Re: The Dumbing Down of America

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

"Dan Emory"  wrote: 

> Of course, I was describing the place as it was in 1895.
> A number of other posts on this thread argued that such a test would be
> entirely different today. Of course, but that's not the point. It was 
> the rigor and depth of a test given to 14-year-old 8th graders in 1895 
> that differentiates it. The typical US high school graduate today can't 
> write a decent 150-word essay, can't  spell, can't parse a sentence, 
> doesn't know the parts of speech, can't use a
> dictionary properly, cannot work with fractions, much less algebraic 
> equations,has virtually no knowledge of geography, even the geography of

> the country (s)he lives in, and is only marginally aware of world 
> history, much less the history of his/her own country.

How about some facts to back this up, Dan.  This is the boiler-plate
argument that conservatives and other political groups love to toss off as
the failure of public education but they NEVER seem to have cold, hard,
stiff facts to back this up. 

They always contrast against ridiculous points in time as well. Actually,
scores and education in this country are improving. So, you're going to
have to spit out some real facts to convince me otherwise.   

> I'm reading the new biography of John Adams. The literateness and
breadth
> of knowledge of people back then is amazing. Read the letters of Adams' 
> wife, Abigail, for instance. She never went to college, and I'm not even

> sure she advanced much beyond elementary school, yet she writes with a 
> style and fervor that is awesome. The difference between then and now is
> that people back then, even ordinary people, read voraciously. They read

> and re-read their favorite books, gleaning every nuance of meaning from 
> them. That's how they learned about the world and their place in it.

Dan, the English language has changed considerably since 1895. Its even
changed since 1995. This is natural process not some conspiracy against
the intellectual elite. Languages change and evolve. As a writer, you
should embrace this change and move with the language. Fighting against it
will only alienate your audience and make your work more and more
inaccessible to readers. 

Also, remember that in 1895, people did not have NEARLY the same kinds of
pressures and demands we have today. But I'll bet you a billion dollars
they would all love some of the technologies we have to day. 

People lived far slower and shorter lives. There was time to sit around
and chew over every last nugget. Nobody has that time today nor do they
care. If you're yearning for the days when people wrote like Ralph Waldo -
ha! Good luck. 

You really should get the Onion's My Dumb Century book at Barnes and
Noble.  Is WAY more funny that anything John Adams wrote and they
routinely make fun of the language and conventions of decades past.  It
also shows how comparing then to now, it terms of language, is pretty
absurd. 

> If the Internet and the Web had become a worthy substitute for printed 
> books, we should have seen
> a noteworthy rise in literateness and self-taught knowledge in the past 
> decade. 

This EXACT same argument was made at the introduction of the telegraph,
the radio, television, and now the Internet. But we manage to survive. 

> A recent study showed that 73% of US teen-agers are wired. See:
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nf/20010621/tc/11444_1.html
> But we don't see such a rise, we see the opposite. The internet is
teaching 
> teen-agers as well adults how to skim-read, not how to read in depth.
The result has 
> been an exponential increase in the size of the non-literate caste. They
don't read books.

Facts man? Where are your facts here?  You're making a massive leap of
logic Dan from "they are all wired" to "they can't find Kansas on a map." 
Where is the connection?  Do you have facts that show kids who are wired
are dumber? 

Actually, I have seen facts that would DIRECTLY contradict your
statements, Dan. I've read articles that show children with computers are
generally more intelligent and more apt to score better on tests. I think
the problem isn't the computers, its getting computers to poorer, inner
city kids who's parents lack the finances to buy their kids computers. 

I think the trend is rather simple, we're getting to a state where
information in your brain is not as important as resourcefulness in
locating information. It isn't so much that people know where Kansas is,
its can they locate a resource that can tell them where Kansas is. As a
tech writer, we have an opportunity to make those resources available to
people. 

Andrew Plato 

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