Dumbing down reality

Originally posted by ararisq

I look at it like this. Take a look at early European history for example. From nomads, to settlements, to towns, to the arrival of the Roman administrative system, to the arrival of Christianity and on and on. everything has led us to where we are now, a telescoping affect. I really don't think its planned.

It is planned (as a result of elections and our elected officials). When someone can look you in the face and tell you we added 200,000 jobs last month when we lost 600,000. When they can tell you we have 8% unemployment when nearly everyone around you is unemployed, that debt and deficits don't matter and is a sign of success, on and on. They lower the bar every year. An Atlanta teacher accused of cheating (giving test answers) said she did it because the kids were "dumb as hell".

I've sat in school rooms recently for 6th grade here in the US and I was stunned. They were talking to the kids like they were in preschool (no joke - preschool). The topic didn't change from day one to day two either - it was the same mindless garbage as if it would take a month of repeating 7+4 is 11 to understand. I don't get it. It was almost identical to the Bush 9/11 school teacher. Repeat after me "hit - plane - steel, good, repeat, good". I am definitely worried about our children and their ability to compete on the world stage.

I deal with a lot of completely ignorant people in their 20s though so I should have seen this coming. It seems like now you have to become intelligent despite the school systems best attempts at preventing you from doing so. My child would get in trouble every day for reading because he'd already finished the textbook for the year (in the first week). He didn't need to repeat "plane hit steel" over and over.

You may be right about lowering standards in your local education systems, and as to whether that is deliberate or not I do not know, it could very well be.

But as to peoples levels of intelligence, how do you propose that somebody is altering that? And who is doing it? And for how long?

I know some very bright people who came from poor areas with very low standards of education.

The whole idea of the schooling system is SUBMISSION.
You can have a child taught the same boring monotonous things over and over, but to get anywhere in grades, they must submit and learn. Think of it as a precursor to 'breaking the spirit' for modern society.
A society of uneducated drones is exactly what they need.
Just smart enough to push the pencils and press the buttons, but just dumb enough to not see how hard they are getting screwed by the system.

S & F!
I don't know if you are familiar with Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt and her book "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". . I highly recommend it if you want one view of what has happened in the US. I can't say how much it applies to Europe or other regions, but I suspect that much of it does. I will warn you that she believes that this is a conspiratorial effort of many groups and institutions, with one goal in mind, to turn the US into a socialist state, dependent upon the government. One might say that given the direction of the last several years, that she has a point. Be aware that the original full version in new condition is not cheap by any means(over $100), but there is a new abridged version of only about 500 pages for under $30. That is the edition I bought, and found it quite enlightening.

Originally posted by Griffo515
The whole idea of the schooling system is SUBMISSION.
You can have a child taught the same boring monotonous things over and over, but to get anywhere in grades, they must submit and learn. Think of it as a precursor to 'breaking the spirit' for modern society.
A society of uneducated drones is exactly what they need.
Just smart enough to push the pencils and press the buttons, but just dumb enough to not see how hard they are getting screwed by the system.

So what makes you so special? I take it you were schooled somewhere by someone? I'm asking this because you seem to differentiate yourself from 'they'. Do you deem yourself to smarter than the average person? Did Morpheus come and pull you out of the machine? Or do you simply view the rest of the population as unfortunate somnambulists as do so many ATSers?

Since the exams were of a different era, how would you be knowledgable enough to complete them?
I think that's maybe why you failed it. lol

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
S & F!
I don't know if you are familiar with Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt and her book "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". . I highly recommend it if you want one view of what has happened in the US. I can't say how much it applies to Europe or other regions, but I suspect that much of it does. I will warn you that she believes that this is a conspiratorial effort of many groups and institutions, with one goal in mind, to turn the US into a socialist state, dependent upon the government. One might say that given the direction of the last several years, that she has a point. Be aware that the original full version in new condition is not cheap by any means(over $100), but there is a new abridged version of only about 500 pages for under $30. That is the edition I bought, and found it quite enlightening.

Education standards in Europe vary. Where I live they are very good, and free at all levels(excluding service fees, books, equipment, but government grants are available etc). Does that mean that there aren't idiots sitting at home glued to their crud spewing television? No, but it does rule against a conspiratorial effort to lower educational standards, at least in my country.

reply to post by seabhac-rua

Do you have teacher unions where you are? I believe that they are one of the problems in the US. When I was growing up here, teachers were fairly dedicated. Today, many of them teach "by union rules". Three o'clock comes and they run the students over getting to their cars. Furthermore, once they're tenured, it is virtually impossible to get rid of them. In additon, instead of laying off the bad ones, when there are budget cuts, it's "last hired, first fired", regardless of their worth as a teacher.

s & f for this thread i have been thinking the same thing for over a decade now i have heard teenagers ask what a decade is the old saying about mushrooms not being the only thing kept in the dark & humored is so true.
I have worked over much of the uk and was shocked at how stupid some people are not understanding basic subjects i have come across adults that write like children and do not know what 6x6 is on my travels i have come across aduts that have never read more than 5 books in total .
now most of the schools are private built and at the end of 10 years will cost £260 billion plus management fees and the public will not own a brick of these at the same time handing away all the land those schools were on this is NO accident you are a fool to think otherwise .
if children are our future thankfully i was not that daft to have any some kids do not know where milk comes from and will reply the supermarket .

over seven billion of us, and the dumb have been outbreeding the smart since the industrial revolution kicked off.

i think he conspiracy is trying to keep the lid on dysgenics, if anything. people don't like getting told they're dumb and need to stop breeding.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Yes we have teacher unions here, it doesn't seem to be a problem, you have your good you have your bad teachers. The main issue here is cutbacks due to the recession, but depending on where you are you can have classrooms with 1 teacher to 15/20 kids, of course this is for public schools, there are private schools with very high standards here too. Once you get past primary and secondary level, it's very open, we have some very good universities, and a great system for 'mature students' where over 23's can enroll and study for free, this depends on an interview of course.

reply to post by LUXUS


S & F. Great topic. And A LOT of great posts here.

I agree that the education system is lacking. Big time. And I agree as to the main reason why. The Federal Government put a program in place years ago under the title of "No child left behind". And it's true. Just as many, if not more, kids are receiving passing grades and graduating high school. What they didn't tell us, what we had to find out on our own, is that the program put in place rewards public schools in the way of more funding in tandem with the average grades of the students. And to help implement this, the AIMS and other like tests were put in place to gauge a students progress. What that really means, and more people are finding this out, is that the emphasis is put on passing those tests which in large measure is dependent on teachers teaching the pupils how to pass those tests. It is NOT dependent on teachers teaching the curriculum the students need to pass the tests on their own.

Because of the way it was all implemented and slowly integrated into the system, people really didn't see it coming. They were blindsided to the fact that this process is going to dumb people down. And because people were blindsided, they equate passing those tests as having gained a lot of knowledge about the subjects they passed. Sorry, but you don't gain knowledge about something by taking a test about it before you learn it. You have to learn it first. What people don't understand is that these tests are worded in such a way as to give the students who are taking the test the impression that they were taught the information in the months prior to the test being taken. They weren't. What the students were taught was how to pass the test. There's a difference.

In the 2nd grade I was teaching myself long form multiplication and division tables at home. I WANTED to learn. I would take my "homework" to school and ask my teacher when we were going to learn this in school. She just looked at me as if to say "What the hell is wrong with you?" ( I thought it was a legitimate question, but in hindsight, my teacher thought I was a bit of a prick) She would tell me that those problems would be taught at the end of the year. She was a nice lady. But since I didn't have to learn the topics as they were being taught, as I put myself ahead of the curve, it afforded me the opportunity to see how it all works a little bit. As much as an 8 year old can see something like that. At the end of the year I saw how the topics that were being taught led to the test itself. I'm not seeing that same process being played out anymore. I'm not seeing a gradual progression of topics being taught through the year and the test at the end being based on all that. I'm seeing tests being based on the fact alone that you have to pass that test. And that's what they teach you. How to pass a test. You're not being taught to learn.

Someone else mentioned the difference in the same school teaching different things in different generations. I can kind of relate. My daughter goes to a different school then I did, but based on the curriculum she's taking in the grade she's in now, and the curriculum I was taking at the same age, in two different schools 2,000 miles apart in different time frames, they're relatively the same. The difference though is what I just mentioned in the previous paragraphs. The methods and reasons that they're teaching kids are dumbing them down. I have noticed though that from the time she was home-schooled, to her time in a charter school and now a public school, she's never had to study hard to get her A's. It just comes naturally and I thank God for that. I shudder at the thought that she would have to actually learn something relevant in a public school. Don't get me wrong, she's not some kind of kind of know-it-all brainiac, but she is ahead of the curve in that the information given to her that she needs to learn from just comes naturally to her. She doesn't really have to try that hard.

And that's really my whole point here. Whether you have to work hard at getting knowledge or not, get it. Whether you're self-taught, it's in your genes or you have to go though the grind like the majority of people, get educated. It's not a disease. You're not going to die from it. And for those of you out there like me and my daughter, to where it seems to come naturally.......don't piss on it like I did. Take it seriously. Trust me, you're going to be shown a lot of doors of opportunity. Open them. Take advantage of them. If you don't you're going to be kicking yourself in the future for not taking your God given gift and working it like you should.

How about we all post a link in our signatures to a website that has educational value? A .edu site? Something that can help people teach themselves something of value?

Deny Ignorance right?

reply to post by LUXUS


Great topic and, I believe, quite true in both cases.

We use less words today, according to some studies. Prehaps this is a symptom of dumbing down or maybe even one of the causes. It would mean people are less able to express themselves, maybe even losing concepts that go with those words.

This is from hotword.dictionary.com...

Due to synonym death and the widespread use of spell-check, words are dying. Using complex algorithms, the scientists discovered that in the past 40 years more words have died than during any other period in their data (from 1800 – 2008). At the same time, fewer words are being successfully introduced into the language. As the scientists conclude: “In the past 10-20 years, the total number of distinct words has significantly decreased, which we find is due largely to the extinction of both misspelled words and nonsensical print errors, and simultaneously, the decreased birth rate of new misspelled variations.” Statistically speaking, the language is shrinking.

As a martial art instructor myself I can certainly confirm that awareness is closely related to survival. Predators(human included) will actually target the unaware deliberately- easy targets. This is more obvious in nature, if animals don't keep an eye on things they get eaten.

I would also add that this degradation is physical as well as mental. The kids these days are physically weak from sitting in front of the computer and not doing much exercise. Most don't relize cos they are all generally like that. Think how hard some of the old people worked, and I mean hard, manual labour. Compare this to the kids today, it would literally hospitalize a lot of them if they tried to do that much, poor things.

To me this dumbing down of society seems like a deliberate move by TPTB. The stupider we are, the easier we are to control.

It is important to note that people purposely dumb down themselves to be more sociable in society. We don't even realize we do it most of the time. Many foods contain chemicals that make us a little dopey and less aggressive, scared, manic, or nervous. We must remember to enjoy our experience here on earth without always worrying about things. Foods can do this, I have studied about their influence on us. We don't always need meds to calm us or relieve adhd unless there is something really wrong with us. Those with real problems only amount to about five percent of people taking meds. I have been studying the chemistry of the antidepresent drugs and found many of the chemicals present in foods. Most foods have an influence on the mind one way or another. I like being dumbed down a bit or my mind whizzes around and I cannot rest. I keep it suppressed so I can restore it within hours if needed to full capacity for extreme array pattern thinking. In this condition I cannot operate on a social basis well, I tend to go way over peoples heads. I usually dope myself up with one of many foods when I go to town.

This doping of oneself is not always bad. The FDA does not tell you what to eat. They make a variety of foods available and are responsible only for keeping them non toxic at normal levels. They do mess up this by listening to chemical companies though, but by law, if there is no undeniable proof that something is toxic than they are allowed to use it.

Overeating anything causes problems. Overeating a class of foods can cause problems also. People need to know the foods in a class, that seems to be a problem that needs addressing. Our commercial soils are burnt out in many areas and the foods lack micronutrients that are needed to make us sociable. One of those is lithium in an organic form. We need a tiny bit of it to help us keep calm. Sometimes it is in our water naturally other times it is not. Too much of one kind of food and our brain gets a little dopey but just till we stop eating too much of the food. I still don't agree with Fluoride being added to the water, I prefer coffee or sometimes tea.

The government can lead you to water but it can't make you drink. Watch how the food you are eating effects you personally. Eating things to dumb you down occasionally allows you to fit in with others and have fun. Alcohol can do this also but too much is not good. Most of the dumbing down of societycan be restored unless brain damage has occurred or the person likes the way he is. It is also a right of people to dumb themselves down so they can enjoy life more. There should be jobs available for these people in this country, they are usually not bad people. There are good and bad people in all classes. These people seem crooked no matter which class they are in.

reply to post by LUXUS


I didn't quote you here, so I'm going from memory. But let's see. We're more dumb than we were. and we got our heads up our ass.

I'm with you on that man. Now. Why? I'm thinking it's short term thinking. Well every thing today comes from short term thinking. Sam Walton screwed us all. Just in time is good enough. Don't worry about tomorrow , because we'll take care of tomorrow today. We'll fix it as we go. Don't worry be happy. And that's what people are becoming, immediate object's. We're programmed products. Taught, not so much to think and understand, but rather to preform assigned tasks efficiently. Test scores, who knows.

The fact that we got our heads up our ass. Now that's a whole other story. Well you know it's our mobile connected, distraction. Our devices. We're fairly disconnected in a physical sense. while at the same time becoming so connected in that world of bandwidth. Myself being older, am not much involved with devices, and like you, am somewhat amazed, and annoyed by the repercussions of their lack of awareness. As you so rightly pointed out.

So I guess the question is Do we find this acceptable or do we think this might be a wrong direction. and take a stand. Dammed if I know But I think it's already a done deal. Yeah the system might weaken but it won't fail. Those kids are on to a better thing.

But there's a lot to be said for thoughtful, aware thinking and I think we should keep at it. It might keep us in good stead, if things should not go so well.

Originally posted by rickymouse
It is important to note that people purposely dumb down themselves to be more sociable in society. We don't even realize we do it most of the time. Many foods contain chemicals that make us a little dopey and less aggressive, scared, manic, or nervous. We must remember to enjoy our experience here on earth without always worrying about things. Foods can do this, I have studied about their influence on us. We don't always need meds to calm us or relieve adhd unless there is something really wrong with us. Those with real problems only amount to about five percent of people taking meds. I have been studying the chemistry of the antidepresent drugs and found many of the chemicals present in foods. Most foods have an influence on the mind one way or another. I like being dumbed down a bit or my mind whizzes around and I cannot rest. I keep it suppressed so I can restore it within hours if needed to full capacity for extreme array pattern thinking. In this condition I cannot operate on a social basis well, I tend to go way over peoples heads. I usually dope myself up with one of many foods when I go to town.

This doping of oneself is not always bad. The FDA does not tell you what to eat. They make a variety of foods available and are responsible only for keeping them non toxic at normal levels. They do mess up this by listening to chemical companies though, but by law, if there is no undeniable proof that something is toxic than they are allowed to use it.

Overeating anything causes problems. Overeating a class of foods can cause problems also. People need to know the foods in a class, that seems to be a problem that needs addressing. Our commercial soils are burnt out in many areas and the foods lack micronutrients that are needed to make us sociable. One of those is lithium in an organic form. We need a tiny bit of it to help us keep calm. Sometimes it is in our water naturally other times it is not. Too much of one kind of food and our brain gets a little dopey but just till we stop eating too much of the food. I still don't agree with Fluoride being added to the water, I prefer coffee or sometimes tea.

The government can lead you to water but it can't make you drink. Watch how the food you are eating effects you personally. Eating things to dumb you down occasionally allows you to fit in with others and have fun. Alcohol can do this also but too much is not good. Most of the dumbing down of societycan be restored unless brain damage has occurred or the person likes the way he is. It is also a right of people to dumb themselves down so they can enjoy life more. There should be jobs available for these people in this country, they are usually not bad people. There are good and bad people in all classes. These people seem crooked no matter which class they are in.

edit on 6-9-2012 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)

Ricky baby, you are a drug. Seriously you're right about that. Toxic chemicals everywhere.In the air, on you skin in your food, in your water. Can't avoid em. Looks like you got it under control however.

I'm all about that purposeful dumb down

I would like to give my five cents worth re education of today.

Having no idea what it really is like in the US, I can only speak for South Africa, but my gut tells me that it is not much different in other countries.

The focus of education has totally shifted from preparation to control and submission.

Schools do not prepare students to:

1. Know basic maintenance on a car. Very few girls know how to change a tire, or do an oil change. When I got my first car nobody bothered to tell me that you are supposed to check the oil and water now and again!

Yes, I admit to total ignorance and am still in awe of the severity of the lesson, due to my first car's engine burning out on the highway! Wow!
I also did not know that cars are LICENSED! Yes, unbelievable. Somehow, these things are automatically taken care of by parents, who do not think to pass it onto their children. In my case, my father died when I was young, and I have always had a very dysfunctional relationship with my mother. I was in boarding school.

Schools can play a very constructive role, in preparing both sexes for the practicalities involved in owning a car.

(I discovered that I enjoy knowing what is wrong with my car, the parts involved and how it is fixed. For a lady I know at least a little about propshafts and side shafts, cv joints, carborator, manifold, fuses, timing on the engin, and even the heads on the pistons etc)
Not to slack for a lady, I'd say.

There are plenty of other life orientating skills that just do not get passed on through education. The emphasis is no longer on preparation for real life.

Another example is growing your own food. Not many schools really go into this deep enough.

2. Education ensures that the split between the sexes remains in tact. Little girls are taught to sew and boys learn woodwork. So, if a woman lives alone, she must ask her male friend to change a plug, drill a hole to put up a shelf, or anything handy. What about normal men who are great with their hands, who would like to knit, but will be bullied if admitting to it. Making a scarf out of wool is a human thing, not a girl thing!

3. Students are discouraged from bringing real life experience into topics presented by schools:
Global warming IS a fact! Noooooo! you may not discuss the fact that thousands of scientists do not agree. If you disagree, you will repeat your grade!
There is only one opinion about AIDS. Any challenges to current theories will lead to punishment or failure.

So the bottom line is:
DO NOT THINK FOR YOURSELF.
DO NOT CONSIDER DIFFERENT VIEWS FROM THE ONE WE TEACH YOU.
DO NOT QUESTION.
DO NOT BECOME SELF SUFFICIENT.

While education is just programming our minds into thinking a certain way and being good at memorizing facts from books and putting them back out on paper, the point still stands. Education is being made easier.

But dont confuse it with intellligence. Just the ability to see the education system for what it really is... thats intelligence. But I cant put that in the exams.

Originally posted by UnlimitedSky
So the bottom line is:
DO NOT THINK FOR YOURSELF.
DO NOT CONSIDER DIFFERENT VIEWS FROM THE ONE WE TEACH YOU.
DO NOT QUESTION.
DO NOT BECOME SELF SUFFICIENT.

If you're looking to make money, you want your customers to have these traits.

Pretty sick huh?

That Reminds Me -___-, When I Was Going To School This Foot Ball Player Had A Gpa Of 4.0. And He Was Never In Class!!!. Ugh I Get Pissed Off Just Thinking About It.

Originally posted by SolarIce

Really? The real theories are given books and almost award deserving threads on this site...

Fiction is usually exciting, and even more so if you manage to convince people it's "real".
And what do you mean "given books"? Anybody can write a book?

And what do you mean "almost award deserving threads"? What would those be?