Article: How dumb can we get

[Kodiak]

Link here

How dumb can we get?

I
t's bad enough that Americans are increasingly ignorant about science, art, history, and geography. What's frightening, says author Susan Jacoby, is that we're proud of it.

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble—in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ... and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late Sen. 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.

***

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper, and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book—fiction or nonfiction—over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing, and videogames.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time—as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web—seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in The New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible—and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate—featuring the candidate's own voice—dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

***

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic–Roper, 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."

***

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. 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. Call this anti-rationalism—a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

***

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

Susan Jacoby's new book is The Age of American Unreason.
This essay was first published by The Washington Post. Used with permission of the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service. All rights reserved.

maybe it's my own bias, but is it possible that most Americans read ZERO books in a year? I read 3-4 each month, depending on my free time. Also, I find this article to be in conflict with what I've read regarding how videogames and technology improve critical-thinking skills in children. Anyone else have thoughts? I must admit that the section about a lack of general knowledge is spot-on. I can't believe how many people my age (25) have never heard of McCarthy, the Bay of Pigs, Heisenberg, Hammurabi, Peak Oil, or dozens of other subjects.

[Knife]

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837,

Pretty much tells you that no, we aren't getting dumber. Stupid people have always existed. The article is periodically laced with people, studies and examples that happened generations ago, beginning quote to name just one, and the fact that we're still wrestling with the same issues with 'dumb people' kind of implies that we are basically the same as we were back then.

maybe it's my own bias, but is it possible that most Americans read ZERO books in a year?

The argument about content between the mediums is a red herring though. Lots of people today probably read more on the net than people in the past read in print. Sure a large swath of that is garbage, but that doesn't mean they're not reading. Plus, it's not like if someone writes something in a book and it gets published, it's not garbage as well.

I find this article to be in conflict with what I've read regarding how videogames and technology improve critical-thinking skills in children

This one is harder, imo, since just playing videogames will take away from physical exercise for the child. However, for various other reasons, hand-eye coordination or straight out problem solving, gaming can be just as good if not better education than the old school 'cowboys and Indians' or 'cops and robbers'.

[Darth Wong]

Anti-intellectualism is not new in America. However, televised pseudo-intellectuals encouraging anti-intellectualism are a fairly new phenomenon.

It used to be that an anti-intellectual was a clearly uncouth lout. Today, thanks to William F Buckley and his ilk, we have a whole generation of business suit-wearing pedigreed pseudo-intellectuals who make a great deal of money telling the unwashed masses that "yes, it's OK to be stupid, and no, it doesn't make you inferior to educated people".

[Junghalli]

Anti-intellectualism is not new in America. However, televised pseudo-intellectuals encouraging anti-intellectualism are a fairly new phenomenon.

I think another new factor to consider may be the "self-esteem" culture. It does promote a certain narcissism, and with that comes a tendency toward intellectual laziness. Because to want to learn something you first have to admit your ignorance, and admitting ignorance and limitations has a bitter taste to people who've been weaned on a constant diet of "self-esteem building". It's easier to just dismiss the stuff you don't understand as stuff that doesn't matter anyway; that way you don't have to work to overcome your limitations.

[Knife]

Anti-intellectualism is not new in America. However, televised pseudo-intellectuals encouraging anti-intellectualism are a fairly new phenomenon.

I think another new factor to consider may be the "self-esteem" culture. It does promote a certain narcissism, and with that comes a tendency toward intellectual laziness. Because to want to learn something you first have to admit your ignorance, and admitting ignorance and limitations has a bitter taste to people who've been weaned on a constant diet of "self-esteem building". It's easier to just dismiss the stuff you don't understand as stuff that doesn't matter anyway; that way you don't have to work to overcome your limitations.

As opposed to the old model of: you are better than everyone else, this is the stuff people who are better know about.

Look, I don't particularly like anti intellectuals either, but to latch onto the idea that it's either new or progressing is a cop out. Rural versus Urban is ancient. Thats not what the OT is, rather if it's getting worse. So; are there as many dumb shits now or more than twenty years ago? Regardless of the change in propaganda or cultural stereotypes.

[ArmorPierce]

Same good old day shit. Society as a whole has always been stupid.

[(name here)]

The internet is not at fault for falling litericy rates. most of the internet is in fact text, and i personally don't like internet video because it's of poor quality, too small, and hard to reread if i want to.

i have two large bookshelves, two small bookshelves, and some extra books in my room. i have read them all.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Anti-intellectualism is not new in America. However, televised pseudo-intellectuals encouraging anti-intellectualism are a fairly new phenomenon.

I think another new factor to consider may be the "self-esteem" culture. It does promote a certain narcissism, and with that comes a tendency toward intellectual laziness. Because to want to learn something you first have to admit your ignorance, and admitting ignorance and limitations has a bitter taste to people who've been weaned on a constant diet of "self-esteem building". It's easier to just dismiss the stuff you don't understand as stuff that doesn't matter anyway; that way you don't have to work to overcome your limitations.

People have been finding ways to avoid that bitter taste of hubris for longer than the self-esteem movement has been in effect. The two most common forms it takes are "common sense" and "street smarts", both are which presumably so precious and valuable to any human being that the only thing that could explain the rotten attitudes of those persnickety "booksmarts" types is some kind of disability or incompetence.

In other words, every scientists wants to be a farmer or a gangbanger at heart, they just can't figure out how and it depresses them.

[Junghalli]

Oh I quite agree that anti-intellectualism and stupid people is nothing new, and probably on the balance no worse now than it was through most of history (heck, probably a lot BETTER now than in most of history, seeing as for most of human history most people couldn't even read or write and had no education to speak of). A lot of the "ph3r teh dumb ppl mUltiply1ng1" anxiety is really nothing more than the same old anxieties over how the world is going to hell in a handbasket and everything else was much better back in the good old days. I'm simplying pointing out a contributing factor that is particular to our era.

[ArmorPierce]

What we have today is a breed of anti-intellectualism which is different from society actually getting dumber.

IMO, Americans are in a whole much smarter and educated than at any point in our history. We may read less books but we read more on the internet now. In fact, I think we probably read a lot more now than we did say 15 years ago when the internet was a new phenomenon.

In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces,

is it suppose to be a good thing that americans weren't aware of the vast distances? Is it a bad thing that Americans can now look at google map instead of buying a map? Information is a lot more accessible now, I don't see this as dumbing down the people as the article seems to be suggesting. In fact quite the opposite.

Basically just a good old day fallacy.

Mod feel free to remove my previous post since it is a bit lacking.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is not that Americans have actually gotten dumber; I'm sure the average hick in Lincoln's time was even dumber than the average hick today, which is why there was actually some debate over the question of whether slavery was moral.

The real problem is that Americans' opinions of their own intellectual development have raced far, far ahead of their actual development. At least in the old days, the lower class knew they weren't in the same league as the experts. Take the Lincoln-Douglas debates; the majority of the population probably didn't even read them. But the illiterates back then knew they were illiterate. Today, there is this vast class of people who are semi-literate and who think they're highly literate.

[Kodiak]

The real problem is that Americans' opinions of their own intellectual development have raced far, far ahead of their actual development. At least in the old days, the lower class knew they weren't in the same league as the experts. Take the Lincoln-Douglas debates; the majority of the population probably didn't even read them. But the illiterates back then knew they were illiterate. Today, there is this vast class of people who are semi-literate and who think they're highly literate.

I think that's the key right there. Society has no shame for it's ignorance in a large part, and it's usually "cool" to do poorly in school and not have the right answers since it makes you a rebel. It grieves me that Americans for the larger part feel that if they can't learn something or read something in less than 5 minutes it's not worth their time.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The real problem is that Americans' opinions of their own intellectual development have raced far, far ahead of their actual development. At least in the old days, the lower class knew they weren't in the same league as the experts. Take the Lincoln-Douglas debates; the majority of the population probably didn't even read them. But the illiterates back then knew they were illiterate. Today, there is this vast class of people who are semi-literate and who think they're highly literate.

Or worse, who shun literacy altogether in favor of intuition and impulsive conclusions based on vague feelings, hasty generalizations and snap assessments. That right there is my problem with a lot of the snotty young "atheists" you find in underground goth or punk culture or whatever; they don't believe in God because it feels unreasonable to them, not because they're familiar with the arguments and understand the fallacies or Occam's Razor. They're not doing us any favors.

[wjs7744]

Or worse, who shun literacy altogether in favor of intuition and impulsive conclusions based on vague feelings, hasty generalizations and snap assessments. That right there is my problem with a lot of the snotty young "atheists" you find in underground goth or punk culture or whatever; they don't believe in God because it feels unreasonable to them, not because they're familiar with the arguments and understand the fallacies or Occam's Razor. They're not doing us any favors.

That's a much better definition of anti-rationalism than that given in the OP. They seemed to think that ignorance and irrationality are somehow synonyms.

In regard to the OP, maybe America is 'dumber' compared to, say, 30 years ago, but obviously this is against the trend of the past few centuries, and I see no reason to believe that even if true, this is evidence that Americans will continue to do so.

There is a similar perception here in England, too, that this generation is somehow more stupid than the previous one, but again, even if true, it is obviously against the general trend, and does not neccessarily represent a major problem.

[ArmorPierce]

I think it's kind of strange how people refuse to accept that are people are getting smarter and will look at it as making now logical sense (often made in response of inflation of college grades which myself believe to have more to do with higher competition in the undergraduate level) but seem to readily embrace the idea that people are getting more stupid as time goes on.

[Graeme Dice]

There's nothing strange about that perception. Many people get incredibly defensive if it's even suggested that they are not as smart as somebody else, but nobody gets upset if told that they are smarter than a group.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Maybe the divide between the most knowledgeable among us and average people is getting wider and inflates that impression? Otherwise, I'd say it's probably just huffy self-righteousness coming out of the mouths of people with their own self-serving and impulse-based definition of "intelligence" that doesn't fit the rest of the public. "Common sense" is your one-stop phrase that'll justify any claim in those circles, from white supremacy to religion to the futility of political, economic or civic awareness.