” rather than “teachers degree” (or at least teachers’ degree). And while I realize that writing “can;t” instead of “can’t” is just a typo (as perhaps was “thier”), don’t you care enough about how your posts look to proofread them?

Does anyone actually have any real data about whether there has been a dumbing of America? I asked two friends of mine several years ago if there exists any accurate, non-anecdotal statistics which compares the performance of schools in the U.S. today with those of twenty or thirty or fifty or whatever years ago. One of them works for the U.S. Department of Education compiling statistics. The other has written a book about American high schools that was published by a conservative foundation. They both agreed that there were no such statistics. All the numbers that you hear people mention are only from a single time period and so can’t be compared with other periods. Most of what people give as evidence are merely anecdotes, and anecdotes are not proof.

I have always suspected that most of the complaints about education in the U.S. today are merely upper-class resentment about the ubiquity of education these days. It looks to me like people noticing that people from poorer backgrounds and blacks and Hispanics and Asians and women are slowly beginning to receive education in something close to the proportion they deserve. This has caused other people to turn up their noses and say, “Well, if those sorts of people are getting educated, obviously the educational standards must be going down.”

53

I’m not sure if this counts as ‘actual data’ but I do think it’s germane to the discussion…
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000121/od/incompetence_1.html

The title of the article is ‘Incompetent People Rarely Know They Are’.

-sb

They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.

54

Actually, I don’t think Americans are dumber than any of our foreign counterparts; I think America has failed to adequately update the curricula with the times, and are more highly distracted. I’ll illustrate the second part first, then show how it impacts the first.

Consider: in the '20s through the early '50s, radio was the main media for everyone. And radio is an audio media, whereas humans are highly visual.

Along comes Television. Now Americans attention is divided more and more between a (relatively) boring textbook and the instant gratification stimuli of TV. Coupled with the gloom and doon seriousness of the Cold War, and then the bloody, aimless meandering of Korea and Vietnam, Americans turned to TV for some lighthearted distraction.

Hence the age of, oh…let’s call it “Distractivism”; and consumer-oriented corporate America responded.

Now enter the computer, with the internet, and Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64. “Must-See-TV” and all the “Worlds Scariest/Worst/Funniest” reality based shows. With this visual glut of gratuitous titillation, is it any wonder why boring school textbooks are set aside as soon as the kids get home from school?

So, in summary, I’d say that Americans aren’t any smarter or dumber than anyone else in the world, just more highly distracted to the point that studies have suffered, and we’re less highly educated and informed than maybe Japanese or Chinese or Germans.

Now, in some select few school districts, the computer and TV is being used in the classroom to make teaching an interactive visual experience. I don’t know if results are in yet, but I suspect that those schools are getting better results than a school using a more traditional teaching technique.

Just my uninformed, uneducated armchair hypothesis.

<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
“An opinion for every occasion…”:stuck_out_tongue:

55

I get disturbed when I start agreeing with things like the Dumbing of America.

Isn’t it a fact of life that the older and wiser you get the more idiotic everybody else seems, especially the younger generation?

I don’t want to be an old fart, so I’m just gonna pretend everything is fine, and kids these days have it all figured out.

That way I can still be cool!

Often wrong… NEVER in doubt

56

People who say that - or people who quote those who would say that? :slight_smile:

57

Interesting article. I’d apply it to the discussion in the following way:

People as youths believed they were competent when they were not - as they gained competency it became clear that youths were not competent, but they never reevaluated their own or their peers competency when they were younger. Hows that for a hypothesis?

58

I think the cultural component (mentioned in that article) is significant.

An Irish friend of mine thought the way Americans toot their own horns in job interviews (we were recruiters at the same firm) was ridiculous and would be laughed out of an interview (or mistrusted) in cynical (this is a complement) Ireland.

I also find Latin cultures (Hispanic and Italian) to praise boys and instill a level of self confidence that is almost ridiculous. Unfortunately, I think stern Protestant cultures like British and German, seem to do the opposite - if I may make cultural generalizations.

59

David, God of Tadpoles:

I’ve got a hundred on Little Benjamin. Those other losers don’t know the answers without reading it off the card. Alex can’t even pronounce all that stuff. Ben is the Bomb.

RobRoy:

Where did you hear that? Was it said with any hint of seriousness? I wonder if that’s possible. There are, I believe, laws against subliminally slipping ads between the frames, but pulsing the picture at such and such a frequency would certainly get past any inspector type. I wonder if you could actually induce a response in the brain wave pattern of an unsuspecting boob tuber. Should this belong in the conspiracy thread?

Wendell Wagner:
Where did the racism/sexism assertions come from?

spankboy:
Only a fool thinks himself wise. The wise person knows he is a fool.

Don’t even get me started about Kansas. Or is that a different thread also?

Does the average person need to know more than he used to? Physicists (I’m not one [much anyway]) need to know way more than they did 100 years ago. Matter of fact, at the turn of the last century several prominent people were concluding that mankind knew all there was to know. I’m not even sure they knew all of the existing elements. Recently the scientists at CERN created element 114 (twice) which lasted for 30-ish seconds before it decayed. At a minimum we’ve all got to know one more element.

Anyways (I did that intentionally), I’ve always enjoyed rising to a good challenge whether it’s in a classroom or shooting pool. I don’t think I would feel challenged in a group-cooperative based class format. Furthermore, it’s not open ended enough and those really excellent students are probably forced to wait on the lowest common denominator. When I was in 3rd grade there was a specific event that convinced me that I did not belong in That-Place-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named. There was one good thing though, we had packet-based individualized math. When I finished one subject I would be tested on it. When I passed the test I could move on to the next subject. I completed 5th grade math in 3rd grade. What really sux is that they went back to the old system when I was in 4th grade. Can you say bored?

About the internet as a teaching tool: I don’t believe the internet is being particularly useful as a teaching tool. Yes, it does allow students access to subjects they might not otherwise pick up and read a book about, but the level of complexity of these subjects is lacking. Yes, students can see pretty pictures of Mars, but the organization of the presentation is such that the student will probably NOT know that there are eight other planets and that (excepting the Earth) Pluto is the coolest one (figuratively and literally.)

Finally, I think the quality of our teachers as a whole could be better.

I’ve gotta’ call my mom and set her straight now (yeah, like that’s gonna’ happen), she’s an elementary school teacher.

Inertia’s entire philosophy in two words - Be nice.

60

Thought y’all might like to read Harlan Ellison’s rant about the topic. An excerpt:

The URL is http://harlanellison.com/text/onioninterview.htm

“But where were the Spiders?”