The Dumbing Down

[ThomWV]

I see it all the time on the television, I hear it on the radio, I see it in print; falsehoods. All over the place, everywhere I look, I keep on seeing it. There is plain and simple misinformation, bald faced lies, the most foolish balderdash of every damned sort plastered all over the press and airways all the time. They are just making shit up! They pass it off as science and nobody says anything. What on all of hell has gone wrong with this world?

Look here, here's an example for you. I was looking up some background information for this region and I ran across one of those small regional magazines that have been putting out a few glossy issues per year for decades. Lots of retired professors contribute to them and sometimes the photography is spectacular. On line this particular magazine has about 10 years worth of back article from its monthly editions. So this was not some fly-by-night operation, this was a legitimate magazine that had been in business for years with hundreds of probably much read articles still in print. Nothing to sneeze at. Now, let me quote from two concurrent paragraphs in an article I was reading.

First Paragraph:

"The Appalachians, like nearly all other chains, were created when continents crashed into one another. The earth is mostly comprised of liquid rock, magma, upon which the rigid blocks of solid rock, called plates, float. The continents drift along with the magma’s currents and sometimes slowly crash into one another. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain-building is a caused by this process, called plate tectonics."

Now I don't know how much you know about geology or this history of the earth or plate tectonics but that jumble of a paragraph above sounds like the babbling of a not-to-bright 12 year-old trying to explain the workings of the earth as explained in a Disney movie they once saw. There is nothing horribly wrong about whatever it is that is trying to be said but it in no way informs anyone of anything like scientific knowledge at any level what so ever. It is just a trash paragraph.

Second Paragraph (this one kills me):

"When a large plate collides with a small one, the lesser will normally slide under the larger plate, sometimes creating earthquakes as they slide back and forth. The entire earth’s surface, or lithosphere, is comprised of about a dozen large plates and several small ones."

This is simply wrong. Plates are comprised primarily of either Granite or Basalt. Basalt is heavier and when the two collide the obvious happens - it does not have a god dam thing to do with size! They just plain made this shit up. It has nothing what so ever to do with scientific fact and it is not some old theory that is now in dispute. Let me say it again, they just made this shit up!

Now think about that. Here is a magazine of some reputation. People have apparently been reading it for years. I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of good honest people who feel themselves to be well informed because they keep up with these obscure journals. Now let me repeat ... They Just Made This Shit UP! For christ's sake, how in hell can we ever be an informed people if they can just make shit up?

Now go listen to some TV commercials. They will tell you the names of chemicals that do not exist. The will cite studies that never have been and never will be performed. They will quote Scientists on subjects for which no science exists. They are just making this shit up! Is it any reason that politicians can tell us anything? Is it any wonder that we can not understand how the economy works or where we fit into society when they can just make up any story anytime about anything and we don't even know it?

This is the second time today I've wanted to scream.

[cbayer]

1. Great piece.

The internet has really promoted this entire process. People think that if they get info off the web, it is true. Their ability to discern what is legitimate vs. what is not legitimate, what is science vs. what is garbage, is way behind their ability to use google.

And the TV commercials for pharmaceuticals? They make me scream out loud at my TV.

[Nitrogenica]

3. I agree, however, the internet has also promoted classic truth.

it's the divisiveness of the internet that divides us. We need to figure out how to use it to unite us.

[lapfog_1]

2. You are almost right

it wasn't written by a not-too-bright 12 year old...

it was written FOR a not-too-bright 12 year old, which is precisely what the editors and publishers think of their readers. Same for TV (Survivor, American Idol, 24) and movies and news. Why should magazines be any different. And our educational system is catering to this dumbing down of America. We aren't (as a society) being prepped for new high tech jobs or information jobs, we are being prepped for retail and fast food jobs.

[trof]

4. The Dumbing Of America:

Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces

By Susan Jacoby
Sunday, February 17, 2008; B01

"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. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901_pf.html

[EvolveOrConvolve]

5. When the average American adult reads at an 8th or 9th grade level

we have serious problems. Not only do we allow bullshit to get published, but many adults don't even have the training or cognitive education to decipher what is reality and what is bullshit. What better explanation for tens of millions of citizens voting against their own best interests (ie, the republicans)?

[HereSince1628]

6. I gave the first-years a pretest for my Bio 103 composed of GED biology questions

that roughly means things HS sophomores are expected to know about biology. My class of second semester college students averaged 38% with a SD of 7.

Last week I learned my sophomore students didn't know the word divert. They laugh when they see words like entropy and call them stupid mumbo jumbo.

We be doomed, Dude. We really is.

[ThomWV]

7. Word ....

[hootinholler]

10. Am I the only one who snickered

At a post lamenting a student calling entropy mumbo jumbo ending with We be Doomed?

:shrug:

Agree with the sentiments though.

-Hoot

[HereSince1628]

12. I'm only getting with the program

WE BE DOOMED, DUDE!

Have we descended into such depths there must always be a SARCASM smilie?

[hootinholler]

13. Thus, why I snickered.

To me sarcasm is a fine art, dood.

-Hoot

[Kitty Herder]

15. Are you serious?

:wow: That's truly frightening.

[HereSince1628]

16. Yes I'm serious. No child appears to have been left behind

when the social structures allowed their educations to decline.

[FirstLight]

8. Kick & Rec

....Well, our Government makes shit up all the time. I suppose we are surounded by pathological liars with access to multi media...hmmm, sounds like MSM, too...

you know, when I worked in Journalism, there was this little thing called "fact checking" that we HAD to do before going to print.


I guess its just more proof that Doublespeak has become the new language,

2+2=5 right?

[nytemare]

9. I had an argument with a former supervisor about Gondwanaland

Pangea, Laurasia, etc. I suppose the name Gondwanaland sounded too ridiculous to her to have actually existed. That, or she couldn't conceive that the earth isn't now the way God made it 7000 years ago.

Sort of silly to actually have an argument with someone that land masses were once together, and slowly drifted apart over millions of years, but that 7000 year old earth may be too big of an obstacle to clear when the word millions enters into the picture.

Gondwanaland was taught to me in Junior High geography class, and it amazed me that someone 25 years older than me couldn't come close to grasping the concept, and almost implied that I was just making shit up.

[LiberalAndProud]

11. They can't say it on tv

if it isn't true.

I know this is true, because they said it on tv.


Circular logic doesn't make me dizzy.

[NMMNG]

14. When I took Journalism in high school,

I was told that the average newspaper reader had a reading level equivalent to that of a 6th grader, so we should write our articles to that level. It seems that nothing has changed over the years, sadly.