Are We Getting Dumber?

This morning's Today show aired a segment asking if American youth were quickly becoming dolts, and citing as evidence that fewer than one of four college graduates could identify Iraq on a map; that ditsy Idol contestant Kelly Pickler, during an interview, did not know France was a country and Europe was not; that fewer than forty percent of American high schoolers had read a fiction or nonfiction book during the past year, and other eyebrow-raisers.

For years Jay Leno has sidewalk-interviewed "dummies" for us to chuckle at sadly. One, who said she was studying to be a teacher, couldn't recognize a picture of Bill Gates but instantly identified another of Harry Potter. Some couldn't name the nation south of Canada. The culprit, according to Matt Lauer's technology advocate, an NBC employee, was benign, not sinister--simply a changing lifestyle, a higher importance given by today's youth to "knowing how to use computers and the internet than to knowing Proust." With the internet's efficiency mere facts could now be instantly Googled or gained on Wikipedia--no need for tedious reading searches. Lauer's other guest, advocating for her book's position that yes, indeed, our youth are dumbing down significantly from previous generations, descried the technology monster which, she suggested, had made today's youth believe that learning basic traditional knowledge in wideranging fields of the languages, the social, natural, and physical sciences and mathematics, geography, history, philosophy, religions, the arts and literature was unimportant. What was important was what Paris Hilton wore to last night's party. Now that's knowledge that can be used, messaged and gossiped to posses and friends.

Another culprit cited by the dumb-and-dumber theorist was the media, who almost never attempt to raise the intellectual store of viewers but eagerly capitulate to the lowest forms of entertainment--inane reality shows as an example--sought by the greatest numbers, in a total sellout to commercialism.

Ah, Rome, Rome--are we so different in our decline from you? I have always been amazed at how quickly "civilization" can disappear. We falsely assume that knowledge once gained can never be lost, that law and order once established cannot be destroyed, that future generations, raised with the blessings technology has brought, will be better, live longer and stronger lives, become smarter and wiser, than their forebears.

It takes about two generations--perhaps only one--to nearly wipe clean an entire generation's knowledge and social memory, and along with that catastrophe to replace previously-held values. To do so requires only mindless entertainments, lowering of expectations and requirements, socially expedient promotions through grade levels, parental neglect and abandonment of any curbs on tv and computer use, the failure of the generations to interact collectively, and a sellout by government at all levels in order to get and maintain power, giving the greatest number of voters the ease and comforts they want rather than the challenges and opportunities for growth that they need.

Are we getting dumber with each generation? I'm not ready to say we are, though what a young adult today is expected to know is certainly different than it was twenty or forty years ago, as any employer can attest. Nor do I believe the fops paraded on tv by Leno or the gross ignorance suggested by books and articles is necessarily proof of decline. There have always been those who have learned more basic knowledge, always been those who have from lack of education or experience not become "smart" in this field or that. Such displays don't indicate whether young people today are better or worse at solving problems, at interacting in socially cohesive groups, at organizing purposeful activity, at living effectively and competitively in a complex world or instilling needed values in their children in turn. Nor do such displays of factual ignorance indicate much about the state of their conscience or their capacity to love, their sense of right and wrong, or their moral and ethical judgement. To me, these areas of the person are more important than whether or not someone has mastered Proust.

But it is worrisome that our expectations of what young Americans should be expected to know have become so low that I'm not laughing so much lately at the screened interview tv "dummies," not as entertained by the idea that ignorance is something to be proud of. It's not necessary for youth to turn away from technological gains--quite the contrary. Technology is a tool like fire or firearms that can be used for good or ill What people need to learn is how to use it wisely. Nor is it necessary for youth to read the entire canon of literature or master any other field of knowledge revered by their parents, in order to be considered "smart." But I do believe that parents, teachers, government, the church and other social institutions, the commercial sector and the media must share the blame for someone becoming an adult who cannot find his nation on a world map, and who is unconcerned that he cannot.