A Nation of Dunces?

[Darryl G. Thomas]

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.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

[Root Doctor]

Thanks for providing the link to the blog, Tippy. This post leaped out at me:

"Susan, you embody for me the classic elite liberal. If I do not agree with you then I must be ignorant. If I do not accept the theory of evolution as fact then I am ignorant. Susan, it is a theory because it is unproven. It is unproven because there is a lack of evidence."

Is there anything worse than a smug dolt like this?

[steve(thelil)]

I think I agree with the article, although I was too lazy to read something that long.

[Pete C]

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/bo...&ex=1203310800

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by Root Doctor

Thanks for providing the link to the blog, Tippy. This post leaped out at me:

"Susan, you embody for me the classic elite liberal. If I do not agree with you then I must be ignorant. If I do not accept the theory of evolution as fact then I am ignorant. Susan, it is a theory because it is unproven. It is unproven because there is a lack of evidence."

Is there anything worse than a smug dolt like this?

Did he offer any counter-evidence?

I don't like to agree with Jacoby about much but I can't say I disagree much on this one, especially when it comes to knowledge of their own country's history. Never mind that of others.

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

I don't like to agree with Jacoby about much but I can't say I disagree much on this one, especially when it comes to knowledge of their own country's history. Never mind that of others.

What are your differences with Jacoby?

[Brian Olewnick]

I'd go to bed happy if people understood that the word "theory" means something different to a scientist than it does to lay people, ie, not something posited but unproven.

[Gary Sisco]

Roots -- Well, I'm not a liberal for one, and I find declamation tedious most of the time. Perhaps because I am myself, too often.

It's amazing to me how many people don't remember if they ever knew about one of the two most defining experiences of my life: my time in Nicaragua. Even my shrink, 36, doesn't know anything but some vague Iran-Contra impressions. I had to explain in detail about what side was what. Many are like that.

[Gary Sisco]

Brian -- I get irritated about that, too. Not just for science, either. Philosophy and real political theory are also something much more than mere "opinion" (which need not be supported by evidence or buttressed even with argument).

What often passes for "theory" today, for example, is, say, Noam Chomsky. But what he really is, is a polemicist, at best. A glorified letter to the editor writer. I hate to say it but even my favorite conservative, Pags, is also in the category, though she is by comparison with he, very clever, more human, and definitely funnier.

Bookchin was a theorist, and the first one of the left since Marx to elaborate a complete theory of history. (Agree or not, is irrelevant.)

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Pete C

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/bo...&ex=1203310800

The other day in Cozumel they had a trivia contest by the pool. The first question was "what is the largest state in Mexico"? Now, I will freely admit that I did not know the answer, and could only name two or three Mexican states to begin with, but I was highly amused by the somewhat inebriated gringo who immediately hollered out (from her perch at the swim-up bar, no less) "There aren't any states in Mexico!"

[Gary Sisco]

To be accepted, a scientific theory must be subject to and able to stand up to vigorous attempts by others to *disprove* the theory.

In political theory and philosophy, you'd be dealing more with the rigor of logic, coherent argument, history, and so on. Agreement or not doesn't matter.

[Gary Sisco]

jmj -- Most gringos think Mexico's in Central America, too.

Someone here, I can't remember who, argued vociferously with me on another thread that the US and its allies never intentionally bombed civilians in WW2, despite the reams of books containing evidence to the contrary. The bombing destruction of Hamburg, to use one example. WW2 was a total war. Which means that the only acceptable outcome is complete destruction of the enemy's will and means to resist. This would include civilian targets by definition.

It's an example of how "belief" substitutes for knowledge today.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Someone here, I can't remember who, argued vociferously with me on another thread that the US and its allies never intentionally bombed civilians in WW2, despite the reams of books containing evidence to the contrary. The bombing destruction of Hamburg, to use one example.

Not to mention virtually every city of any consequence in Japan.

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by tippy

>>Agreement or not doesn't matter.<<

Okay, that helps. Something I have been missing from JC discussions for sure. No disproof leaves it on the table.

In science, yes. The theory of gravity, for example, isn't just a matter of opinion.

In philosophy and political theory the measure would be the rigor and coherence of argument. Marxism, for example, wouldn't seem the way it does to us today if we lived in 19th C England with its industrial cities, or if we were living in the US during the Great Depression. It would have appeared logical that capitalism was in fact destroying itself.

Even today, based on rigor of argument, he did create a coherent and elaborate a rigorous theory of history. Agree or disagree is a different matter.

Bookchin did as well. Nothing was inevitable in Bookchin, though, one huge difference.

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'd go to bed happy if people understood that the word "theory" means something different to a scientist than it does to lay people, ie, not something posited but unproven.

I believe Jacoby blames social scientists for this problem.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by tippy

Let me try and make you happy, Brian, because I don’t understand what you meant. I thought theory was a hypothesis backed up by some evidence and/or agreement among members of a field. Maybe the “evidence” (probably not the right word) is only the agreement of a hypothesis as a possibility?

Something like Einstein's Theory of Relativity is an assertion about how nature works that is backed up by experimental evidence to the point that it's accepted as fact (even if, as time goes on, it gets supplanted or adapted in the course of further study). It's not just something that Einstein threw out there as a "possible" explanation for observations. With regard to evolution, you constantly hear the theory of same described, essentially, as just one opinion, just a theory, in the same sense that I might theorize the whys and wherefores of Brittney's recent behavior. No, it's a scientific explanation that has been backed up by evidence and experiment to the point where it's accepted by experts in the field as a fact of existence, not just an opinion. Could it be disproven? Sure, that's always a possibility (unlike certain other beliefs I won't name). But arguing that it's merely a "theory" is like arguing the same about the theory of gravity at the same time as you're not floating weightlessly through space.

"Marge, I agree with you in theory. In theory, communism is a good idea. In theory." - Homer Simpson

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by tippy

Helloooo! New Mexico.

Dumb b***h.

Didn't think to point that out, tippy!

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Not to mention virtually every city of any consequence in Japan.

And Europe, except Paris and Rome that were off-limits by mutual agreement.

[Gary Sisco]

Brian -- And also the cosmological constant, Einstein thought was a fudge on his part. Turned out, it looks like, that the fudge factor may well have been correct.

Scientific theories stand until another comes along that more complete accounts for the known facts.

I think there'll be a breakthrough "theory of everything" sometime not all that far off.

[Jon Abbey]

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Jon,

I saw that movie. The scary thing is I thought, "This could happen".

[groover]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Not to mention virtually every city of any consequence in Japan.

Actually, Kyoto was spared because of it's religious significance to the Japanese.

[Monte Smith]

Hey, what is ya'lls favorite sandwich?

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Hey, what is ya'lls favorite sandwich?

Mine is theoretical.

[Monte Smith]

A construct! Like Dagwood Bumstead.

[Scott Dolan]

Or Cliff Huxtable.

[Dr Dave]

I used to be smart, but I used up all my brain cells parsing "The Wire."

[steve(thelil)]

I went back and read the article. Very well written.

Arrogant ignorance (or "Dumb Pride" for you anti-intellectuals) does seem to be one of the toughest obstacles for American society to overcome in view of it's snowball effect.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I posted additional stuff under the dots

[Dan G]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'd go to bed happy if people understood that the word "theory" means something different to a scientist than it does to lay people, ie, not something posited but unproven.

Yep. One one side, they think that evolution isn't true because it is called a theory, but believe word for word a book that has some god talking out of a burning bush, people living to be 900 years old, a virgin birth, a boat big enough to hold 2 of all species...

[jesus marion joseph]

These are noses:




These are snots: