In article <47DDB75A.F523AEDC@
yahoo.co.uk>,
"Bill Bonde ( 'the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack' )"
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> mm wrote:
>>
>> proves that the radlibs lie:
>>
>>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502
>> 901.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
>>
>> The Dumbing Of America
>> Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces
>>
>> By Susan Jacoby
>> Sunday, February 17, 2008; B01
>>
>> "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."
>> Ralph Waldo Emerson
>>
> "He said 'waldo', hee, hee."
And how many guys do you know called Susan, Mr Observant?
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> So what are they learning when they get this "education"?
Whoa, you never went to school? That must be rough. Unfortunately, a
full explanation would take 13 years to give you (K-12). Hopefully you
would want a more detailed explanation after that.
>
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> What do people look like when they are reading?
Reading requires an effort. Just watching animation doesn't. There are
some good educational programs out there but just watching a video on
the Grand Canyon without a writing assignment, is a waste of time.
Watching Maverick in school is ludicrous.
>
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> How is this different to them wanting you to read the same book you
> read to them 36 times already?
Hyperbole or fantasy? In any event you have jumped the tracks.
>
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> That is likely. Because what are you reading is what matters.
To a degree but good habits can help. Reading is an effort. It takes a
while to adapt to it's demands. If you have already been a reader, you
will know that and make the effort, otherwise you may say that this is
no good, and kick it in.
>
>
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> So you end up with folks like Oblamo with no policy just "change".
> He can tell you his entire plan in one word.
Just because the infotainment fish wraps don't tell you his policy
positions, doesn't mean that Obama, Hillary, and McCain don't have them.
Infotainment fish wraps like to handle politics like a wrestling match.
Whose up. Whose down. Sound clips (He's goin' down, ect.) It's cheaper
than gathering real news.
>
>
>> 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);
>>
> One in five folks answering polls is a jokester.
How many people believe in a virgin birth? How many people believe in
evolution? Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin
Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).
>
>
>> 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.
>>
> Of course this defines the Liberal base that votes for the Democrat
> party.
That education is good and ignorance is bad? George Washington was a
liberal. He led the redistribution of power from the King to the
citizens. But if you had an education, you would have known that.
>
>
> --
> Like the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes mountains,
> Hillary is "ALIVE!".
