Mar
31

The Dumbing Of America

Posted (seano) in Culture on March-31-2008

Susan Jacoby of the Washington Post recently lamented on The Dumbing Of America. She claims that Americans are not only becoming more and more ignorant, but increasingly proud of that said ignorance. “Anti-Rationalism” and “Anti-Intellectualism” are part of the new American Way - do you agree?

Personally, I think it’s one of the defining characteristics of what I call The IM Generation. The people entering today’s workforce have been weened on insta-culture, and simply do not pay attention to the basics… like, oh, spelling simple words correctly. Take a look around… I’ve noticed far more misspellings and simple grammar mistakes in the news, on billboards, commercials, etc. in the past 5 years or so then I’ve ever seen. Signs, often literally, of the vanishing attention span of America.
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Comments:
melinda on March 31st, 2008 at 1:48 pm #

Fascinating article…I am always caught up in the debate of if we really need to know things or just know how to find them quickly? Do you need to know all the state capitals if they are one google search away? Or do you just need to know that every state has a capital? I think the internet does make it less important for us to store all our knowledge in our minds, but maybe it should allow us to explore topics more deeply than simply tune out to important questions and watch sound bites on TV.

Vicki on March 31st, 2008 at 9:30 pm #

Soo… have you guys see Idiocracy yet??? If not, we are coming over to watch it! If you have, we are coming over anyway, cause we haven’t seen yas in a while!

Caveman Need Meat on March 31st, 2008 at 11:05 pm #

Yes. Me store information extra-somatically. On the internets. Save more neurons to find meat. Me Hungry.

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