The Dumbing of America
My wife comes from a middle eastern background, with family from India, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. I've often asked her why - going beyond any cultural disposition toward such behavior - people in that region seem so angry and distrustful of toward anything besides family and religion. Her answer is clear: it is a result of sheer ignorance, plain and simple.
What she means by that is that many people in these regions are essentially illiterate and disconnected from the modern world. Their world view is shaped by the 'media' they consume, i.e. family and religion. Those two forces become the guiding lights in their life.
But he who controls the message controls the truth. Radical Imams can distort the message of Islam, families become radicalized by these messages, and children are raised by these radicalized families.
One might go so far as to say they're clinging to religion and guns...
Is she an 'elitist' for thinking these thoughts, or are there bigger issues at play? Issues such as a populace trying to make sense of the changing world and events surrounding them, whether they have the ability to fully understand them or not? Or more importantly, are these people unwilling to change or modify their world view in the face of new information simply because they're so attached to what they believe?
Now, to bring all that back to the matter at hand, let's talk about the dumbing of America. I stole the title of this post from an excellent Washington Post article by Susan Jacoby. In it she argues that America is gradually getting dumber, and while every generation fears the next is nothing but mindless kids, it's hard to deny that there is a powerful undercurrent of ignorance and anti-intellectualism brewing in our country.
This is supported by the fact that our lead in world affairs is slipping by almost any conceivable measure - manufacturing is long gone, we clearly lag behind in educational performance, and other countries are making steady progress toward overtaking us in science, engineering, finance and academia (though admittedly, one could argue that its just as much a matter of the developing world rising up as opposed to America dropping down).
Now I don't agree with everything she has to say. For one, I don't agree that there is a linear relationship between the volume of printed words one reads and one's intellect. There are immensely bright people who simply don't have the time to sit around reading books. Then again, those same people probably don't waste time watching reality TV or updating their Facebook profiles either, so perhaps in that sense there is some validity to her argument.
posted on 05.15.08