The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces

by Susan Jacoby, Washington Post
February 17, 2008

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.

...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."

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.

Personal Note: Scary, but it's not like I couldn't see it. I just couldn't verbalize it! Another problem, too, as I see it, is TMI-- Too Much Information! With a plethora of related facts, opinions, and sources, it takes better than an above average mind to distill it all into a cohesive report. I'm not saying Miss Jacoby has done this, but she has managed to articulate something that has bothered me for quite awhile.

Nor am I selling my own intellect short. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to shorten a post simply to keep you people reading. And that's the long ones! I remember one post months back where in comments ER complained about how long it was! Sometimes there's simply too much to distill.

Have you ever looked with dread upon a task you absolutely HAD to do, but were overwhelmed by the enormity of it? Imagine that applied to a society of ignorants. Or a culture of vapid self-absorption.