The Dumbing of America

Susan Jacoby suggests in a recent op-ed piece that we're becoming a nation of dunces.

"Americans," she says, "are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations."

She blames this dumbing down on certain "irresistible forces," which include "the triumph of video culture over print culture ... 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."

I think she's right. But, as someone else noted, it's not just Americans that are affected. Other countries suffer from the same malaise.

A poll released just recently in Britain found an appalling lack of basic knowledge on the part of the English:

1. Almost 25% think Winston Churchill was a myth while over 50% think Sherlock Holmes was real.

2. 47% believe that the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

3. 23% think World War II prime minister Churchill was a fiction. That same percentage believed that Crimean War nurse, Florence Nightingale, did not exist.

4. Charles Dickens, one of Britain's most famous writers, was thought to be a fictional character by 3%.

5. Among those in the top ten list of people thought to be myths were Indian political leader Mahatma Ghandi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington.

We have a problem. Ms. Jacoby notes that a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper found that almost 50% of Americans between 18 and 24 did not think it was necessary to know the location of countries where news was being made. Over a third thought a foreign language was "not at all important," as opposed to only 14% who thought it was "very important."

According to the National Science Foundation, 20% of American adults thinks the sun revolves around the earth!

I have seen a number of surveys of the "man on the street," and invariably the people interviewed cannot tell you the names of our top political leaders, the first or second presidents of our country, what the Bill of Rights is, the name of their state capital, etc.

What follows is a "perfect" example of what Susan Jacoby is talking about. The Vice Chairman of General Motors Corporation, Bob Lutz, told reporters in Texas recently that global warming is a "total crock of shit."

With that kind of ignorant leadership, is it any wonder that GM is going down the tubes?