The Dumbing Of America

[Nono]

The Dumbing Of America

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. (...)

Dumbness ... has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. (...)

I have lots of bright, well-informed American friends. But they all have to make that extra effort vis-à-vis their stultifying environment. And they're all pretty appalled by what they see around them. But even knowing the place as I do ...

... this is damned alarming.

[Jack]

Anti-intellectualism is especially disturbing to someone like me. I not only put great value on intelligence but have spent a fair portion of my life educating myself on a variety of topics. Occasionally it's for a specific purpose but more often it's just to know more, to enlarge my base of knowledge. For me, learning new information is fun and rewarding.

Yet we do seem to place too much value on ignorance as a society. We gladly allow politicians, influence peddlers like ministers and advertising companies to tell us what to think. We use pejorative terms like egg-head, smarty-pants, know-it-all to indicate our disdain for educated people. We express no shame in describing someone as "too smart for their own good" or saying "look where all that learnin' got you". The percentage of people who read regularly in this country is declining.

Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years. * Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.1 * On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.2 Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved. * Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.3 * 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.4 * Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.5 The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas. * Nearly two-thirds of employers ranked reading comprehension "very important" for high school graduates. Yet 38 percent consider most high school graduates deficient in this basic skill.6 * American 15-year-olds ranked fifteenth in average reading scores for 31 industrialized nations, behind Poland, Korea, France, and Canada, among others.7 * Literary readers are more likely than non-readers to engage in positive civic and individual activities – such as volunteering, attending sports or cultural events, and exercising.8

(Source)

Soon students won't be able to do research in a library any more. As a matter of fact, I'm currently reading (OK, one of the books I'm in the middle of) a sci-fi novel by Vernor Vinge called Rainbows End, in which library books are being scanned, digitized then destroyed because no one accesses real books any longer. We're almost there. I love Google as much as anyone, but an argument could be made that they have contributed to the decline in reading books by offering so much information online. At least most people using computers still have to read words, sentences and paragraphs on the screen. However, computers alone can't fight the tide of stupidity. Despite the number of spell checkers built into browsers and available as stand-alone applications, a quick look around just this forum will reveal how few people pay any attention to spelling and grammar any more.

When machines finally do replace humans, it will most likely be because we were no longer smarter than the machines.

[nerdvincent]

Here we can see that America's average IQ is falling apart:
-45% believes in young earth creationism
-MTV's music is getting less and less complex. Jazz music, prog rock...they're called elitist and self-indulgent.
-Look at the mainstream comedies: fart (people laughing).
-"Hey, what do you think about-"
"Hey, want a beer dude?"
-"We're the greatest country ever! (Chauvinist atttitude isn't a proof of intelligence)
And so on...

I gave clichés, of course, but that's not far from the truth.
If we look into history:
-Roman empire was at its most powerful state, and then fell in decadence with orgies, feast...
-Same for the greeks: Soon after Plato's era, they fell into decadence and died.
-Same for many other civilisations, jsut look into history book. America is the next.

[Tycoon]

Despite the number of spell checkers built into browsers and available as stand-alone applications, a quick look around just this forum will reveal how few people pay any attention to spelling and grammar any more.

I do my best, despite the one time I misspelled "experiment". But I have to agree with the fact that America is dumbing things down. All that really matters to most people here is comfort.

I had a friend in high school who doesn't even turn in the busy-work that the school assigns. He's failing pretty much every class he has just because for the moment, his parents pay for his food and his Xbox Live.

Note the word "had". I don't plan on being friends with somebody that will be living out of a cardboard box as soon as his parents kick him out.

[gela]

YouTube - AMERICA THE STUPID

[Chris]

YouTube - Is Europe a country?

and this broad was allowed to graduate high school

[Nono]

Quote by: gela http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaN6Rx8X6_I

Scary indeed.

[Compugasm]

Nono, those videos don't prove anything.

[Winter wind]

YouTube - Americans are NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLES
This made me cry

"What country starts with a U?"
"Utah?"

"What currency is used in the United Kingdom?"
"What's the United Kingdom?"

I gave up all hope on humanity when they placed a tack in "France"

Nono, those videos don't prove anything.

That this is even possible in the United States is proof enough of something.

[Chris]

of course if they had interviewed me I would have gotten all answers right.

It wouldn't make for good entertainment, so they edited the dumbasses in to it.

[Winter wind]

It wouldn't make for good entertainment, so they edited the dumbasses in to it.

Common..."A country that starts with a U?"

One would have been bad enough...Ah but your right. Makes me feel a whole lot better watching it.

But these people don't vote...do they? If they did...well it would explain a lot.

Tycoon's clip is much more factual

[Tycoon]

Tycoon's clip is much more factual.

Tycoon posted a clip?

[Winter wind]

It's one in the morning here, throw me a bone...
I meant gela.

This does not bode well for me. Especially not on this topic (I am kinda smart. I swear...)

[Clarence]

it's not too late to turn things around. With modern technology and the benefit of knowledge and history, we could close the gap rather easily.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: Clarence it's not too late to turn things around. With modern technology and the benefit of knowledge and history, we could close the gap rather easily.

The problem is getting enough people to recognize the problem, and desire to see it rectified.


That won't be happening any time soon.

[Nono]

Right, Milton, as the "Dumbing" article above points out, even worse than the problem itself is the way people are so smug about their pathetic ignorance.

Quote by: Winter Wind That this is even possible in the United States is proof enough of something.

Well said. Jeez, compugasm, a video doesn't have to prove anything. Just put it in a nutshell. For proof, I suggest you go out on the street and conduct your own mini-survey. That'll be proof.

[Tycoon]

The problem is getting enough people to recognize the problem, and desire to see it rectified.

Like I said, people are content to be ignorant because, for the moment, they still have their high definition TVs, steak dinners and sports cars.

[Clarence]

people are content to be ignorant because, for the moment, they still have their high definition TVs, steak dinners and sports cars.

that's true. instead of losing all that before we wise up, some introspect could be sufficient.

[Muckraker]

There have always been uneducated people. I would argue that it only seems like there are more now because our culture is choosing to highlight them. There is a new drive in entertainment to make fun of the idiots instead of idolizing the talented. It probably has to do with the fact that idiots cost less than idols.

The first few weeks of American Idol puts mentally ill and ugly people on display so the millions of viewers can laugh as each night presents us with uglier and crazier people than the previous night.

Then you have the talk shows that glorify ignorance and dysfunction, the nightly shows that interview stupid people for laughs, the crime shows that catch cheaters and interview people in prison, and the comedy shows that create fake stupid people for us to laugh at. Shows like Jackass and South Park are also well received by audiences. Add in the internet, with Youtube videos of stupid people taking the world of email forwards by storm and you have a vast culture of "America's Funniest (stupidest) Home Videos" taken to the extreme.

The statistics about schools failing because the average punk on the street can't identify Texas on a map are flawed and sensationalized. The education system today encompasses far more people than ever before and many of those people would have simply been passed by a few decades ago.

While it is true that "reading" is declining, I would argue that there is nothing wrong with that. It pains me, as a prospective fiction writer, to know that my medium is a dying form if we look at the number of readers as a percentage of total population. But there will always be readers, and to claim that people who don't read are lumped in with all the other uneducated idiots in the world is incredibly shortsighted. There are other options for the acquisition of information in modern times. One hundred years ago, there were not many other options and yet many people still did not read when it was one of the only options for gaining knowledge.

I would also argue that the average individual is more intelligent, and possesses a wider range of skills and knowledge, today than ever before. To say that people are getting "dumber" is, in my opinion, saying that everyone in history is also dumber than we originally thought.

All of this sensationalized, cultural fodder should be taken with a grain of salt. Jay Leno showing a clip of a pedestrian that doesn't know something is inconsequential and is there purely for your entertainment.

[sevendogs]

It is understandable. A smart individual is always smarter then a crowd. This is how nasty politicians and even dictators manipulated quite well culturally developed nations; for example, Hitler in Germany, Stalin in Russia and now, we have Bush in our country. Hope it will straighten up soon under our democracy.