Anti intellectualism and the future of the country

[nadinbrzezinski]

Read any recently published novel and you will quickly notice that they tend to be fairly simplistic and the hero usually wins... in fact anything whiteout a clear conclusion or a bad ending for the hero is seen as a no-no.

They also tend to be shorter... because gosh darn it who has time to read 500 and 600 page novels?

And they also tend to be written at a fairly low grade level, to the point that the Harry Potter series of books, read by 8th graders in the UK, would never be given to anything less than an 11th grader in the US.

Newspapers,. we all know they are written to the level of sixth grade, that is the mantra, not to write anything complex, not even in the editorial page... now if you went to other countries you'd quickly notice that editorial pages are everything but simple and respect the intelligence of the reader.

Hell some words are not even used any more (outside of academia) and gosh darn it, its gotten so bad that gosh darn it, we are in love with our explosions but forget complex stories at the movies either, and our news media is all but entertainment these days incapable of dealing with the complexities of the real world.

On this side we like to fashion ourselves as well read...

Perhaps

But the anti intellectualism and disdain for education is not only confined to free republic or the right... it is a national phenomena, and from time to time it is also openly on display here.

So is the denial of facts that may not jibe with your personal world view

So why am I bringing this up? I have been talking to my brother in law, and we were talking about the pendulum swings in US history and how it is harder and harder to go back to any semblance of academic rigor every time we have these crazy anti intellectual spats... (which incidentally it is one of the 14 points of fascism)

What I am saying, is that we are entering a dark age in the US, where monsters, warlocks and other creatures of the fantastic are about to take over from rational thought... and it is just one more indicator that the Empire is dying. Just like Rome, we are now going to war for religious reasons, and not rational reasons, and just like Rome our Congress has become a joke, there for the collective amusement but essentially with no power. And just like Rome, we are about to learn we are part of history and not outside of it.

[Sammy Pepys]

1. Don't know about this

"And they also tend to be written at a fairly low grade level, to the point that the Harry Potter series of books, read by 8th graders in the UK, would never be given to anything less than an 11th grader in the US."

All of my co-workers kids burn through Harry Potter books, and they're not even middle school age.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. They are the exception, not the rule then

if you look at what grade level scholastic recomends it is not 8th grade

[Sammy Pepys]

14. Yeah, but...

..who made Scholastic the arbiter of what reading is appropriate for what age level? I don't buy that argument...

[Book Lover]

114. The marketplace - they are the world's biggest children's publisher

and have been in that position for decades. Also, their staff: these people have been writing books that have taught kids to read over a period, again, of decades. How ironic that in a thread about anti-intellectualism in America that you would display such disdain for educated professionals.

[Nikia]

72. I thought that Harry Potter books were more middle school aged books

At least I see lots of them buying those books or parents buying those books for them.
Are you sure that 11 wasn't the recommended age, not grade level?

[nadinbrzezinski]

119. I am sure they are not recommended by eight year olds

in the US, but are read by eight year olds in the UK

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Book recommendation: "Anti-Intellectualism in the United States"

by Richard Hofstadter. Published in the early 60's and just as relevent today.

[AspenRose]

24. Correction on the title, since I just tried to look it up to get it

"Anti-Intellectualism in American Life." 1966.

[no_hypocrisy]

37. Thanks. I couldn't quite remember it and I admire the book so

much, I hoped someone could figure out what I meant.

[AspenRose]

45. Thank you for sharing it. I can't wait to read it.

eom

[Supersedeas]

51. American Evasion of Philosophy - Cornell West

[tabasco]

4. I have a brother who used to be a ditto head.

He once told my mother with some pride that "I haven't read a book in thirty years." It was a sad moment for my dear late Mom, a lifelong liberal and avid reader, who read more books in one year than I will my entire life. I just do not understand how anyone can take pride in ignorance.

[seabeyond]

8. i havent finished reading the op, but..... my brother brags about not reading

he has such a f*ed up life,... i on the other hand have a pretty peaceful and happy life. he tells me all the things i am doing wrong, and wrong with my kids. i let my oldest, then 10 read adult books. bad me. they should be out playing being kids.... got my ass chewed out. the other day his 18 yr old daughter was directed to tell me she was preg. second time. irresponsible. she is keeping baby so i am getting her a couple of my preg books. brother says to his two boys. women have been having babies forever and never needed book. snide, so snide. i tell him.... not saying a woman cannot have a baby without reading, just is so much better when we can read and learn what is up.

ass hole

yes.... he is very proud he does not read

[JuniperLea]

23. Women might know

But irresponsible 18-year-old children may benefit from a book!

How sad.

My mom let me read any book in the house, including her copy of "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) and was there ready and waiting with a dictionary and an encyclopedia (We didn't have the Internets back then). She had me enrolled in at least three book clubs at any given time, and I've had a library card since I was four. I'm betting your bro never did anything like that for his daughter. Which is further evidence that she could really use some prego books!

[seabeyond]

27. i have my dictionary falling apart from college 3 decades ago

sittin right next to me now. i was looking up exploit. lol. i love my dictionary. kids all the time ask for definition, i use big words, always with them. so always they have asked. i always pull out the dictionary for accurate definition. even knowing the meaning.

right there with you on all you say

[JuniperLea]

32. I got a great book for Christmas...

You might like it!

The Gilded Tongue by Rod L. Evans, PH.D.

"Overly eloquent words for everyday things"

It's like a thesaurus on steroids! LOL! Very fun stuff.

I always tried to keep my kids from swearing, but you know how it is once they hit a certain age. So I started correcting them with things like... no, its not bullshit, its bovine excrement. We had a lot of fun with that and the dirty words disappeared... well, from our house anyway:)


Edited to say... I have a new Webster here at work, and another with my Scrabble game, but my favorite is a big, heavy encyclopedic dictionary that belonged to my grandmother, circa 1938... weighs about 20 lbs!

[seabeyond]

34. that is so cool. all you post. what would f* be. lol lol. gonna tell the kids

bovine excrement, they will giggle. my son would love that book. gnna have to get it. and we have $50 in barnes and noble gifts

[JuniperLea]

39. Genital intercourse...

not to be confused with verbal intercourse:)

Its pretty funny to be all urine'd off and yell, genital intercourse!!!

Most people don't give an airborne rodents derriere about the English language and all the fun you can have with it.

:)

:toast:

[seabeyond]

47. i just love this. thank you for sharing. very creative. i cuss.....

i cuss well, lol lol. my kids not allowed. my oldest is in middle school and talks about the kids cussing and he says, they dont even know how to do it. at least you know how to do it. lol. but he is really offended by it and hates it. he is the reason i started cussing in front of him because of his judgment level and teaching him to get beyond, for the very reason of hitting this age and judgin his fellow students, .... my youngest loves it and cant wait until he can do it. anyway

they will really enjoy this. i am going ot share

now

i stopped reading for years cause babies/kids never let me read and i have to read straight thru. last spring i read two books on vacation and fell in love all over. went thru koonts, then sandford and just finished up johansen. i went to hastings today and the dude turned me onto lee child and tami hoag..... so i am off to read. my hubby is never gonna get a clean house

thanks juniperx

[JuniperLea]

50. When you get done with those...

Look into Knut Hamsun... a love story in "Victoria"... and the very disturbing, Pulitzer prize winning "Hunger".

[Hardrada]

70. I was raised by my grandparents.

My grandfather would always give Greek and Latin equivalents to our swear words so we could use them instead. We learned a lot! He would also sometimes use some Norwegian curses (but wouldn't translate). Profiting by his example, some years later I learned some German phrases that have been useful at times.

[zanne]

48. I don't think he's proud...

I've heard that stuff all my life and I know numerous people who are "proud" of their "street smarts". They look down on intellectual pursuits because they're resentful of the educated, who have better jobs than they do.

[salin]

11. "who used to be a ditto head."

Curious - what turned the verb from "is" to "used to be"?

[tabasco]

59. He seems to have come to his senses.

At least temporarily.

He will never get back all those years of no reading, however.

[seabeyond]

5. firstly bullshit harry potter is 11th grade in u.s. it is on my 6th gr son

reading list. only he is graded at a college level reading so he is well beyond harry potter. my 3rd grader is at the harry potter level in AR reading points. just doesnt like it cause monsters and too scary for him.

now i will finish reading what you posted

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Ok fine

whatever... if you think it is BS, then it is BS... I will not argue.

I'm going by what SCHOLAISTIC recomends

[seabeyond]

9. they also recommended that movie on 9/11 build up dissing clinton

but that is not the levels being given by the schools.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Shcolastic dropped the 9.11 movie by the way

and they also dropped the study guide

But hey... as I said, readhing several sites

And what all seem to agree upon is that well motivated readers will read above their grade level

[seabeyond]

15. yes i know scholastic did that. i was very interested in that time.

i called my school board and kept them informed on that. and i pat scholastic on the back for that.

and i do know that my house hold, though not unique may not quite be the norm in reading. all four of us are big readers. those books you talk about.... lol lol, i have been hooked since spring. i must have read a good hundred in the last handful of months. i have it down to a book a day.

my kids have always had a passion for reading. i told my relatives since they were babies give them books as presents, as good or more, than a toy

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Yep I am a big reader too

Hell I have been readhing well above my grade level since fifth grade....

So I fully undertand

[Runcible Spoon]

7. I think a large part of the problem...

is that the media are pretty horrendous at expressing complicated, multi-dimensional ideas in simple language. There is an art to that. So, you've either got inaccessible academic papers utilizing highly technical language or you've got mainstream media that is boiled down, simplified with a lot of the original contextual complexity missing. I don't think we need to speak like Victorians to understand difficult arguments; talking with any engineer or other hard-sciency type will illustrate this :evilgrin: As a matter of fact, I think valuing 50-cent words and tangled syntax to the point where an author is INTENTIONALLY trying to make her writing difficult to grasp so that it appears more intelligent is another huge problem. As an academic I can assure you that this occurs all the time, myself occasionally being guilty as charged.

[seabeyond]

13. sheeit... so many couldnt even understand the very clear and articulate speech of kerry

said he used too "big" of words and "nuanced". many dems at that. crazy. there was not a single thing he said that i did not understand and i did not think he used too "big" of words. just crazy.

i do agree that there is an effort to dumb down our kids. i do believe that it is becoming more cool to be stupid. i see this around my kids.

[Runcible Spoon]

28. Umm I'm not quite sure how that's entirely relevant to my post but...

I'm not arguing that many are not educated to the level necessary to follow John Kerry's speech. I was specifically referring to problems in MSM, but I'll digress to address points about general literacy. First of all, literacy is not the end-all, be-all of intelligence. It is not intrinsic to humankind to write things down and read them. We developed this skill across time and geography for reasons too complex and numerous to get into here. However, we are left with the realization that to fully participate in most institutions of the world, a certain competence in this skill must be attained.

Now, you may think that kids are "dumbed down" but I'm willing to bet that they are learning new avenues of cultural fluency that you couldn't even begin to guess at. Kids just don't stop absorbing and learning; in the absence of formal schooling they find and create alternative fluencies. Hell, there was an anthropologist named Bourgois studying crack-addicted communities and you'd be surprised at the complexity and effeciency of "alternative" economies and social networks that develop to compensate for poverty, marginalization, and social disenfranchisement. This is not to glamorize "thug life", since the vast majority of those people wanted OUT. Now, this is just an example.

There are other fluencies kids are learning, computer technology especially (ever seen a 12 year old text message on a cell phone? mind boggling!) and there is a definite devaluation of standardized language. Whether this is at the institutional, familial, individual, national cultural level(s) (I suspect some discursive interplay here) is beyond my specific field of expertise. However, with the amount and types of information kids are expected to process we should expect "short-hand" communicative strategies to be valued over expansive, in-depth reasoning that we value as "educated". So either educational institutions need to recognize WHY, HOW, and WHEN these alternative fluencies are valued and exploit this to educate these kids to read and write in the "traditional" sense, or perhaps we should just recognize that change is inevitable (and social change happens first and can be most readily seen at the level of language) and what we are seeing is a revolution in communication that has organically adapted to globalization and transnationalism. Who knows? Perhaps text messaging/cyber shorthand is the beginning of a "global language" :shrug:

[seabeyond]

31. a lot of good points

i have noticed the many different areas the kids are learning that i did not have growing up... thanks for your post. good perspective.

[Runcible Spoon]

33. I know what I'm saying is provocative :)

and I mean it to be that way :evilgrin: What bugs me is when people just go off on the "dumbing down" of our youth without themselves fully recognizing exactly WHAT "we" mean by "smart/dumb" and the social dynamics attached to the processes of "educating" or "dumbing down". Seems a bit hypocritical, and a lot of people rely on sketchy anecdotal evidence to back up sweeping claims about the future of our kids. Bugs me a little bit.

[seabeyond]

35. it isnt provacative.... for me anyway

and generally i am able to preceive what you are stating and have in the pastour made exactly your points, not examples, but others. it is just this thread was started as intellectual which has a certain box.... what youa re speaking isnt intellectual but certainly smart, thinking and learning.....

[ljm2002]

108. Really good points...

...and I really think your point about text messaging/cyber shorthand possibly being a 'global language' is a good one.

My son likes to play online video games. He sits in front of the computer and creates characters in fantasy role playing type games, all the while using online chat and VOIP where people constantly speak to one another. On any given day, he interacts with others from around the country and around the world. He has cyber friends in Montana, in England, India, Japan... it's astonishing. And while I always thought him to be apolitical (and he does not subscribe to my own strong leftist politics) -- at the same time, he has insights that blow me away sometimes. Also -- he's pretty astute. After Colbert's performance at the White House Press Corps dinner last year, he asked me if I knew where to get the video -- he had heard about it. He watched the whole thing, and loved it, thought it was the funniest thing yet.

So yes, there are real issues with the dumbing down of kids and the population as a whole. But in the end, truth will out, and people will come to their senses. Right now, the population as a whole still thinks we have a "free press" that mostly tells us the truth. We on DU know that is not the case -- and as I tell friends, one of the big problems we have is the population does not know or even suspect the depths of the lies they are being told. At least in the USSR, their population knew they were being lied to; we are even more controlled because we still cling to the belief of being a free and open society.

Anyway -- the point is -- these kids are smarter than we give them credit for. Many of those who have tuned out politics and politicians have done so because they recognize they are being lied to. Maybe that, and their unprecedented ability to reach out around the globe, will produce new ways for information to flow that will change social structures in ways we cannot imagine.

Here's hoping.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. That is not the point

I work in the gaming industry, producing ROle Playing Books and we started seeing this ahead of the curve

When Dungeons and Dragons started production values were far more invested in good, clear concise language that was not dumbed down, and not in art... it is not as if they wrote a masters or PhD thesis, even if at times you may think so (thaco comes to mind), but they spend quite a bit longer editing and creating something that was interesting to read.

These days... it is 180... glossy paper and cool artwork and the writing has slipped in quality since we need to keep things simple for our readers. Don't get me wrong, it still sells, and sells admirably well, but the original product would not sell... it would be, by modern standards, too complex.

What is more, the novels that came with many of the games.

They used to tell complex stories, or dare and do... and Weiss and Hickman are still a joy to read.

These days they are not only thinner but also simpler, with badly realized characters and badly realized plots... and always keyed to product.. so if you have a change in the rules, you will see a series of novels keyed to push the change.

When you ask the people responsible, who used to commission novels that were more or less decent, they say, our market cannot read this material because it is too complex.

Here is a huge secret, the market they are going after are the 15 year old mostly middle class males, but the ones who keep buying those novels are slightly older males, and novels are very poor sellers.

But words like oh "hence," I have used it for years, it is part of my lexicon... as my brother in law pointed out to me, I learned Queens English, not American, California English...

Oh and if you look at the GW novels, written for their games, they are far more concerned about character, and story telling than they are about reflecting game rules.

[seabeyond]

22. hence, ergo.... i love and use all the time. again kids hae picked up and is so cute

k... now i will leave you to your thread. i am popping up all over. but i do love this subject. and i hear ya on the games. hubby is big on that. we would spend a lot of time in the decade ago complex games. busy with kids now, but he hasnt found any good ones to come out recently for us to do

[Runcible Spoon]

29. I addressed (some) of these points in my other post...n/t

[Broken_Hero]

99. To thread hijack for a moment...

I haven't heard the term thaco in years.....:) What kind of games do you make, do you work for Wizards of the C, or ? BTW, for those who don't know, thaco means, To Hit Armor Class 0(zero)...it was the means, in which you attacked somebody...you had to roll a certain number(thaco number), and if you hit that number, or got higher...you hit the monster/character.

on edit:thaco is still one of the hardest things in 1/2 edition D and D to teach somebody...

[nadinbrzezinski]

116. No problem

I work for myself, I run a very small game company, so far composed of ME

Right at the moment working on a D20 module and in the editorial stage we have removed some words that are too complex or difficult, such as "hence"

the company is deist games.

Oh and when designing our own game engine, we had to consider carefully just how math intensive we wanted to make it.

www.deistgames.com

And yes, THACO was rsemoved from third because it was way, WAAAYYYY too complex for current players

[Broken_Hero]

123. nice site

I got it bookmarked....I thought thaco was easy, once I understood it, my d and d teachers weren't all that great teachers to begin with. I like it better than the attack mode in 3rd edition...I know they have 3.5 edition out, but don't know what they have changed in that revamp. About the only thing I liked in 3rd was the dual classes, and the ability to play as monsters, aka Orcs, Minotaurs, things like that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

124. For the old hands it is all but intiuitive

but having done the test with the target market, who for the record at times have a problem making a character from the book and need a computer, it is far easier to comprehend

It comes down to add some numbers and roll high... yes the engine is that simple.

And yes, that is part of the problem... ironically DnD helps to boost the case that thinking is no longer taught or apreciatied.... that said, most kids who Role Play are far better at academic pursuits, since they are introduced to concepts in play and in a "fun" way

Oh and thanks for the compliments on the site. Been teaching myself how to use Macromedia... as I am on a true shoe string budget

[Broken_Hero]

125. a computer, to make characters?!?!!?

Blasphemy!....YOu got to be kidding me...all I need is four d6's, a piece of paper, and a #2 pencil...

I always thought the White Wolf system was the easiest...no big compliciations in that one(that I remember).

[nadinbrzezinski]

126. No I am not kidding

it has gotten that interesting.

Heck I use some of that software to make my work flow go faster

But I am not kidding... kids do far better if they have software, and there are plenty of packages, both free and commercial to make life easier for the major packages...

And it all comes down to that darn cute complex arithmetic.... no I am not kidding you

[KoKo]

61. They are hiring folks who say "Yeah...Cool Dudes...watcha' say...what's

goin' down here with this report...give me some background here...whoa...we have to ask when these dudes are gonna'...wait..we're hearing some action coming in from our affiliates...what's that ya say about these tornado's ...well I'm just hearing in from our correspondent on the ground...well what's goin' on there where you are...you say these things came in during the night? and what were the folks there on the ground tellin' you about their experience...did they have any warning...well we're talking to some folks who are down there and they are tellin' us that that they didn't know...Whoa you are saying that those folks down there didn't know...but we are wondering about those radio's that folks are saying you can buy..but we go to our weather forcaster who's saying that those dudes didn't really have warning because those cities didn't have alarms..but most folks out there in our viewing area know that to thave those radio alarms is a good thing and so if folks couldn't get outta th way then there some responsibility on them but we want everyone to know that we are very concerned about what's goin' down out there today in the midst of this terrible tragedy that's going down...there in XYC.

[Broken_Hero]

100. If you think language/reading is bad

the writing style is by far the worst, imo...I don't now how many times I've had to redo reports because someone doesn't know how to write/spell...but I do believe, all three are tied together.

[The2ndWheel]

12. So if we're following the same path as all empires do

(and I agree that we are, we really can't escape it, America wouldn't exist without it), why does it matter?

Increased complexity requires increased energy to keep it going. At the same time, with that increased complexity comes specialization. Specialization allows us to focus on one aspect at a time, not the complex web. Specialization also allows us to drift into our own individual world, where problems are taken care of by experts and institutions.

[KoKo]

62. We are just a "Blip" in the History Time Line.......

And...all along we thought AMERICA was SPECIAL! :cry: Just a Blip in the Timeline...if one looks at the vast Timeline of History. We are puny...and small..

We tried, though! And we join all the OTHERS who TRIED...but in the end the Dicatators and Emperors and Kings always WIN...in the end...for awhile.

We DID TRY!

[Donnachaidh]

16. I have to agree with you totally on this

I'm in the process of doing the paperwork for my son to go to 9th grade. We've been subjected to powerpoint presentations done by seniors in high school that had the both of us wincing because of grammatical mistakes and generally amateurish quality from kids who are *graduating*.

I've yet to see any REAL information for a purely Academic route through this high school. The emphasis has been on what I would consider *middle management jobs* - NOT academics.

He is slated to go into the advanced placement classes. But honestly neither one of us knows what constitutes *advanced placement* here.

I'm VERY worried about this.

[seabeyond]

20. my son is sixth and i have been working hard on this

finding the school not only most academically inclined, but where academic excellence is embraced and not beat up.... lol lol. but even in this school that i think is great for him, challenging, i am continually working on the academic path opposed to just going thru the school system with what is taught and tested

[Donnachaidh]

52. I have used the guidance counselors so much they probably hate me

But I really don't care -- it's their JOB to deal with me and to make sure my kid is in a class that is both challenging AND will look good on his record for higher education.

[seabeyond]

17. finally read thru your whole post and......

i agree. lol lol lol

[Jonathan50]

21. There was an example of anti intellectualism on a thread just in the last couple of days

But the anti intellectualism and disdain for education is not only confined to free republic or the right... it is a national phenomena, and from time to time it is also openly on display here.

Yep, on the thread about pot prisoners costing one billion dollars a year anti intellectualism was displayed quite openly.

I posted link after link showing that cannabis was far less harmful than alcohol and one poster kept insisting that he/she was right and that cannabis was a "dangerous drug" without once posting any information of his/her own despite multiple challenges on my part for him/her to do so.

Willful ignorance is anti intellectualism incarnate.

[JuniperLea]

30. Good on you!

Add "Big Pharma Syndrome" to that and what you have is corporations keeping the lid on information and releasing erroneous information... just like BushCo.

Think of all the drugs and food additives that have been released and subsequently recalled in the past 30-40 years.

Think of all the big pharma drugs we could do without by using cannabis instead. No money in that though.

Yes, you have a perfect example right there!

[TZ]

67. another example is

most threads that talk about the HPV vaccine. I have seen the same thing...

[alarimer]

127. That is anti-science, a whole subset of anti-intellectualism

and my personal pet peeve when it comes to discussion of science and medicine. Most people do not understand the concept of "proof" as it pertains to scientific studies. You don't really "prove" anything in science, you just disprove things. It's just the way the logic works. And even after you conduct the appropriate tests and run the statistics, there is still a possibility that a) you accept a null hypothesis that is not true or b) you reject a hypothesis that is true.

Most people do not understand probability at all, which is why they continue to play the lottery.

[DaveJ]

25. Maybe it's a yin/yang thing

I definitely agree that anti-intellectualism is a growing trend but there are also a lot of extraordinarily intelligent people (kids and adults) still out there. I think it's more likely that society's range of mental achievement is widening, and a likely source of even more inequities.

[Initech]

26. Movie recommendation - "Idiocracy"

It was made by the guys who created Office Space, and Mike Judge creates a future America where everyone is really stupid. So stupid that water has been replaced by Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, the Costco is the size of the state of Kansas, and the president is the 12 time WWE Smackdown champion.

[MilesColtrane]

55. Yes, "Idiocracy"...

...set in the future.

Highly intelligent couples are now having only have one child, or none, not wanting to bring a life into such a screwed up world.
Stupid couples have 7 kids.

After natural selection does it's work, the most popular TV show in the US is "Ow, My Balls!!" which is just constant videos of guys getting racked.

One of the things about Ken Burn's "Civil War" that I noticed was the literacy and eloquence of the letter writers.

Now we gots loosers who kant spel. I'm series!!!

[northofdenali]

92. I saw that trend coming the first time

I caught my stepson watching something similar. Today's reality shows are about as real as Power Rangers.

And I no your series!!1! Were screwn!1!

[devilgrrl]

74. I just watched 'Idiocracy' last evening...

a brilliant satire! Two thumbs up - WAY UP! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Initech]

96. Funny thing about the movie...

Whenever people are quick to point out how stupid the movie is, they're only furthering the point that Mike Judge is trying to make.

[devilgrrl]

98. Oh exactly!

That's the movie's stroke of genius - stupid people will hate it.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

[rudy23]

80. It's hard to stop seeing that movie once it's over--it's genuinely scary and accurate!

Seriously, the whole time you're laughing your ass off at that movie, you can't shake the feeling that this has already been set in motion.

Maybe that's why none of the major studios wanted to promote a movie from the guy who's responsible for Office Space.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. Read a novel from a hundred years ago...

and they tend to be fairly simplistic, and the hero usually wins.

Notice I said a novel, not one of the great classics which some people mistake as representative of an era.

"They also tend to be shorter... because gosh darn it who has time to read 500 and 600 page novels?"

I reject the notion that the longer a novel is, the more intellectual is.

"And they also tend to be written at a fairly low grade level, to the point that the Harry Potter series of books, read by 8th graders in the UK, would never be given to anything less than an 11th grader in the US."

Seems to me the target audience of Harry Potter is 8th grade and younger in the U.S. I also reject the suggested notion that a more mature audience who reads children books are not intellectual.

"Newspapers,. we all know they are written to the level of sixth grade, that is the mantra, not to write anything complex, not even in the editorial page... now if you went to other countries you'd quickly notice that editorial pages are everything but simple and respect the intelligence of the reader."

I'd think any newspaper writer would take serious issue with that, um, sentence.

"Hell some words are not even used any more (outside of academia) and gosh darn it, its gotten so bad that gosh darn it, we are in love with our explosions but forget complex stories at the movies either, and our news media is all but entertainment these days incapable of dealing with the complexities of the real world."

Forsooth, ye've hit the bull's eye. You're the bee's knees. Ug ug ook.

[LanternWaste]

56. You said you read "a novel", but then go on to say, "they tend...".

You said you read "a novel", but then go on to say, "they tend...".

Were you able to measure the content of many 19th century novels from the one you read?

I ask because the vast majority of fiction I read were written in the 19th century (not just Rosetti and Dodgson, but also Benjamin Heath Malkin and even the light romances of Charles Beckwith-- to me, the more obscure, the better) and I find that there is ample character growth, no shortage of sub-plots, in-depth examination of social trends and beautiful metaphor.

Indeed, I read these due to the almost absolute lack of the same (IMO) from late 20th century authors.

Out of curiosity, on what do you base your statement, "they tend to be fairly simplistic"? I'm intrigued by this because I find the 19th century to contain some of the most in-depth character development and plot.

[Nikia]

73. I would imagine that the poorer quality 19th century writing

Is out of print.
There are intellectual novels written in our time and those are the ones that will be more likely to be in circulation over 100 years from now.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

109. Are you familiar with the term "dime novel?"

Both literally and figuratively?

[damntexdem]

38. It's not true of science fiction.

I'm reading a 505-page novel, published in 2005, in part about how global warming will threaten society later in this century, even after the automobile has been abandoned and new energy souces tapped.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Even sci fi is seeing that trend

[Jonathan50]

49. That you call SF "skiffy" is revealing..

Skiffy is space opera or fantasy. SF is science fiction.

There is a difference.

Notice below that Spider Robinson's website does not refer to skiffy but rather to SF.

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/index.html

RUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE!!!

Or,

Christmas comes early for SF Readers

In September, Tor Books is helping me to bring you all an unexpected posthumous gift from the First Grandmaster of SF: VARIABLE STAR, by Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson – a new novel of interstellar danger, romance and tragedy based on an outline created by Robert in 1955 and only recently rediscovered.

It will be Robert's 53rd book, his first in 19 years, and my own 33rd. Being privileged to write this novel, being chosen to work with characters and future history created by my mentor and friend, has been the greatest honour and the most intimidating challenge of my career to date. I received nothing but warm support and encouragement from Robert's family, friends, and fans everywhere, and from my editor, Pat LoBrutto. I gave VARIABLE STAR everything I had, and to my vast relief I am very happy with the way it turned out. I think Robert is, too. And I hope you will be.

[muriel_volestrangler]

71. A difference only apparent to a few

'SF' and 'sci fi' are both abbreviations for 'science fiction'. 'SF' is shorter, and not quite as obvious in what it's an abbreviation for (in other contexts, it could be San Francisco, or Sinn Fein).

Calling it 'skiffy' is, I presume, some in-joke. Who told you 'sci fi' meant something other than 'science fiction'? Is this anything other than snobbery?

[Jonathan50]

87. Not snobbery

Like I said, SF is science fiction.

Sci Fi is space opera or fantasy.

SF is by far the older term.

[muriel_volestrangler]

89. There's no 'i' in "space opera" or "fantasy"

which rather shoots down your theory that that is what "sci fi" stands for.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates "scifi" back to 1955 (and defines it as a contraction of 'science fiction'); it doesn't give a date for the 'SF' abbreviation. When do you claim it dates to?

[Jonathan50]

90. Skiffy is a pejorative term indicating low quality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

Forrest J. Ackerman publicly used the term "sci-fi" at UCLA in 1954,<7> though Robert A. Heinlein had used it in private correspondence six years earlier.<8> As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp fiction science fiction.<9><10><11> By the 1970s, critics within the field such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight were using "sci-fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction,<12> and around 1978, Susan Wood and others introduced the pronunciation "skiffy." Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers."<13> David Langford's monthly column "As Others See Us" offers numerous examples of "sci-fi" being used in a pejorative sense by people outside the genre.<14>

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scientifiction

Blend of scientific and fiction, coined by science fiction pulp magazine editor Hugo Gernsback in 1926

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=science+fiction

science fiction

1929 (first attested in "Science Wonder Stories" magazine), though there is an isolated use from 1851; abbreviated form sci-fi is from 1955.

http://www.answers.com/topic/science-fiction

The euphonic "sci-fi," popularized by Forrest J Ackerman in 1954, but used five years earlier by Robert A. Heinlein<4>, has grown in popularity and is today by far the most common term used in the popular press, although many hardcore fans and authors continue to wince at its usage or even consider it offensive. Brian Aldiss, defending the abbreviation "SF," notes that it is flexible enough to stand for science fantasy or speculative fiction, as well as science fiction. Some detractors of the term "sci-fi" have corrupted its pronunciation to "skiffy," which itself has become a sub-genre term for poorly made science fiction. Harlan Ellison has derided the term "sci-fi" as a "hideous neologism" that "sounds like crickets fucking,"<11> a comment to which Ackerman responded by producing buttons bearing the slogan, "I love the sound of crickets making love.

Some commentators make a distinction between "sf" which they use to describe fiction in which science or speculation are integral to the plot or theme of the work, with "sci-fi" which they use for entertainment, typically in another genre such as action/adventure or horror which merely uses the trappings of traditional science-fiction stories, such a space ships, futuristic technology, bug-eyed monsters.

Another source of dislike for the term sci-fi term is the tendency for the mainstream to use it as a collective term that lumps together not only true science fiction but fantasy, horror, comic books, cult films, special effects action films, only marginally related genres such as anime and gaming, and completely unrelated fields such as UFOlogy. (The term "science fiction" itself has also been used at various times as a collective marketing term for these genres.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

101. Sounds like snobbery to me (n/t)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

110. It is snobbery.

For years fans of the genre have been under the mistaken impression that "hard" science fiction is better than the space opera stuff. So they've tried to created a wedge between the two with terms like "space opera" and "speculative fiction." It was an old and tired debate forty years ago, and it makes "Kirk vs. Picard" debates seem intelligent by comparison. It's the writing, stupids.

[nadinbrzezinski]

118. And it is the kidn of snobbery that still makes it to

conventions and other events

For some reason the old hands really had a problem with thigns like Star Wars, since it sold.

[Jonathan50]

44. You might want to check out "Mother of Storms" by John Barnes

It's not as recent as the book you refer to but it's quite good.

http://www.epiphyte.net/SF/mother-of-storms.html

Just in time for hurricane season, John Barnes brings us science fiction for meteorologists. Mother of Storms will probably be labelled as "a chilling ecological thriller!" but it's much more than that. A military--excuse me, peacekeeping--strike by the UN causes sudden, rapid global warming, which results in the birth of a superhurricane of unprecedented size, strength, and longevity. This storm spawns a number of daughter storms, which proceed to rampage around the planet, doing a pretty good job of bringing civilization to its knees. This book has flood, pestilence, and war; there's famine too, but it's mostly offstage. There's death and destruction of incomprehensible magnitude. Nations and coastlines crumble. Despite all this, a certain cheerful cynicism that pervades the book keeps it entertaining and amusing.

That cheerful cynicism is also what makes Barnes' near-future society of 2028 so plausible. The world is quite different politically; the UN is the dominant political and military power, and the President of the United States is waging a constant battle to regain some measure of the States' former sovereignty. TV and newspapers have been largely supplanted by XV, which lets the public experience the full range of sensory experience being transmitted by a character. (Needless to say, this has revolutionized the porn industry.) The net still exists, but in a greatly expanded state (has to be; XV consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth). Cars drive themselves. There's a wonderful digression about a group of self-replicating robots on the moon who start to model some of the more unpleasant behaviors of societies.

[MedleyMisty]

64. John Barnes

My husband is a huge John Barnes fan. :) And he even emails him on a regular basis now, because Barnes put a lot of his books up on Ebay and my husband sort of bought most of them. So now he gets first pick before they're put up for auction.

And yes, I will actually contribute to the thread when I get finished reading it.

[Jonathan50]

95. Yeah, Barnes is good no doubt.

Does you husband by any chance like SM Stirling?

I'm kind of a dystopia fan and nobody does dystopias like Stirling.

His "Draka" books are quite chilling and very well thought out and even include extensive appendices documenting the culture, technology, history etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._M._Stirling

The Draka novels postulate a dystopian slave-holding militaristic (white) African empire founded by American Loyalists who escaped to South Africa after the American Revolution rather than to Canada (as in our history). They were later joined by French Royalist emigres, Icelandic refugees, and demobbed veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, then by tens of thousands of defeated Confederates after the American Civil War. Stirling provides a timeline for its historical development through the 19th and 20th centuries, first as the Crown Colony of Drakia (for Francis Drake), gradually breaking away from British control to become the Domination of the Draka. The Draka culture is remarkable for combining a strictly race- and class-based hierarchical society with near-complete gender-equality (including female soldiers in integrated military units in combat roles). Compared to current western society, nudity and sexuality are much less taboo among Draka.

As a result of the intense manpower pressures stemming from their Conquest of Africa through the 19th century, all Draka are liable for service in the military/security forces, and the Draka-only Citizen Force is by far the deadliest and most advanced military machine on the planet. But there are never enough Draka (only 30 million or so at the start of WW2) to go around, and the bulk of the Domination's Armed Forces are made up on Jannisary Legions recruited from the Serf population. The Citizen Force provides the elite cutting edge, while the Jannisaries are the cannon fodder.

[northofdenali]

93. Mother of Storms was a great read.

For all you Skiffy (fantasy) fans out there, Jasper Fforde has a new one out - "The Fourth Bear" - that had me rolling on the floor in a literal fashion. One of the funniest mystery/fantasy/humor novels I've ever read.

[SoCalDem]

40. Although our founders appeared to be educated men, the myth of America

is that we were built by uneducated sod-busters, 49-ers, mountain-men, cowboys, and wave after wave of illiterate immigrants.

To a degree, that iS true, though and the folklore has always been about glamorizing their exploits in a "they did it, and so can YOU" kind of way.

America is in love with the Horatio Alger mentality. We have been raised to believe in DREAMS and WISHES...and if you want something badly enough, it is attainable.

It is possible, but highly improbable.

What makes a better story/book/movie?

1. a story about a kid who did his lessons diligently, studied hard, worked his way through college, and ended up owning a company

2. a poor kid with no chance...homeless.. who can barely read.. a high school dropout, who by a series of coincidences and luck, ends up owning a company..

The anti-intellectual movement is all about making excuses. Excuses for why the schools can't seem to cope with "modern" students, why teachers aren't paid well, why kids are hopelessly uninterested in school, and to excuse the lack of "mass education" that we used to take pride in.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, small children sit at their own computer terminals in their classrooms... they are learning english.. they are reading..and they are waiting for a chance to take jobs that used to be American jobs..

[More Than A Feeling]

41. My personal experience is different.

I've read the Song of Ice and Fire series and I am currently reading the Mars Trilogy. The Song of Ice and Fire is an very popular fantasy series. Each installment could be used as a door stop. Both series have no "hero immunity", in fact, you wonder whether the author is going to leave ANYONE alive at the end.

[Hardrada]

42. Whenever I hear the word "culture" I reach for my revolver.

Whenever I hear the word "revolver," I reach for my culture!

I forgot who said which but it expresses a sort of fairly intelligent cynicism.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

46. Whenever I hear the word "revolver"

I think about one of the greatest records the Beatles ever made.

Starts with "Taxman", a George song, and ends with John's first weird song, "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Can't beat it!!

I have had people ask me if I am European because I know a lot of Beatle songs; I can also sing some opera arias in Italian and French, and I grew up listening to and playing classical music. I was an orchestra nerd.

BTW, I learned to read when I was three. I cannot remember NOT knowing what English letters were. I cannot remember not recognizing letters. So my folks had to put me in the first grade in private school when I was five, because public school wouldn't take you until you were six.

And now I think a college education is useless. It's good for entertaining yourself and expanding your mind, but America doesn't want an educated workforce. It wants mediocrity that it can control & exploit through fear and ignorance. Bosses don't want you to know your rights.

One person I know was told by a co worker that he was exempt from being paid for overtime, IOW he was salaried because "he has a title".

Everybody has a title, even "Janitor". What an idiot. This co-worker believed she was right, too.


I love my Random House Unabridged Dictionary. It has the bad words in it too!!! This would have made my adolescence a lot easier!!

[Jonathan50]

53. I learned to read at four.

And I can't remember ever not being able to read.

I too think of the Beatles when I hear "revolver".

Education these days is more about job training and less about developing critical thinking skills and the ability to think and learn for oneself.

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos."
-HL Mencken

[Hardrada]

65. I was reading newspapers at age 4 and puzzling the hell

out of my relatives. Yeah, I liked Revolver too but wondered what the Beatles were up to with it!

[JVS]

60. Goering

[Obamarama]

54. I was shocked at what happened at work last week...

I was at a meeting and a rather thick, lengthy report was handed out to each attendee. People were commenting on how long the report was.

I said "OMG...this thing is longer than Anna Kerenina!"

After a room full of blank stares, I said "You know....the book by Leo Tolstoy?"

One of my coworkers then piped up and said "Wasn't he a Russian president or something? I didn't know he wrote a book too."

"Never mind," I said.

These are all college educated professionals.

Now, I don't beleive the world is going to hell in a handbasket becasue 12 college educated management level professionals seem to have never heard of the novel or its author. BUT....if this is any indication of the other basic fundamentals they aren't aware of that historically have been hallmarks of a good, basic education, we're all fucked.

[Jonathan50]

63. Ummm.... That's Anna Karenina..

Not Kerenina ;)

[Obamarama]

86. MAN...I hate it when I make an ASS out of myself like that!

I know how to spell Anna Karenina. Of course I have to spell it incorrectly in a thread where I'm trying to sound somewhat intellectual. Funny how those things backfire on you! :-)

[Jonathan50]

88. Ain't it the truth.

I just happen to be a phonetic reader so I catch that kind of stuff all the time.

:)

[Greyhound]

103. "These are all college educated professionals"

and that, dear readers, sums it up.

For the most part, we no longer have a system of education, but instead, have mass job training.

Of course, I'm only referring to the education that is readily available to the masses, the ruling class still have excellent institutions for advanced education. Though our current imbecile in charge is proof that it is quite possible to attend an excellent school without allowing any actual learning to occur.

[KoKo]

57. POINT ON! KUDO's for THIS POST!! Have you listened to the NEW , MSNBC/CNN

Anchors and followed their Diction and Dialog? "You Guys...Hey...that's Cool...Wow...Lemme ask you..what we hear here...Now lemme ask you...Whoa you are saying? These Guys are telling us Kira...Are they telling us...Yeah...Cool...and Dudes are asking Questions...can you fill us in on this...well..all I can say is that this stuff is going down...Really? that kind of stuff is going down? let's cut to White House Correspondent...ABC...

This is the dialog from watching MSNBC/CNN ....


What you say strikes a huge part of my heart. AND THANK YOU FOR POSTING!

[NashVegas]

58. When We Got Stupider

The following is an excerpt from a David Brooks NYT piece from a few years ago.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/opinion/16brooks.html


Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, middlebrow culture, which is really high-toned popular culture, was thriving in America. There was still a sense that culture is good for your character, and that a respectable person should spend time absorbing the best that has been thought and said.

The middlebrow impulse in America dates at least to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the belief that how one spends one's leisure time is intensely important. Time spent with consequential art uplifts character, and time spent with dross debases it.

It's true there was a great mood of take-your-vitamins earnestness about the middlebrow enterprise. But it led to high levels of mass cultural literacy, to Great Books volumes on parlor shelves and to a great deal of accessible but reasonably serious work, like Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization."

Middlebrow culture was killed in the late 50's and 60's, and the mortal blows came from opposite directions. The intellectuals launched assaults on what they took to be middlebrow institutions, attacks that are so vicious they take your breath away.

Clement Greenberg called the middlebrow an "insidious" force that was "devaluing the precious, infecting the healthy, corrupting the honest and stultifying the wise." Dwight Macdonald lambasted the "tepid ooze" of the Museum of Modern Art and the plays of Thornton Wilder. Basically, these intellectuals objected to the earnest and optimistic middle-class arrivistes who were tromping over everything and dumbing down their turf.

At the same time, pop culture changed. It was no longer character-oriented; it was personality-oriented. Readers felt less of a need to go outside themselves to absorb works of art as a means of self-improvement. They were more interested in exploring and being true to the precious flower of their own individual selves.

Less Rembrandt, more Me. Fewer theologians, more dietitians.

As a result, we are spared some of the plodding gentility that marked middlebrow culture. But on the other hand, serious culture matters less now than it did then, and artists and intellectuals have less authority.

Today more people go to college. They may be assigned Rimbaud or Faulkner or even Hemingway. But somehow in adulthood, they tend to have less interest in that stuff than readers 40 years ago.


But, as for those monsters and irrational thought? I don't have any issues with that. We're human and if we behave with rationality all the time, we aren't stretching our potential.

Increasingly, in our workdays and daily lives, we are expected to accept rationality at the cost of everything else. We put profit ahead of compassion, we put food patents ahead of ancestral knowledge, we put computer efficiency and precision above human art.

We are overdosing on rationality at the most important levels, that so few realize. Of course we reach for Heroes and Harry; we need an escape hatch. It's either that, or the bible.

[Hardrada]

68. I remember middlebrow music like the Longines Symphonette

and the Choraliers on the AM radio. Things like that appealed to a broader middle class than we now have and to a rural small town middle class that no longer exists. Well middle brow culture will tend to vanish when there isn't a middle anymore.

[TZ]

66. Yep it goes hand and hand

with the devaluation of the scientific method and critical thinkins skills in the country. Chimpy and company do not want people thinking for themselves. Then they might actually realize that crooks cheats and liars are running the country. As late as last year there was something like 40 percent of people who still believed that Saddam Hussein helped with 9/11 just because Chimpy and co said so.

[MedleyMisty]

69. Anti-intellectualism

I have to add another dissenting voice to the Harry Potter thing. I seriously doubt many parents are going "OMG, you can't read that! Scholastic says you can't have it until you're a junior in high school!"

Kids of all ages read Harry Potter. Go to the midnight party for the last one. You'll see.

Another thing about this thread that bothers me - equating education and intelligence. Maybe in a perfect world where college is free you could say that, but in the real world a lot of intelligent people can't afford college and/or don't have the opportunity to go. That doesn't make them less intelligent.

Hmm...if you want sketchy speculation - it's true that pretty much all the forms of entertainment are aiming for the lowest common denominator and trying for the most stupid and bland products they can get.

It's also true that CD sales and ticket sales and, I'm sad to say, book sales are all going down. I like to think it's because people are tired of bland and stupid.

What do you think of anime and manga? I was first introduced to it in 1999, and since then I've seen the manga section at local bookstores growing and growing and growing. And so much of the art I've seen on deviantart is inspired by manga and anime, and certain Japanese phrases are becoming pretty standard in English conversation. And yes, this tangent has a point - wondering if maybe we're looking to other cultures for intellectual stimulation since American culture has so little of it.

Education perhaps does not equal intelligence, but it does equal being informed. At least for people who have to have information forced upon them. Personally, I seek it out and much prefer reading and researching on my own to formal instruction, but anyway....

With all the teaching to the test and cutting subjects other than reading and math, how informed do you think most younger Americans are? I've seen people post quotes from their college textbooks that were pure propaganda.

Maybe it's not so much that Americans are intrinsically stupid or that our culture is anti-intellectual. Maybe it's more that our schools suck.

[Kerrytravelers]

75. Education isn't just about college.

My parents didn't go to college and I consider them educated. They read and ask questions about the world around them.

The point is, even those who are supposedly the most educated in this country are, quite frankly, intellectually lazy and have no interest in the bigger world unless it directly effects them.

[NashVegas]

84. My Father Was Functionally Illiterate

And yet, he was a huge Tom Lehrer fan.

[Kerrytravelers]

76. I agree! Well said!

This sounds like the nightly conversation Mr. kt and I have on a regular basis.

In regards to Harry Potter, book companies level their books based on the averaging of test and reading scores from various places around the country (teacher here.) Therefore, even though kids may be reading Harry Potter when they aren't in the eleventh grade, the "average" reading scores indicate that Harry Potter would be at an eleventh grade reading level. It has to do with the length and difficulty of the words. And remember, these scores include students who are functionally illiterate when they graduate high school. Pick up Jonathon Kozol's "Savage Inequalities" for a peek into their world.

Nadinbrzezinski simply pointed out that based on Scholastic's research, the Harry Potter books would rank in at an eleventh grade level. It's not an opinion, but a very sad glance at the level of functional illiterates among our children.

When I first started teaching, I began with a 7th grade English class. I was amazed at the low reading ability. The comprehension levels were bottoming out. Essays- if completed at all- were turned in written in pink ink. No pride whatsoever taken in the work. And the parents were appalled that I had their precious little angels rewrite the essays in the appropriate fashion. I'm reading 160 essays, they are to be written in blue or black ink. I expected some pride to be taken. Apparently, expecting students to take pride in their work and to be responsible for their work is simply outrageous.


In the workplace, I am shocked at the stories Mr. kt tells. People never read. He has a book that he will read some a lunch. People are shocked at seeing a grown man reading- well, reading something that isn't about sports. Again, these are college educated people who brag about using the Cliff Notes to get through collage. Wow. They should be so proud.

As a teacher, I see this trend in my kids. I have parents tell me their little one is bored. My response is that I'm not here to entertain. I'm here to teach. OFten, the parents says that the kid like to watch tv and play video games. Now, I'm not against either one of those, but when that is all the kid is doing, and there is no personal creativity, naturally they are bored. They have no idea how to think outside of pressing the hand controllers and flipping the remote. We have limited our children to such a degree, they are incapable of relying on their own abilities.

When I say "we" and "our children," naturally, I am not referring to any articular child, but simply we as a society and the trend that people working in education are finding.

[bleedingheart]

77. Wealth is respected more than education

If you gain your wealth through your education and intelligence, people respect that.

However being an ordinary individual with a boatload of PhD's and perhaps a great intellect, may actually gain you a level of disrepect if you are not wealthy as a result.

To be blunt, I don't know that anything has changed.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

102. Yeah, same here.

I have a letter from a school principal with a Ph.D. that says that he tested me and that I "obviously have a brilliant mind". This is when I was five years old!!! I'm not the smartest person out there, but not stupid either.

Regular people are threatened by smart people. When I was young and dating, I could open my mouth and say Hi to a boy, and a few sentences, and they would zoom off. So I went out with math/physics/engineering nerds for interesting conversation! They loved having a smart girl to talk to! I can't say I understood everything they talked about but at least it was interesting. And I can drop names like "Fourier analysis" and "Vicki Weisskopf" (not a girl), or "Fitzgerald-Lorenz transformations" or "Planck's constant". Don't know what they mean. At least not in technical terms.

Same thing at work. Mediocrity rules and you have to know somebody. I earned three degrees and the only one that got me a job was the 2 year jr. college vocational one, not the bachelor's or the doctorate. Whoop-dee-do.

Once in college, I had a summer temp job, typing, down by NASA Mission Control. This was back in the 1970s. My boss decided he was gonna show me how smart he was. I was nineteen and a junior in college.

He said "Bla bla, Carl Sagan, I'm sure you don't know who he is."
Me: "He teaches astrophysics at Cornell."
Him: "Richard Feynman, I'm sure you don't know who he is."
Me: "He wrote the Feynman Lectures on Physics".

He gave up after the second one because a 19 year old secretary MUST be REALLY STUPID, right? Even if she's in college? I certainly enjoyed my non-violent slam.

They've killed the educated middle class.

My kid went to an expensive Montessori school for years and they read "Tale of Two Cities" in sixth grade. Then she went to an excellent public high school and read it again in ninth grade.

I know someone who said that his education at a large state school, through his B.S. degree, acquired in the 1960s, was probably equivalent to my kid's eighth grade education at a superior Montessori school.

College doesn't guarantee anything anymore unless you major in finance or business, I guess.

[porphyrian]

78. The main Tallahassee paper is written at a third grade reading level.

Capital city of the state of Florida, faith in its education on the level of elementary school dropout.

[NewJeffCT]

79. I think anti-intellectualism picked up after WW2

First off, I think my high school age nephews have outgrown Harry Potter. None of them are academic all-stars, but Potter is definitely more “middle school” to them. And, I think the strength of Potter and the rise of internet sites like amazon.com have actually led to an increase in the amount of reading around the country. In my middle school from the late 70s to early 80s, there was only a handful of kids that would read for pleasure. At least Potter has changed that...

But, I think anti-intellectualism took off in the post WW2 era. Prior to that era, the way for people to get ahead was to encourage their children to study hard and do well in school in hopes of getting into college. And, if the children didn't get into college, hopefully the grand-children would after that. People would live, work and save with the hopes that their children would do better than them.

After nearly 20 years where the country was either in the midst of the Great Depression or fighting World War 2, the economy really took off with things like the GI Bill and just the fact that people had more money to go to college. More and more people went to colleges.

But, the trend had its reaction as well. I think Eisenhower was really the first modern era presidential candidate who decried his opponent (Adlai Stevenson) for being an intellectual elitist. And, Ike, who was no dummy, would often portray himself as a simple, regular guy. I think that kind of touched off the rise of anti-intellectualism, as things like charisma (JFK, Clinton) and “regular guy” status (Reagan, Bush) were more important than intellectual credentials. Granted, both JFK and Clinton were bright and Reagan and Bush were hardly regular guys, but that was how they were portrayed.

And, I think that has spread through society over the decades – how often do you see a smart male portrayed as a nerd/geek on TV or in the movies? It is pretty commonplace, while the hero is the guy who kicks ass and gets the hot girl. If the nerdy guy is lucky, he finds a nerdy girl to hook up with in a minor sub-plot. You’d really break the Hollywood paradigm if the smart guy got the hot girl while also kicking some ass. Or, the stereotype of the smart, but cold, beauty who is won over by the hero kicking ass, while also learning to loosen up in the process.

I am not blaming Ike or Hollywood for it all. I also think that as a consequence of the growing middle class, people did not feel the need to push their children as hard into studying, going to college, etc, so they could have a better life than them. People thought more of their own pleasure...

And, I think the long-term is also that today’s children can see what is happening in America today with the outsourcing of jobs, shrinking wages, etc and feel it might be too much to overcome, so they take a why bother attitude.

[tex-wyo-dem]

81. I agree with your assessment...

The reasons for this anti-intellectualism are many, but overall it does not bode well for our future.

Something that has stuck with me recently is a statement that Deepak Chopra said recently on the Colbert Report: I'm paraphrasing, but in response to Colbert lauding the merits of solving our problems with military muscle and force (parody, of course), Chopra responded that to ensure our own future survival and the survival of all peoples, problems must be solved with wisdom, not force.

Unfortunately, I can't see that happening in the near future.

[FredStembottom]

82. ....and people cover themselves with tatoos

which always symbolizes to me that people are returning to a pre-literate state. The kind of visual symbol based culture that the Catholic church exploited in the middle ages.

Thought organized by the discipline of words (book-learnin')is required to avoid the chaos of a entirely visual culture.

[cain_7777]

83. One Nation Under Educated

This country could have been great if not for the Christian right trying to dumb america down to their level. Hopefully I have the means to leave this shit hole before it falls completely into a theocracy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

120. I will repeat this since it is worth repeating

it is not just the Christian Right.

If it was, we would not be having this conversation. They are not that large of a group

It is an underlying cultural phenomena

[Swamp Rat]

85. The Age of Literacy is over...

... according to John Lukacs in his book "At the End of an Age."

We are a nation run by functional illiterates that is populated with an incurious, inbred folk. :D

[northofdenali]

91. Don't forget banned books, fundies burning books,

movies, audio, video, name it.......... straight out of Salem circa 1692.

WARNING! NoD RANT AHEAD.

Up front, my dearest friends, I admit that I slack off intellectually quite a bit since I've been caregiving my father-in-law. But my library folks call me by name, remember what I like, and will check me out without my card.... usually after I've washed it, again.

The disdain for education is very, very clear in the middle and high schools here; yet, we still have a majority of the kids going after everything they can learn. However, I've noticed the quality of the cirriculum has seriously deteriorated in the last 30 years. When I was in high school here, I was VERY glad I'd had a parochial school education before that, because my new high school was TOUGH. Both 4 years of a language (French, Spanish, Russian, German and - gulp - Latin) and of English were required. Four years of progressively more difficult math. Four years of physical education. After school activities were rampant, everything from the Gymnastics teams, runners, cross-country skiers, the rifle team - and there was no lack of participation even by us hippies. Band, choir, drama.

There were no "feel good" classes - and I know I sound like a Repuke here, but those things can be learned in the same classes as true academics. I guarantee you'll learn the ethics of cheating if you get caught once! I'm not just including ethics here, but you can certainly learn to be a good citizen (and yes, Civics was required and had the toughest teacher in the school, Mrs. Evans -- I'll never forget her!) in home ec, auto shop, woodworking, arts classes - none of which are around any more.

How can the kids learn when the classes aren't offered? Most of the tougher classes have given way to remedial classes. What does that tell us about our early education system?

When the kids can't read, they find other amusements - and usually those amusements are NOT intellectual in scope - hell, the kids want fun!

The problem is, they are not being taught at home as well as at school or, they're being taught the fundy thing, or by the television. And one can teach at home without it being a tedious, I'm-bored-mom inducing process. I started my daughter on standard Trivial Pursuit (the first one) at 6, when she started school ("REAL school mom, not kiddygarten) - with allowed handicaps, of course.

Her stepbrother, who came to me at 5, had a learning disability and at age 6 was lucky enough to get a great special teacher. We practiced hard at home, and by age 11 he was no longer taking special classes. That was the year my daughter was born, 1981. Since I'd had Trivial Pursuit from it's debut, I'd already started handicapping him in 1979. Needless to say, they were inundated with books and had both library and used-book store cards. The TV was allowed. Sometimes.

Other games - even basic card games like UNO, and tile games like Dominos, teach. Even Candyland!

IF WE DON'T FIX OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, WE WILL ROT. I despair of going into a store and getting change from a clerk who can't count it out. Seeing cash registers with little pictures on them because the kid can't read your order.


OK, rant almost over - I don't know the answers. I do know that funding for education has decreased drastically since the Reagan era, and has never returned to pre-Neocon levels. That's part of the plan. Our teachers certainly weren't better than today's. But a tough academic curriculum, taught by teachers who know the material and are not swamped with 5 hours a day in paperwork, watched over by school administrators who aren't so terrified of a lawsuit they'd rather let the kids cut class than discipline them? And school boards who'll back them up?

Rant Off

Love you all, DU, Happy Valentines Day! :loveya: I'm going to go to the store in a bit and buy my sweetie a cheesecake (he's on a diet and will faint, because I am the boss of him)! And then run him a nice hot bath.........

[Hekate]

94. Who does it serve to turn Americans into ignorant peasants?

Because that's what I think is happening to us, to our children, to our grandchildren. Who does it serve to have the people become dumb and dumber?

The same people who want to make college or career education contingent on military service. The same people who want to starve public education of funding, enough teachers, adequate teacher salaries, quality books and curricula.

Who does it serve?

The same people who outsource every possible job, industry, and skilled craft, up and down the wage scale, up and down the career scale. Outsource so many of these good jobs that those that are left here are competing to lower US salaries to Third World standards.

Who does it serve?

The ones who push for short term financial gains without regard to the cost to either their corporation or the country.

Who does it serve to turn the American populace into ignorant peasants?

And how can we let this happen?

:argh:

Hekate

[Hekate]

97. I did raise my kids to be readers, as my mom did before me

A house with books in it goes a long way toward opening the minds of the occupants. Going to the library, watching parents read, turning off the television.

Regarding some of the posts upthread: I believe that good science fiction will take a young mind a long way -- as a freshman in college I found that the basic principles of anthro, psych, and the other humanities were already familiar to me because of the quantities of well-written adult science fiction I had read from the age of 10 on.

My grandkids are going to start getting Harry Potter almost as soon as they outgrow "Frog and Toad." Well, maybe I'll wait a few more years after that... ;-)

But my husband, who teaches computer information systems at the local community college, is beginning to despair of the students he's been getting the past several years. He started coming home and talking about a "lost generation." Last semester he was so frustrated that he told one class they should sue their schools (meaning the K-12 ones) because they had been robbed of the fundamentals of an education. He still gets some good students, but on the whole he's not very happy any more.

Hekate

[Jonathan50]

105. I started teaching my daughter quite early

Read to her every night, plenty of books around the house, etc etc.

She learned her ABCs from a speak n' spell in a very painless manner, it's like a game and kids love it. Went on to teach her to read at about age five.

She did fine in school until fifth grade, at which point she stopped trying for some reason. It was a real struggle to get her through high school and she had no interest in college.

Daughter got married to a Marine she went to HS with at age twenty, had three kids and now is a stay at home mom. Husband works for a major aerospace company using the training he got in the Corps.

Now she's taking college classes online and is on the Dean's list with an average grade of about ninety five. She is an excellent writer and a real nitpicker on grammar and spelling. The only class she still has trouble with is math and I've been helping her with that.

I guess it shows that motivation is what counts more than anything, my daughter wasn't motivated for a long time and now she is. I'm elated that she has finally decided to learn on her own and that the early training we gave her is finally paying off for her.

[Hekate]

106. Sounds like my daughter, except mine dropped out of HS first, before finally college

My daughter made a complete hash of high school (rampant truancy), and I'll probably never know exactly what happened. :cry: I sent her to live with her dad for awhile, and he made her get her GED at least. Once the dust settled (so to speak) I knew that when she found sufficient inner motivation,she would continue her education.

Which has turned out to be true. Three years ago she started classes at community college, commencing with a demanding science class online. Having mastered that, she began a certificate course to become an Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and last fall was tapped for an internship with the County. :bounce: She just turned 31, has a two year-old, and really has her life on track.

When I was growing up, the received wisdom was that high school dropouts were Doomed. That single mothers were Doomed. That girls who married young and had babies early had Sealed their Fate.

I learned that was all hogwash when I started college in 1965. If I had started at the local university as planned instead of at a community college because my parents moved and staying in a dorm was out of the question, I probably would have gone on believing that crap.

Instead I found myself among a cluster of returning students in their late twenties who were all doing outstanding work. Two women who made straight A's had both been married and mothers at 17 or 18. The men were returning vets -- one of whom freely admitted he had partied his way to flunking out of state college before joining the Army.

I knew my daughter could do it when she was ready, and she is.

Your kids and mine had the advantage of learning how to learn, especially of becoming fluent readers early, and they got that at home. All those kids who don't have that crucial advantage are the ones who are likely to struggle endlessly, not knowing what it is that holds them back....

Hekate

[lastliberalintexas]

111. Your daughter was probably bored

I would assume Jonathan's was as well. My mother had to force me to go to school because I hated it so much, and I apparently fought her almost every morning until later years where advanced classes were introduced in our area. I was bored to tears, not being taught anything, and would have preferred to stay home and read (anything!) rather than listen to someone teach 3 or 4 levels below me. My mother wisely asked my teachers (and they very graciously agreed) to give me extra work. I can never thank them enough, as I know that teachers are overworked already. If not for the teachers who went above and beyond for me and gave me extra assignments, I might have ended up as a dropout or troubled student as well.

Even today, when I hear people discussing their "problem" child and how s/he is having trouble in school, I tell that story (without saying that it was me, but a friend). And in several cases, that has been the problem for their children as well! Unfortunately, our schools must teach for the masses or to the middle, and the students on either extreme often get ignored. (not that I'm saying that the kids in the middle are getting what they need, either)


on edit- I saw how incredibly arrogant this post sounded, so I wanted to clarify. I am not a genius by any means, I was simply ahead of the curve academically when compared to what area schools were teaching. I intended my post to comment more on the lowest common denominator aspect of education, which can do a great deal to turn off students who've been taught at home and who enter school already reading and writing. Sorry it sounded otherwise.

[Hekate]

113. I agree completely. I still have some degree of bitterness about that issue.

My husband and I made the very difficult decision to send our son to board at a private high school with class sizes of around 10 students. We got some financial aid and we spent his college fund, but if we had not done that he would have done worse than drop out. He got as good an academic education there as we got in our good public schools in the 1960s, and the atmosphere was heaven for a boy (they lived in log cabins and did nearly all the work around the place themselves). We knew when he graduated that he knew how to study and how to learn and had an excellent foundation for both work and further studies, whenever that took place.

It's safe to say that our son was the first child on any side of the family (mine, his bio-dad's, and his step-dad's) who ever went to a private school that wasn't a parochial school (that would be some of the Catholic cousins). In my immediate family, we are public school all the way, not only because it's our taxes that pay for it but because in our generation we were well-served by public education. My husband went to Bronx High School of Science, for gods sake, and my teachers in Hawaii (many of them Nisei) kept hammering us with challenging work and high expectations.

But with our kids in California, we didn't really know what hit us, although the signs were all over the place. They were terminally bored from the outset, and I was informed by my daughter's principal in 1st grade that if you "track" the bright kids into separate classes they will get a swelled head and not be able to relate to the rest of humanity. Her teacher complained (!!!) that she finished her work before anyone else and then wandered about the classroom... The GATE program in 5th and 6th grade was a pull-out class for one hour a week, by coincidence during arithmetic lessons, and being pulled out meant that the other children were indeed reminded of which kids were "special" -- my daughter was by no means the only kid who hated that part.

We had stretched our means to buy a modest home in a suburb with good schools -- good for most kids, I guess. Exasperated teachers would point out that they were both "very bright" and wonder why on earth they were not doing better, because no kid should rightfully be "bored" in their classroom.

Homeschooling is definitely not for everybody. I needed my job for the money, and not every child wants to be taught by their mommy anyway, nor is every mommy cut out to be a schoolteacher.

Now that my kids are 31 and 29 years old and doing quite well, I don't often have cause to think back to those rocky years. But you can probably tell that my feelings about it are still fairly raw because there's a lot of self-blame in there too.

I'm so very grateful that my kids were/are healthy and bright; I count my blessings, I assure you. But my assessment of public education today is that for a variety of reasons (including money and ideology) most kids seem to be underserved, and that while kids who desperately need special services are usually easy to spot, children who are at the high end of intelligence are most often left to fend for themselves. Some don't make it.

Hekate

[Greyhound]

104. It is all so transparent to those that have knowledge in general

and knowledge of history in particular, but they are winning.

Like your husband, I used to encounter top level HS grads (most were there on scholarships) in my classes and was literally stunned the first year when I was asked, "Mr. Greyhound how do you know all this stuff?", we were preparing for the basic reading skills test that CA requires(ed?) students to take. They had literally never read a book for the sake of reading in their lives. They were sounding out words and obviously had no comprehension at all. High school graduates. In the mid-90's.

I was depressed for days and then started an after hours tutoring group. These people have no chance whatsoever.:cry:

[BluePatriot]

107. some reading

I generally throw the below into threads like this one:

"The Underground History of American Education"

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/

Basically, it's a teacher outlining that public K-12 schools aren't designed to teach people to learn, but to obey, and that public schools deliberately weed out critical thinking because of their design. It's a good perspective/read for people coming awake to the concept.

[lapislzi]

112. I work in publishing

And we have a dogged anti-intellectual faction in upper management. He argued vociferously against the use of the word "lexicon" in the title of one of our books, because he said people don't know what that word means. He is constantly carping at me because the words I use are "too big" and "too snooty" and I'm apparently trying to embarrass people with my vocabulary. We are constantly having to dumb down our editorial content to suit him--because if he doesn't get his way via direct confrontation, he takes the passive/aggressive route and won't sell the product. Then he gets to blame it on the "big words."

It drives me nuts. Is "lexicon" such a big or unusual word that people wouldn't know what it meant??

:banghead:

[nadinbrzezinski]

115. I just removed the word Hence

from my writing vocabulary.

My target audience does not know what "hence" is

We live in sad times my frined

[Book Lover]

121. Well, he may be right in terms of the market and the demographic, but more likely

he can't sell outside the box he defines the market to be. May I ask what type of publishing you are in?

[lapislzi]

122. Right on both counts, Book Lover

We publish gift, inspirational, and (gentle) humor books, although we have branched out of late into a bit of (soft) erotica (I write for the company in addition to my other duties. My latest title is The Little Black Book of the Kama Sutra--very tasteful, but the real deal nonetheless. And although I refused to dumb it down, it's selling very well). Our typical customers are 30-60-year-old white females who shop in Hallmark stores.

edited for spelling. The spell check only works if you actually look at it...

[dysfunctional press]

128. yes, it is. most people do NOT know the meaning of lexicon.

nt.

[callous taoboy]

117. I have a colleague

who likes to make fun of people who use "big words" during staff meetings. It is truly a pernicious abstraction.