The Dumbing Down of America - Here's Why

[vitanola]

One memorable evening she threw an entire box of tea bags in his face after a particularly noisy argument -- the Mad Tea Party, we called it the next morning.

How imaginative.


And appropriate!


The lady certainly appears to have been ahead of her time.

What made it even funnier was that the superintendant's name was Marx -- a word she spit out whenever she spoke to him like it was wormwood in her mouth.

Just imagine if it had been, say, "Rosenfeld".

 

[LizzieMaine]

Somewhere out in the garage I have a box with some reels of tape from those days. I gotta dig them out.

Camden was and is a weird town, the kind of place with a lot of retirees with too much money and too much time on their hands, so you get a lot of quixotic crusades. It used to be education policy was a very big issue there -- the town was viciously polarized at one point, and when they voted the school budget -- which they did at the time in an open-warrant town meeting format -- there had to be cops present to keep the factions under control, or there would have been literal fistfights in the gym. 90 degrees outside, no air conditioning, people screaming at the top of their lungs about conspiracies -- ah, happy days.

 

[Fletch]

Gedempte Fleysch. I like it braised with onion, leeks, carrots, a little garlic, black pepper, a couple pinches pickling spice, a cup of that good old fashion Kosher wine and a half-cup of vinegar. Brown first the Brisket in very hot schmaltz, then add the vegatables, spices, liquid, and perhaps a couple of table spoons of tomato paste, and cook over a very low fire for three hours until tender. Serve with Kasha or with Latkes.

Soul food. A meal like that has gedemptive powers.

I'm kinda partial to the way this BBQ van out of Des Moines does it, but I can't remember its name. Suffice it to say you need no teef to eat dat beef.

 

[dhermann1]

The fattening up of America . . .

 

[Gregg Axley]

The fattening up of America . . .

Because of this I've started smoking beef instead of pork. It's also for my wife who is from TX and never really had pork unless it was fried! I rinse the meat off after cooking, to remove some excess fat.
I'm in TN as my location states, and I know Memphis BBQ very well. I can assure you there is nothing "low fat" about it, but it's good.

As for the dumbing down, I have watched people (that should know better) make some of the silliest decisions and swear they are right. Both in gov't and in business. To keep this apolitical I won't be specific on the bodies or branches they belong to. But I agree, this dumbing down has gotten out of control. What's next? A graph of how revenue and expenses is going made with fingerpaints?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think a lot of the "dumbing down" simply has to do with technology -- too many kids spend too much time looking into too many screens. You don't look at a screen the same way you look at a page in a book or a piece of paper on the desk or even a typewriter, and that can't help but affect the way you think. And the way technology is used today, as a substitute for *thinking*, worries me a lot.

I work with teenagers every day, kids who have grown up in modern schools. They aren't *dumb.* Not at all. They read a lot, everything from Proust to "Twilight," they have decent vocabularies, they can carry on a conversation without too many "like yah, y'knows" in it. They're smart kids, they would have been smart in 1937, and they're smart today. They do have a pretty shallow understanding of 20th Century history, but being around me is getting them squared away in that area.

But they don't seem to *think* the way I do, and I have to be very clear and very specific in what I want them to do -- they don't seem to have the talent for improvisation that I had at their age, the ability to work out an alternative way of doing something if the original idea doesn't work out. If something unexpected happens, they call for me to come over and fix it, rather than improvising a solution on the spot as I would have done.

I think the Internet has a lot to do with this. The Internet gives you information and answers, but in a lot of ways it does your thinking for you. Got a question or a problem? Go to Google and get an answer, bang bang bang. No need to suss it out for yourself, no need to analyze the situation and consider the various issues and figure out how to resolve it. The Internet makes life too easy -- and for a growing kid, that's a very dangerous thing. We learn from challenges, not having solutions dished up to us in easy bite-sized morsels.

If it were up to me, kids wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a computer or the Internet until they were 21. Figure out how the world works using the brains God gave you, and when you've done that *then* you can use a computer as a tool, not a crutch.

 

[Fletch]

But. Yesterday I wanted a sturdy coat tree, as the old one had collapsed. I hopped in the go-buggy, followed my nose to about 5 places and found nothing I could use. Time expended: about 90 minutes. I then came home and started messing about with The Google, and within 30 minutes had found 3 suitable products.

Had I done The Google first, would I have been using a crutch? I did want to buy locally as a first resort. But more and more places that's not possible.

I also have found many problems over the past decade and a half online that could not have been solved through legwork and libraries, or could have been solved better with easy access to information no one thinks you would ever need.

It takes reading between the lines, of course. Maybe that's something these younger folk need to learn: how to use all this information. Synthesis. How to think with it.

I see you approaching it as an all or nothing proposition, and maybe it is when there's a popcorn popper to keep running.

Kids today have also learned that authority isn't always to be trusted. Don't take it personally, please, when I say that, because I mean that oftentimes the people in charge want it done their way first and done well second. Initiative from the ground up isn't rewarded that often, and they probably don't know you from every other boss in their young lives.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, why not think up a way to fix the old one? Unless it had crumbled into dust -- in which case you ought to be searching for termite exterminators instead of furniture dealers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I also have found many problems over the past decade and a half online that could not have been solved through legwork and libraries, or could have been solved better with easy access to information no one thinks you would ever need.

It takes reading between the lines, of course. Maybe that's something these younger folk need to learn: how to use all this information. Synthesis. How to think with it.

But -- had you grown up with the Internet doing the thinking for you, would you know how to do it? Learning to use the net in one's thirties or forties is a far cry from being raised on it, and never knowing how to think and problem-solve any other way.

 

[Feraud]

Technology is great but not at the expense of developing the ability to explore and problem solve.
Young people need to learn the Internet is only one tool available.

Edited To add-
Where many parents fail today is to merely give children a device with Internet access and be done with it. There is no more teaching to not run with scissors or how to responsibly handle firearms..it's just "Here's your iPad, see ya later.." Which results in a very dumbed down group.

 

[Touchofevil]

Patience or learning that not everything can be summed up in a paragraph or that you might not always "get it" in two minutes or less. Too many of today's youth grow disinterested or give up if it takes whatever too long is.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Impatience? There's an app for that.

 

[Touchofevil]

Impatience? There's an app for that.

Maybe I am just showing my age but, waiting for Christmas, especially as a child but still so today, was/is one of the joys of the holiday season. Waiting or rather the anticipation of what's to come can be so much more rewarding then the actual reception. Soon, for $8.99, you will be able to receive Christmas in two business days.

 

[fashion frank]

I think a lot of the "dumbing down" simply has to do with technology -- too many kids spend too much time looking into too many screens. You don't look at a screen the same way you look at a page in a book or a piece of paper on the desk or even a typewriter, and that can't help but affect the way you think. And the way technology is used today, as a substitute for *thinking*, worries me a lot.

I work with teenagers every day, kids who have grown up in modern schools. They aren't *dumb.* Not at all. They read a lot, everything from Proust to "Twilight," they have decent vocabularies, they can carry on a conversation without too many "like yah, y'knows" in it. They're smart kids, they would have been smart in 1937, and they're smart today. They do have a pretty shallow understanding of 20th Century history, but being around me is getting them squared away in that area.
[/I]

It's funny that you say that Lizzie Maine ,because I'm always telling my 12 year old "to get her face out a screen "
whichever one it may happen to be, tv screen, computer screen, kindle screen, dsl screen etc etc etc .
Man when I was a kid ,you could not keep me in the house , nowadays you have to force kid's to go out and play .

What a difference in just one generation .

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[Aristaeus]

Beg pardon.

"I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pledge of Allegiance
http://www.wvsd.uscourts.gov/outreach/Pledge.htm

 

[Atticus Finch]

Years ago, in the final days of a local political race, the young underdog candidate began spreading the rumor that the very popular incumbent was a closet sexagenerian. Sure enough, come election day, the incumbent lost by a wide margin.

No one bothered to look up the definition of sexegenerain...but it just sounded so twisted and bad!

AF

 

[vitanola]

Pledge of Allegiance
http://www.wvsd.uscourts.gov/outreach/Pledge.htm

I stick to the original wording. And sentiment.

I must admit, though, that I am not comfortable with the Bellamy Salute. It kept rather bad company in the "Thirties, I'm afraid.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I stick to the original wording. And sentiment.

I must admit, though, that I am not comfortable with the Bellamy Salute. It kept rather bad company in the "Thirties, I'm afraid.

Agreed on the wording. I don't think the additions help it, either as poetry or as sentiment. Teddy Roosevelt certainly wouldn't have approved.

As for the Bellamy Salute I try to think of it the same way I think of the moustache -- Chaplin had it first, after all -- but I admit the argument doesn't work.

 

[dhermann1]

What irks me is how now we have to put our hand across our chest for every patriotic song. God Bless America is a great song, but you DON'T put your hand over your heart for it, same with the National Anthem. It's NOT PROPER.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Women aren't supposed to take their hats off, either, but nobody seems to understand that.