Here's how stupid we are:

At no time since 1932 has the need for America to go in a radically new direction been as appararant as it is on this second day of July 2008. And yet as extraordiary aa the candidate is that the Democrats are about to nominate, he is by no means a sure thing this November. As a matter of fact, were I to be the farm on it, I would have to honestly concede that he is probably going to be beaten senseless this November.

What gives one the confidence to make such a bold prediction? The mind numbing stupidity of the American people. A country that will send a brain dead, failed "B" movie actor to the White House and then look back at his disastrous adminstration with fond nostalgia a quarter of a century later is capable of just about anything.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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Think about how stupid the average American is, and then realize that half of them are dumber than that.

jdfu!

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We have systematically gutted civics classes from our schools. What we get through high school in the way of history is a boringly written and much revised overview of an American history usually ending before it is brought up to date. We get little or no European or world history. By the time these classes are available in college we have developed neither the taste for them nor do we understand the relevancy of them. It should be made clear much earlier how the laws of our land impact our lives. We should be made aware of how these laws are made and how that might affect the student personally. Most high school students will tell you, if you talk to them long enough, that politics have nothing to do with them. How very wrong they are, but we have not taught them any better.
The only other way there might be a civics input is at home, and unfortunately, as you say, the average parent is as ignorant as their child.

Thank you
Delight

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The future of the Republican Party and the fundamentalist churches depend upon this kind of ignorance, so they do all they can to perpetuate it.

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The starting premise is fairly stupid. As if to say that voting will fix everything, anything at all. If you're placing your hopes in ANY candidate to really, actually change things, you're so stupid as to be beyond hope. For the time being anyway.

And what is this focus on paying attention to the news....Does that make me an informed and aware individual? No. It makes me even more ignorant, programmed, and DIS-informed. Sure, sure, there are better news sources than the outright bullshit we have available here in the US. And the significance of this is what?

If I know the real goods on this or that event anywhere in the world, what am I going to do about it? What are YOU going to do about it? Shake your head? Shake your fists at the sky and cry out against the evil doers? Make an informed decision on election day? Wave signs around and protest? Come on.

The smugness I’ve occasionally seen from people that consider themselves informed just for having watched the news and read the paper is just disgusting. Years of unexamined beliefs and attitudes are apparent with such an atrophied, bovine cortex.

Stop with the self deception and masturbation, voting is a meaningless process. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you pay attention to the news or not.

The average American is a moron. Think back on all your years, and sum up the attitudes typically held toward those that are a little smarter than most. And the reactions people have to simple things that should be common knowledge. Confusion. Sometimes just plain hostility. And actually THINKING? You’ve got to be kidding me. Who wants to do that? Look at what we have for entertainment to get an idea of how much people like to think, that’s just ONE example, one facet of how little most people like to think about anything…..And it’s the reason why nothing changes, the author had it right here:

The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.”

See that quote up there? That is EXACTLY why so many of you will rant and rave and foam at the mouth and get excited and actually take the political process and news seriously.

I've known plenty of people that are supposedly educated, have a degree, and are.....dumb.

Who the fuck in their right mind could sit through TV news, or actually read a paper? It's not hard to understand why not. It’s depressing, disturbing, trivial, petty, and quite annoying in its presentation. A lot like being around the kind of person whose very presence is an irritation. Fortunately, less people are paying attention, that’s a GOOD thing. I like the fact that presentation of news is turning into a movie playing in an empty theater.

Now I'd love to eat my words a few years from now. Probably wont, but its a nice thought, isn't it? On par with the nice thoughts that any election is going to change anything.

Voting. And the other one, awareness. That word always makes me laugh. Keep on telling yourself its going to do anything meaningful anytime soon. The greedy sociopathic motherfuckers have won for now, and will keep on fucking all of us worse and worse until the time comes for things to change. It sure isn’t now. Because WE are not ready to make things change.

Now go forth and view the world as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. Just like you’re supposed to do.

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You can only make people work for so long.
Especially with growing numbers of under & non-insured peoples for health care; especially with our other shameful broth of ignorance: nutrition.

SS already gets to keep all the money for unmarried people who contribute then die before eligibility age. And for all the unmarried gays.

If they keep increasing the retirement age, your odds to collect start looking like Atlantic City.

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are ppl like shenkman who would accuse the majority of being so simply because they dont vote according to shenkman...no..the majority isnt always right..but calling them stupid and ignorant definitely wont change their votes either...

LION..in a democracy..every vote must be presumed (however incorrectly) to be an informed..intelligent decision on the part of the voter..not shenkman...

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It seems to me that the whole purpose of having knowledge of government, history, politics, civil rights and other various topics that have an impact on civil society, is so that we can take advantage of the wisdom of lessons learned from our past mistakes and successes.

If we as a country did manage to achieve widespread knowledge of this type, we would be a society possessing the wisdom of broad perspective and conscious awareness. Through a practice of conscious awareness of the world around us, we would probably be better equipped to make more sound civic decisions on the whole.

The problem is that people feel far removed from their ability to understand and effect change on a large enough scale to significantly improve their lives in a relatively expedient fashion. Vast segments of our population lack the inspiration to engage in personal initiative. The effort does not seem to be worth it the hassle because people want to know, what is in it for me?

I think there is a better methodology to inspire both initiative and wisdom in our society. The key is that people have to feel like whatever they engage in is going to have a net positive impact on the quality of their life; is this going to make me any happier?

If we really want to increase the general level of knowledge and intelligence in this country, we have to appeal the every individual’s sense of initiative in regard to self-determination. The best way to achieve this is to use the lessons of history to recognize and analyze the basic patterns of human behavior. If we can develop some basic understandable blue print or periodic table describing; what the basic elements of our human nature are, how our experiences influence our nature, what balance of elements lead to a humane lifestyle and how we as individuals can self determinately influence our state of being for the better…then people may be motivated enough to engage in the practice of conscious awareness if they know the effort will lead to real positive impact in their everyday experience.

Wouldn't it make sense if each of us could have a clear idea of what balance of basic human needs we must fulfill in our lives to be happy? Wouldn’t it be great if we knew what do to bring ourselves back into balance? Doesn’t it make sense to make the effort to fix an imbalanced people while we attempt to fix an imbalanced society?

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Yes, we Americans ARE ignorant! So, OK - How do we fix this?

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Many critiques of US stupidity, including large parts of this article, tend to focus on fact retention, rather than our ability to think. And that's part of the problem with the US education system. Perhaps a lot of high school students forget a lot of what they learn because 99% of it is crap.

A lot of these types of articles just feed into the idea that the left are a bunch of snobby, godless, book-smart intellectuals who enjoy looking down their nose at honest working folks.

Americans' biggest problem is not lack of facts, but the inability to process them when they're all in front of their face. There are too many facts to keep in your head, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to Google something, visit your local library, or point at the TV and call O'Reilly an idiot.

The article comes around to that a little towards the end, but not enough to make the point that facts are not our biggest problem.

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This article mostly addresses the wrong issue.

From its very beginning, America's schools have focused on the memorization of data ("facts") and one's ability to regurgitate them on demand, to the exclusion of critical thinking. Critical thinking, after all, is anathema to our authoritarian heritage. (No child left behind, anyone?)

Memorized data has little value without an understanding of how whatever system is under study works and how those data interrelate and interact with all the other pieces of the big picture. And you can't have that without critical thinking.

When a system does little more than present data for memorization, it's no surprise that college seniors have forgotten what they learned in high school. How do you file something away in a way that you can find it again if you have no idea of its place in relation to all the rest of the stuff already in there.

If our kids were shown how to use their brains for analysis and understanding instead of just stuffing them full of memorized "facts" America might have a fair shot at becoming what our founders supposedly dreamed it to be.

We'll leave the discussion of what the founders actually envisioned for another thread.

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That describes a nation of careless, brainwashed clods that constantly and eagerly suck up whatever BS lies are fed to them at the plantation of fear USA.

As I've been repeating lately - George Carlin was one of the vanishing few that actually spoke reality like it was and is:

"Forget the politicians. They’re irrelevant. The politicans are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN YOU.".

Carlin well knew that America under tinhorn Fascist rule is no better than a BS Kool-Aid State for parasite sociopaths.

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The results of dumbing down are finally starting to show. Just look at our schools- the prevailing culture is one that places sports over science, cheerleading over the arts.... Teachers and all too often scientists struggle to make ends meet while we give multi-million dollar salaries to pro athletes. Cities and states can't fund their schools properly or pay enough to keep competent teachers, or even provide new textbooks for every student, but they can always find enough money for a new sports arena/complex.

Our newsmedia is equally dumbed down. Features that truly analyze current events and offer impartial insight are being eliminated- God forbid they should siphon off paper or airtime from coverage of the latest Britney Spears or Paris Hilton scandal or other "top" celebrity stories(like we really need to know about the latest party TomKat, Brangelina, or Bennifer went to), or are replaced with largely one-sided versions like we see on Fox News.

Nobody reads anymore- God forbid Americans should miss the latest WWF/ECW/WWE match, football game, NASCAR race, or "Survivor" or "American Idol" episode. Yeah, like rooting for an "Idol" candidate is really vital to America's future.

No wonder Bush and his gangsters got [s]elected.

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I'm an American who has lived and raised his children in East Africa since 1989. Twice we have gone back to the USA for a period of one year and enrolled our children in school. Each time they were far ahead of the other children/students.

We were in the USA when our daughter was in 3rd grade, and we went to a teacher-parent meeting. Her 3rd grade teacher gave the goals for the year. All of the goals were 'social' goals, like getting along with classmates, enjoying school, following directions, etc. There was not a single mention of what they would learn academically. This contrasted drastically with the French system we knew in Africa.

Of course our children can locate most countries of the world on a map. They speak two or three languages fluently. My 20-year-old daughter is reading classic novels, and my 17-year-old son is reading philosophy. Much of this is due to living and traveling internationally, and I wouldn't wish to fault the American educational system for all of it. But from what I've seen in the American system, there is a belief that children either aren't capable, or they are not interested. Our youngest was in a British/Kenyan kindergarten this year. She and all of her classmates learned to read. American teachers who saw her reading were amazed that children her age could read like that. My daughter is in a class of 20 Kenyan children who read like that.

I taught for many years in a French-influenced African secondary school system, and now I'm teaching at an American-influenced African college. The French-influenced system was much more rigorous.

Shenkman makes a comment that young people are perhaps reading the Bible or works of non-fiction. In churches knowledge of the Bible is also low. This is why quack-pastors such as Hagee and Paisley, and other right-wing Christian leaders like Dobson can be so influential among American Christians.

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In 1986 I took a seminar from a visiting professor from Belgium. None of us could draw a map of the world from memory, most could not do the USA. We did not know what the difference between ICBM and any other kind of weapon the USA was producing.
He attributed our stupidity to the fact we had never had a war on our own soil and that we did not feel threatened from the rest of the world.

He also had us bring in newspaper articles and showed us the lies and misinformation the media puked out in this country.

I don't read newspapers or watch the news because it is more of the same...boring and poorly presented.
It doesn't matter if you vote, it doesn't matter if you read or know 'facts' about things.
The smartest people we have are not and have never been in charge of the country...
Our entire culture is about accumulating 'things and ignoring the rest of the world.
We are a bunch of sheep who don't deserve what we have.
I don't participate because it's all I have in the way of protest.
I point out the medical profession in this country as an example. Doctors are people who are 'good' at memorizing facts, however they are lousy at connecting those facts and seem to be more worried about income than doing something right.Doctor error is a leading cause of death in this country.
Our education system is outmoded and boring. We do not know how to teach critical thinking.

Philosophy is hardly ever taught in this country anymore, and it dealt with plain and simple critical thinking....something we all lack from the president on down.
What we need is a gameshow that shows people where and how there thinking errored.
We want our education fast and hard in this country.ANd we don't need know stinking facts to prove we are smart.
I am 59 and I have been for the last 3 years trying to get myself back to a simpler time and way of thinking where I can live in peace.
What that means to me is ignoring the bullshit media and politics,giving up the hype about the American Dream, and refusing to cooperate with the rest of the herd.

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Legislators, whom I thought must be smart, are not. Video streaming of state legislatures in action have revealed to me people who are very confused about legislation they are encouraging their colleagues to pass.

For example, Louisiana just passed a bill mandating water fluoridation (hopefully the governor will veto it)

State representative Katz told her colleagues the bill wasn't forcing anyone to add fluoride chemicals; it was just a bill for people to take a look at how much fluoride was already in the water. Doh!

Either someone soft-pedaled this bill or she didn't understand it. The EPA already requires that the fluoride content of all US water supplies be measured and the results are published on the CDC's website.

Fluoridation promoters know they have trouble at the local level, so they are increasingly headed towards the state legislatures where their money and influence carries more weight - especially when poorly-educated legislators are easily manipulated

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Shenkman's book is very good (I read it yesterday).

In-a-nutshell, as if we didn't know it already, we've become "dumbed-down" and distracted. A genuine lack of understanding, and curiosity, about government's workings and processes, and a preoccupation with being consumers instead of citizens, has led to our "stupid" society.

I agree with Shenkman. We've blamed everything under the Sun for so long, when the real problem has been us.

Good book. It reaffirmed everything I believed.

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I believe that the premise of this article is regrettably true. This basic reality has nagged at me for decades.

It troubles me because I'm not sure it is solvable?

It seems to be the price we pay for representative democracy a principle which I cherish.

So I have no really good answers which is actually refreshing to me

Do you have some answers?

Thanks,

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,PA

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At what point was the younger generation more politically aware & savvy then their parents- the '60's. And what 'shadow Gov't' began lurking behind every corner during the Nixon Admin.when did all the Educational cuts begin to gut the system.When did Media begin failing to provide unbiased News Reporting and Begin telling people what to think.
Frankly I'm glad to hear the younger generation has turned away from the shameless media propaganda- both print & TV have been been twisting the truth for decades. Now we have Rove pretending to be a Newspaper guy for the WSJ,WE have the entertainment mouthpieces proclaiming their knowledge & expertise in Gov't functions.
Cheney and his goons have just read this and are rubbing their hands together saying'Excellent',Their longitudinal stratedgy is Fait Accompli! If they did not succeed in actually dumbing US down, they caused enough disgust to make US Apathetic.

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...and is proof positive that we are reaping what we sowed!

Their is some logic in assuming that TPTB want the sheeple to be
as malleable and complacent as possible!?
Is a dumber herd easier [for the powers that be] to manipulate?
My instincts tell me,
that their is nothing more dangerous then a startled herd!

When will some serious thought go into
cradle to grave education
and healthcare!

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first of all political knowledge is actually not that useful especially to the majority of people. To the majority of the population who forge out a living from normal every day jobs such as being an electrition what is more important knowing how to do your job or politics. whats the bet that the author would not know the first thing about being an electrition or any number of other ocupations. does this mean that the author is also supid, no of cause not it just means that he has little knowledge in an area of which is of little importance to him. the same can also be said for the majoity of the population who have little political knowledge as they see this knowledge as having little importance to them.

Now whilst it mite be said that this is not the case and that political knowledge in fact has a massive importance to all of the population, and I would tend to agree. However political knowledge is meaningless unless you have the means to act upon that knowledge and use it to your betterment. And the simple truth is that all many people will gain from greater political knowledge is that they are fucked and that there is not much they can do. As whilst many people on the left like to have these fantasies that everything will be made good if all we did was elect someone who cares about the people.

In fact this believe that the we can have this kind of utopian world just as soon as the right politician comes along. How many elections is it going to take you progressives to realize that not matter who you elect the fact is that that politician is only going to care about themselves? Take the recent shock by many progressives on this sight when the great progressive hope Obama inevitably started turning to the right.

Maybe many of these people with very little political knowledge have realized that what south park said was correct, that every election is just between a Douche and Turd. and all of this pessimism is coming from someone who is in there third year of a political science degree.

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We are the better people. We are smarter, we are humane, we are more compassionate, we are better informed. We are better citizens, we are more cooperative and realistic. we are winners- not losers, and we deserve everything we get. We are spiritually superior. We are centered and balanced, calm and insightful. We are on the right side of history. We are building a better world.

The general public does not realize that we are the better people, and the ones who should be making the decisions. Of course the only logical reason for this public oversight is because- “Republicans are able to take advantage of the people's stupidity and ignorance and turn them against us.”

As Liberals we understand that most of the problems in the world are the result of stupid people running things. If “We the smart people” were in charge, all of the problems could be solved with science and technology and rational social planning.

Class analysis, and the struggles of working class people against tyranny have no place in modern society. They are obsolete and passé, and only something that we read about or see in movies. Romantic as those stories are, they are no substitute for hardheaded practical reality, whether we like it or not. This is a matter of being a mentally healthy, modern, well-adjusted adult in society. None of the lessons from history apply, because things are different now. Only strange maladjusted people are attracted to obsolete political ideas. They are all obviously losers, and are a great danger, almost as much of a danger as the Republicans are.

Since politics and economics in the traditional sense are dead, we embrace a new paradigm of self improvement and self-actualization. Anything that interferes with our focus on ourselves and our pursuit of creating ourselves as an actualized being is to be rejected. The way to achieve the perfect society is first to create a perfect self. Meanwhile, so long as the authorities do not interfere with our self-actualization, we must comply in all ways with that authority. This allows us perfect self-expression within perfect social conformity. Anyone who attacks our personal choices is the enemy, and anyone who attacks the social system based on personal choice is also the enemy.

As fully-realized liberal-progressives we understand that our enlightened self-interest is the ultimate engine of social progress.

Others, however, who do not share our values are not to be given personal choice, when and as we can prove that their personal choices are wrong, often with our righteous claims that their choice impacts us somehow. We support the police state and massive incarceration of people, so long as they are being harassed and imprisoned for the right reasons. Any variance from our idea as to how people should be is quite naturally the right reason, by definition.

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"Voting" is our Roman Circus. Give them a good show and they won't notice...

...what's really going on. In our case in the U.S., we *are* noticing, but the powers that have taken over our country have quietly been eating away at our governmental structures for years, like termites quietly ruining the structure of a house.

We spend time considering who our *best* candidate is, without yet getting down to the fact that if we did not vote at all, in our numbers, and we refused to partake in our fraudulent government, in every way we could, we might have a chance of turning around our Ship of State. Our elections have become the opiate of the masses, and still we entertain hope because to give up hope is the greatest political sin. It is our hedge against having to live out the rest of our lives knowing we've been "Good Germans."

I often recall the scene in the film "Gandhi" where they shut down the country. No busses, no shops open, no activity in the public sphere. That "small" event was the foundation of expelling the British from India.

Taking to the streets does not seem effective any longer, and it has become much more dangerous, with various draconian weapons being developed for crowd control. Quiet refusal may be the only hope we have to rid ourselves of the most complacent and compromised ruling body, in its three branches, this country has ever had to endure.

"If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome." The opposite is true. By playing the game, voters agree to the rules. Only those who don’t play and withhold their consent have a right to complain about the outcome, especially since the winner will have his hand in the non-voter’s pocket.

Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: "You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you."

Non-voting has a rich and long history through which the dissenting electorate has expressed everything from religious convictions to political cynicism.

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I'm an expatriate Brit and US permanent resident. I moved to the US ten years ago. I grew up in a family that very much believed that Americans were dumb, vulgar and ill-informed. When I got to the US, I found instead that my prejudices were unfounded. The Americans I met were on the whole smart, polite people with a reasonable level of knowledge about the world.

That doesn't stop Americans from assuming that if I know something they don't, it's because I'm a Brit and Brits are better informed than Americans. Bullcrap. The average level of cultural literacy in Britain is pretty darn low.

Regarding politics, their knowledge of how British government works is generally lower than Americans' knowledge of how their government works. British people are much less likely to know who their elected representative is, or the mechanics of how legislation gets passed.

Second, regarding geography, only 11% of British people (in some surveys) can find Britain on a world map. British people are better informed about European countries and history than Americans are, but Europe is our backyard, not yours. We learn sod all about American history - I came here with no idea who Jefferson was, for example - except that Americans helped us win the World Wars. The ignorance about America in Britain, despite voluminous newspaper coverage, is enormous. The fifty states of the USA are VAST, spanning six time zones and about fifty degrees of latitude. Is it then so surprising that Americans have enough to do to know about their own country?

Third, regarding the media: I think the US TV news media is appallingly vapid and a terrible tool for learning anything. But the limitations of the data the article's author is using are clear. First, the data exclude nonfiction books, which are very popular and sell very well. Second, more books are being sold in the US every year than ever before, and SOMEONE must be reading them. Third, it doesn't include reading things on the Internet, which is a huge portion of my own reading and information-gathering.

In both the US and Britain, there are more people than there should be who don't know significant things about their government. That is a genuine problem, but they won't learn about those significant things from newspapers, by and large, or from TV. Not reading newspapers is really not the problem here.

Please don't let insecurity allow you to think that Americans are on average a bunch of drooling, know-nothing hicks. You're not.

The only thing I'd say about American civics education (having never experienced your civics education and having never had any civics education at all in Britain, where it is not part of the curriculum at all) is that I have heard from American friends that their schools had them memorize the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence for civics. That is way less important than memorizing and understanding the Bill of Rights. I have two newborn daughters, American citizens, and I think it's critically important that they understand the Bill of Rights, and I will make sure they do even if their school, for some reason, does not.

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Watch the video on youtube called "The Century of the Self" to get a brief history of America's real strength - propaganda. As George Carlin said, "America was founded by a bunch of white slaveowners wanting to be free ...." And the objective has not changed, only the methods, from physical chains to virtual chains in the form of the media, debt, consumption as the prime directive and measure of the good life and an educational system geared for obedience and ignorance.

The wealthy white slave owners continue with their philosophy of moral and intellectual superiority wanting, as the villain in "Key Largo" so eloquently put it, "More!". Hitler's "ubermensch" is just Plato's philosopher king and America's ruling class. It is all a disguise for, "I fear and do not trust anyone different from me with wealth as a key criteria." And, basically, moral and intellectual dishonesty, enforced by might is right.

It was to the advantage of despots and monarchs to destroy languages and cultures of "conquered" peoples. It was to the advantage of the ruling class to keep the people hopeless and ignorant. Taught history is one long narrative of this strategy, whether disguised in religious garb (as in the work ethic of the Protestants) or pseudo-scientific garb of economics (the invisible hand or free markets). Nothing has changed, it has just become more sophisticated through the use of cognitive research (which also generally puts a fine scientific point on methodologies long understood by "effective" rulers).

The bottom line is that we, "the educated" need to stand up to the real ignorant of the world, the avaricious wealthy. Maslow beautifully summarized the requirements for intellectual, physical and social health. If we want an educated population, we need to insist that everyone live on enough until everyone has enough. We do not need 10 bedroom mansions, 5 car garages and VIP treatments at night clubs or airports. We do not need superstars and idols. We need right livelihood for everyone. And if that means we "industrialized westerners" settle for a 2 bedroom cottage and a scooter, so be it.

If more of us were like Paul Farmer, the Harvard medical anthropologist, walking the talk by building medical centers in the most difficult of places, more of us would have interesting and rewarding lives and, no surprise, there would be a lot less ignorance in the world and even in the United States.

Rather than bemoaning the state of ignorance in America, which is obvious if one just picks up a "newspaper" or turns on the TV, we need to begin changing how we live our lives and how we relate to the people around us. We need to start, not just throwing out the garbage as Socrates in "Peaceful Warrior" states, we need to stop accepting the creation of garbage and insisting on the creation of value.

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no doubt all readers here are sufficiently awake to avoid the central criticism of this article, but for those acquaintances we all have who might benefit from a little dose of reality, send them to They're Building a Box - and You're In It . For the rest of us, the dark horse of the summer reading list is Green Island . The adults have finally taken over. The trolls are unhappy.

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I don't appreciate being referred to as "the Depends generation."

It was like having a big "F-YOU" in the middle of the article.

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Yesterday, I pulled in to a parking lot while listening to an NPR discussion on the Iraq war. I sat there for a few minutes, listening, the many arguments flowing through my head.

I looked over and saw the woman in the next car busy doing a word search puzzle. I thought "She's going to cancel out my vote, isn't she?"

Americans aren't necessarily stupid, but we are lazy, uninformed, and unmotivated. How do I reach that word-search lady? Print a word search that combines war, death, Bush, tyranny, greed, fascism, Cheney, oil...

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And then it made me laugh. And then cry some more. And then I was a little hungry, and finally disgusted. This story illustrates exactly why I don't discuss politics with even my closest family and friends. Love them as I do, I know they can not have an informed and intelligent conversation about the news, world events, or politics. I read Rawstory, AlterNet, Huffington post, BBC news, Reuters, Buzzflash, Crooks and Liars, Prison Planet, and even CNN (for celebrity news) religiously everyday. To be fair, I think the ignorant and uninformed of this country are actually better off. It's a particularly perplexing dilemma lately as I try to ready my loved ones for the impending financial collapse.

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The smugness of this screed is appalling. So what exactly are you suppose to gain from being inundated with all this information? Yes many are misinformed and many many do not even care, so what? as Dick Cheney would say. The illusion that if you know about an injustice will enable you to do something about it. Good luck with that. As the well informed rail against the stupidity of the American people, their way of living, eating etc; meanwhile the robbery by the very rich goes on unabated. But I am informed! I learn that former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso gets to keep his $190 million retirement package, after several years of legal wrangling, that amounted to $40 million is legal fees, paid by the insurance companies. Many average non-political citizens have said to me: "if that's the way the system was set up, he should get what he deserves."
Just because you are aware of something does not make you wise.

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If you can name Brad and Angelina's kids but don't know the names of your Congressional Delegation. you might be a Celebutard.

If you know which drivers those stupid NASCAR numbers people stick on their cars stand for, but don't know what Habeas Corpus is, you might be a sports Celebutard.

If you think Global Warming is about getting loaded, you might be a drunk.

If the last magazine you read was People, US, Entertainment Weekly, In Touch, or The National Enquirer- you really need help.

If you know what the Homeowner's Association rules are about satellite dishes, but think Peak Oil is a hoax- you might be ore than a little misinformed.

If you think Faux Newz is Fair & Balanced, you might be more than a little unbalanced.

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to identify their own self interest. Only when the pain gets to be too great will citizens start thinking of ways to avoid it. Regrettably, Americans seem to be able to endure a lot of thumping. They have been remarkably well conditioned by their owners. There is nothing on the horizon (Obama included) that seems likely to alter this condition.

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to identify their own self interest. Only when the pain gets to be too great will citizens start thinking of ways to avoid it. Regrettably, Americans seem to be able to endure a lot of thumping. They have been remarkably well conditioned by their owners. There is nothing on the horizon (Obama included) that seems likely to alter this condition.

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Since I don't have time to read this entire article (see below), I only offer a few thoughts on the author's five definitions.

o Sheer ignorance - Since encyclopedic knowledge of current news events, names of government officials, etc. will not lead to more money or happiness, why would anyone invest the time?

o Negligence - someone show me a reliable source of information (please don't say Alternet or you are guilty by the author's own definitions)

o Woodenheadness - just human nature - anyone in sales understands this

o Shortsightedness - agreed (e.g. democrat and republican parties)

o Boneheadedness - agreed (see woodenheadness)

The author could have saved all his words and instead just stated "Most Americans are not very smart."

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I think stupid is not correct. I would have stayed in U.S., but seeing "professorship" and the task, I said, "impossible", and I left. Students in language studies WILL not try to make "foreign" sounds, and I admit German "ausgezeichnet" is a lulu, but the 99 in a hundred will not try, and three years into it still say "ish" for the spelled "ich," although they can: all those people saying "yukk" are really saying "yukh" much like "ich", but they don't know it. Nor that they say both aspirated and unaspirated versions of the same consonants: the "p" in "pile" vs. "spoil", for example. But they won't try. That is the American view of most learning: no value to it, no need to waste effort. But there is value to it, if you now fight a real war on false and admittedly false evidence, you don't care about the truth, so to hell with it. The impetus is "gimme!", get it however you can. The Seattle woman on t.v. looking at the homeless man on a piece of cardboard in sub zero termperatures telling the camera crew (did she know they were Canadians?) how proud she was to live in a country where at least that man had the CHOICE. What tortured brain disorder brought her to that view of the situation? Does she think that people abroad, for example, might not also choose to sit on a piece of cardboard in mid winter? I knew one by sight who did and even with six inches of melting snow beneath it all; he was mentally ill but without home and nursing care, who could care for him or get him to take pills? He had no colon, a colostomy, cancer, and he was begging on the streets for coins. He could have got the money just by registering into any kind of address; one would be found for him, but he would rather be "free". He wasn't stupid, just ill, the Seattle woman, however, was downright stupid, and proud of it. How do you get a lazy people to want to learn? No, it is easier this way, even if then you are, indeed, so unwelome everywhere that most of you stay home,-- good choice. I wish all this were not so, but after forty years since my decision to decamp, I fear I have no reason to change my mind.

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Who thinks the majority of Americans are stupid and also thinks a powerful democratic government will solve more problems than it creates? Who's doing the voting?

Intelligent reforms will never take place via politics; they will only occur when politics are removed.

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Most of my friends who visit routinely from Europe and Asia would mightily agree. They continue to receive a classical education as did we in the fifties. They are invariably amazed at how ignorant the average American appears to be when it comes to the value of information. 'Mediocrity' is the word used most to describe our values and our art. Unfortunately, us boomers did not do a very good job of bringing up baby. While we were well educated and craved real information, we neglegted to pass on these values to our children who turned out to be the most ignorant generation in our history.

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It's too bad that no one's attention was attracted by this artcle... or that no one has an opinion or was offended: no one likes to be told they are thought of as stupid, and that "Depends" remark was callous and ill-advised. It was not worthy of the rest of the article. Maybe the author thought were too stupid to miss is.

"Dumbed down" is a dumb expression: there is no reverse evolution going on here, and I resent the implication.What we do have is a proliferation of liars, cheats, and nasty people. We value money far more than humanity, live in whatever comfortable isolation we can afford, and, as the old song says, " Just let the rest of the world go by".

Any surprise or shock about the nesses are in is feigned and/or manufactured to present the appearance of innocence.

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All those manufacturing jobs didn't leave the country for lower wages. They went to countries where the workers are better educated. Factory workers in China are FAR better educated than the average American: you need to have proficiency in calculus, physics and statistics to get a entry-level job in a Chinese factory. My public high school in New Hampshire didn't even offer calculus.

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The Roman elite knew how to control the masses, bread and circus. It's no accident that Murdock is heavily invested in sports and entertainment (mindless).

Colleges and universities spend more money on their sports than they bring in, and on some campuses, education is compromised in order to spend money (and time) on their sports. Have you ever heard of a football game being cancelled in order to have classes?


Check out Murray Sperber's Beer and Circus
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~sperber/

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I have been working for a school system for 22 years, and was married to a teacher for 15 years before that, so I have had a great deal of experience in at least 2 states. What I've discovered is that the problem is not teachers, parents or kids; it's administrators. One of my responsibilities is to edit the student and staff handbooks for our county. When I began doing this years ago, they were an absolute abomination, full of misspellings, grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and arbitrary organization.

Now that I've got them all cleaned up, each year, I get requests from administrators for updates or additional information to be put in the handbooks. The vast majority of requests are either grammatically incorrect, have spelling errors, or just simply sound terrible. Here in West Virginia, it's common for someone to say something like, "The windows need washed." Although this sounds odd to me, in informal speech it's not so terrible. But when a supposedly educated person actually wants me to put that kind of thing into a handbook, it's pretty bad.

An amazing number of so-called educators don't realize that you can actually use the word "me" after the word "and," so they might say, "Come talk to John and I." Or even, "The problem with she and her secretary..."

I've had school principals comment on the fact that I always have a book to read on my lunch hour because they "never read." One (whose grammar is particularly wanting) said that English is just not his strong subject. In Pennsylvania, where my ex-husband taught, the head of the English department did not know that Nick Adams was a main character in Hemmingway's short stories or that Antigone was a Greek play rather than one written by Shakespeare.

Recently, the drama department in one of our schools won a major award for one of its plays, but not one single adminstrator even bothered to show up for a performance. They do, however, manage to go to football games. A couple of years ago, I had a one person show of my art work in our local art center. Again, not one administrator came to either my opening or stopped in to see the exhibit for the 6 weeks it was on display.

Last year, some of the area's finest blues musicians performed for a "Blues in the Schools" program, and not only were there no administrators present, but not even the music teachers showed up. Obviously drama, art, and music are not on the agenda for our "educators."

From what I've heard, I would imagine that my experiences are not unique. Many, many educational administrators are failed coaches or burned out teachers. The system probably is also not designed to accomodate intellectuals, either.

It's long been my contention that it would be quite easy to find out what's wrong with education in America. Simply put all the administrators in any school district in the country in a room and give them a comprehensive test. Have them write a few paragraphs; ask them to do some simple math; test them on current events, history, science, and geography. As soon as one reads their essays, the problem is likely to become crystal clear. If 2 or 3 administrators can write a complete paragraph that is grammatically correct and doesn't make one cringe, it's a miracle.

These are the people who decide what our children need to learn. They make the rules, keep the system going, prioritize, and select textbooks. Add all of this to the basic suppressive atmosphere in public schools, an over emphasis on sports, and the massive misinformation perpetuated by the corporate media, and it's no big surprise that American citizens are ignorant.

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Laying the blame on an uninformed American electorate is a cheap shot. The article's sequence moving from anecdotes about lack of information to anecdotes about deliberate misinformation tells the story but the article then misses the very point it makes.

We must protect ourselves at all times from the lies we are told. Merchandising is simply sophisticated lying. So is the daily news lying. Teachers lie. Law enforcement lies. It's just one of the consequences of nihilism.

When authorities lie (and Bush, Jr. exceeded all expectations at lying) it is safer to stay dumb and watch the Simpsons.

Oh, yeah, it is the Fourth Estate, the media, who are supposed to sort out the lies. That's why they are protected by the f'ing Constitution. But they can make more money by lying, along with everyone else. Staying *informed* makes us stoopid and the liars rich. "Same as it ever was."

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People who do all these studies and expect anything but a normal distribution within the population are the stupid people. However now that we know the population distribution for civics knowledge, American history, or politics other than labeling one end smart and the other end stupid, what is this knowledge good for, probably nothing. They should do something interesting like break the total population down into groups and try and explain behavior based on difference between group distributions. So if you break these studies into two groups voters and non-voters, I will bet there is a distribution shift toward the smart end for voters vs. non-voters. If so then you smart voters sure have gotten us into a fine mess. Personally I think you are stupid if you do not know how and why the second law of thermodynamics predicts the end of the universe, damn that entropy. Everyone is smart if they get to define the smart criteria.

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I think it about time that we tell the truth and shame the devil! We the people have accepted being dumbed down to a level that we don't even care anymore, because there is a smug satisfaction with just being an American.

The truth is we have an educational system that has essentially been gutted and "teaches to the test". We have allowed civics to be taken out of our classrooms, and yes while there are many good teachers out there - lets face it we have a lot of mediocre ones teaching also. We have allowed little James to pass even though he really can't read a paragraph let alone write one. Why, because we might "hurt his sense of self esteem", as if being illiterate isn't a self esteem stealer!

Even our news (both print & t.v.) isn't really news it's infotainment and we suck it up. Or it's "reality t.v" - who cares?! We don't demand more.

We allowed a "B" (if that) grade actor to be President, and now he is revered as some sort of hero. And heaven forbid one criticize him, because that's treason. Exactly what did he do - tax cuts for the wealthy, deliver a blow to unions when he fired the air traffic controllers, started deregulation, etc., exactly what positive thing did he do for the country.

We currently have a religious fervor in this country that looks upon "learning" anything outside of the bible as heresy. And if you are reading the bible you must read it as they interpret it otherwise that's heresy! This is worse than Salem, Massachussetts during the witch trials (does anyone know about them)?

Of course no one honestly wants to discuss that we're ignorant! It's so easy to turn on O'Reilly and watch him spew forth ignorance, or listen to Limbaugh's hate rant than to actually critically think, after all we're just breeding sheep here in America. Land of the free & home of the slave.

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Ignorance is a condition of mind in which we are lacking knowledge or have been misinformed. Ignorance can be overcome through the acquisition of knowledge. Through education that promotes critical thinking (not indoctrination), through the process of acquiring knowledge (education), ignorance can be overcome.

Stupidity is a condtion of mind that is basically unchangeable, in which critical thinking is not possible or even necessary for maintaining life or power.

Ignorance is a function of class war and class rule. To maintain it's power and priviledge, every ruling class in the past has limitied education to it's own class or to those who service the needs of the ruling class.

Today, this class rule is maintained in by corporate control of mass media and the educational process. Critical thinking that questions class rule and privledge is especially suppressed.

Thus the demand for free public education through college is a threatening revolutionary demand. The demand for free access to mass media involved in critical thinking of existing class rule is violently suppressed.

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I personally think in some ways he's made a poor choice for a scapegoat in Homer. I wonder what the actual overlap of his two primary statistics is. Frankly the Simpsons, puerile and antisocial as it may be, is one of the most politically aware and intelligently written shows on the tube. I would not be at all surprised if the 22 percent who can name all 5 Simpsons was not nearly the same group as the 1 in 4 who can name all five rights. One reason I say this is that I strongly suspect there is a significant overlap of Simpsons viewers and the Daily Show/Colbert viewers, who are among the best informed in our populace.

Had he gone after Bachelor or any mind sapping reality show... I also have to echo lamentations of the poor quality of policy information available in the corporate media that often leaves people worse informed the more they watch.

On the other hand, my inner cannibal simply can't decide between impeachment and impalement. But, he is not in charge of me.

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What happens if Big Business takes control of all the access to knowledge? A really dumbed down America. If we lose net neutrality and have to pay to surf outside of the tidy little packages the ISP's want to sell us, much of the open knowledge on the internet will eventually vanish for lack of use.

While we may accidentally happen into knowledge online today, if we know the meter is running, most people will avoid knowledge like the plague, sticking to online re-runs of the Simpsons and eating whatever the advertisers tell us to eat...worse, voting for whoever the advertisers tell us to vote for.

Everyone MUST DEMAND that Congress preserve Net Neutrality.

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we failed to prepare ourselves for peak oil, and our politicians have no clue on how we turn our economy around. So, it may be we are too stupid to live. But being a practical idealist I think we can set our nation on new sustainable path.


The End Of History
The End Point and The End Game
http://theendpoint.blogspot.com/


With the fall of the Soviet Union it was widely believed that we had witness the end of history, the end of the historical war between democracy and Marxism. But with the rise of communist China, we are again faced with the historical question: who will be left standing at the end of history?

This time around it looks like the final battle. And the news from the front isn’t good. Communist China, simply by opening its trade door to the world’s capitalists has pretty much captured the means of production along with the technology and the wealth and so the wherewithal to build up its military strength. Does this mean that Marxism is set to dominate the world? Not quite. It is not the rise of worldwide communism that China has in mind, but “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It is China that has captured the means of production and it is China that seeks to dominate the world. And they intend to do so not by military dominance, but by waging total economic war. A war we are on the verge of losing. And as we lose it, so goes the world. This is China’s end point and end game.
So, before they succeed, we have to get in the game. Not only do we need a vision that pulls our economy out of recession, we also need one that will win the ideological war. That is, we need an end point and end game of our own.

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Besides everything this article mentions, there is one more catagory that needs to be added: the "head-in-the-sand" group. I personally know people in this catagory who consciously choose to NOT be in-the-know and choose to live in lala land with their false information and impressions. These are Bush Sheeple as well.

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When you force people into a box, and teach them to the lowest common denominator?

My teachers and guidence counselors always lamented on how I never lived up to my 'potential'. As if marching in sync to someone elses drum says anything to my potential in life.

I had one of my English teachers tell us not only what sources to use in one of her essays, but how many and in what format she wanted the essay written in. And they still wondered why I wanted to drop out of highschool so damn badly.

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There are a number of things that the average american does not know and this can be categorised into several boxes.
1. He does not WANT to know.
2. He only selects things that that he WANTS to know.
3 He only sees believes and understands what he programmed to know through what information is gained through the media.
4.He is not interested what goes on outside the US unless he is personally and directly involved

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In 2001 good ole Dubya promised to close not only roads and railways but the ports of Afghanistan as well. To be the Navy could not find any!

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is just trying to make hard working Americans look bad. Why do the liberals always resort to class warfare against us slackers? They are just jealous because after they took all of those hard classes in high school, while we were taking Gen. Math and shop, and THEN spent all that time and money in college, that we are making more money as plumbers than they are.

Now, we even run this country and have elected one of our own as President. Eat your hearts out liberals!

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The local news on television mostly consists of crime, celebrities,and events from places outside the viewing area.

Any hard news is rare and is mostly delegated to political horseraces.

That is why while people get the news from local television, they still really don't know much about their local, state, or federal government.

Except for law enforcement.

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showed the world that Americans have an average IQ equal to the mean wintertime temperature of my state, California.

Hugh E. Scott, Vietnam vet, ex-USAF pilot, lifelong registered Republican, ARDENT Obama supporter and the editor of www.PhonyFighterPilot.com -- the only website about George W. Bush that presents irrefutable, smoking-gun proof of White House corruption.

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in 2001 good ole Dubya promised to close not only roads and railroads into Afganistan but the ports as well. To bad the Navy could not find any!

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JFK represented an era and time where the direction of America would have taken a dramatically different turn. There was a "je ne sais quoi" a something special in the air about that time. An optimism, and idealism that education , investing in society, ask not... something that could even be called spiritual. That was all ended on Nove 22nd 1963 at Dealey Plaza by those who had the "Real Power" and they made the "decision".
If there was a time where all the resources , power, know how, go to'edness or can do ethic, it was then. This was snuffed out then. I think quite frankly that America has simply not recovered from this "murder most foul", it has been replaced by resignation, a profound sense of powerlessness and resignation, that with each election and subsequent assassinations grew stronger and stronger. America's ills are ills of the spirit, ills of the soul. One of the most interesting comments I've heard about America was from the Dalai Lama, at one point during a "weekend workshop" he asked the audience how many of you believe you suffer from low self worth, low self esteem, to his shock and amazement it was almost everybody. He remembers and mentions this because he had just come from a Korea/ Mongolia trip where he had popped the same question, there the response was about 20% of the audience.
Given the right conditions, proper leadership and encouragement, human beings can do remarkable things.
The Big Power brokers that run the USA have consistently decapitated and nipped the possibility of these things happening, wanting people to be dumbed down, discouraged, self destructive, resigned, feeling powerless and most of all full of fear and apprehension.
AS long as there are humans roaming the earth there will always be"Power Brokers" that have these ends in mind, in a sense you can think of that as a universal constant.
I still believe the responsibility falls on us, each and every one of us to "connect" in our daily lives and do as much as we can to nourish what is best and human in all of us, to confront our fears and deal with them and lastly to painfully wean off those illusions we so dearly love....

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Even up here the other day an "informed reader" commented that art is "fluff" that only women are drawn to... WTF??

Ummm... ever hear of Michelangelo? Yeah, that Sistine Chapel painting job must've been an afternoon of fun. Holy shit, people are even too stupid to know that art is complex and necessary to a society, always has been. That kind of ignorant thinking - along with tossing art out in favor of sports & other lesser important things in schools - is what got us where we are today.

I'm lucky I graduated high school in 1981. After that, with RayGun's hand on the button & the country's focus on nothing but $$, education went straight down the tubes.

Although I was lucky enough to attend a Catholic "prep" high school, which was supposed to be pretty good, they didn't offer even ONE Geography class. The closest I came to that was in grade school, when I took social studies! So my ignorance of the world was pretty vast upon graduation.

All of my knowledge of other parts of the world has been learned on my own, perhaps a tad in college. And I spend great swaths of time now making up for lost time then. Luckily, I was always a big reader.

Think about what a message that sends kids, though: Nowhere else on the planet is of any imporantance, just learn AMERICAN history and AMERICAN geography. In Europe, they learn about everywhere. Same goes in most other continents.

We're so insulated, isolated, jingoistic and stupid we don't even know the level of our stupidity. And now, there's the "my baby is a genius" syndrome that sets kids up to fail miserably, and lose interest in things that they aren't immediately good at.

Ay yi yi. Oh, for a new Era of Enlightenment!

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How do we expect young people to want a college education when being rich and famous is a good thing in a society that teaches them power and money is what life is all about? Why go to school to begin with when fame and fortune are what you look like and where you live? The world has left us far, far behind and our only recourse or stand with the rest of the world is our ability to inflict war and destruction. I say upgrade and mandate history books to include American history before European arrival. This would offer a complete value of the continents birth and instill a sense of real American identity. Offer African American, Latino, Asian and concentrate more on who the founding fathers were and what they stood for. Speak not only of Columbus, but Amerigo Vespucci and Leif Erikson. It is sad that most youth know more about Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons than they do about Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison. They know little of what the Cold War was about; the plight of the Irish Americans or who Alice Paul was. There are foreign students that know more about our history than we do. There are members of Congress who know nothing of the Harlan County War but know and have immense respect for Saudi royalty. The youth today are remarkably resilient in the face of a doomed future we create for them and we wonder why they turn to sex, drugs and rock and roll. We need to teach sex education as a health issue instead of a religious or moral standing. We’ve already lost that fight; we may as well “man-up” about real issues and stop spoon feeding them our personal agenda for in the end, we won’t be around to back-up the lies we were handed and continue to get handed, at our own behest. Science and the Arts rock!

The film “Coach Carter” comes to mind when you have a community attack a coach for not making students winners in the academia and life before winners on the basketball court. It is the parents today that are more ignorant of basic reading, writing, science, history and the arts. American history is painted with athletes that have achieved great fame and fortune yet their lives become entangled with addictions and tragedy, especially recent history where they are akin to rock stars or entertainers with embarrassing lives. Is this what America needs right now? The reasoning between a wealthy drug dealer on the street corner or the mafia and the constant barrage of pharmaceuticals on television is a very thin line. Where we justify the need for a longer sexual libido or a stronger heart, street drugs will flow as well in a society that not only demands them; but the profit and entrepreneurial savvy is the same. How do we teach the youth the difference between the two when meth and alcohol are both harmful and the only difference between the two is legalities? Not all people can be historians or mathematicians, which is why we have the arts. Unfortunately the conservative times have oppressed music, painting, and film. This can only stifle our greatest talent from reaching their potential, for even engineers need a sense of creativity.

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Here in Toronto not to long ago a crony Bush loving douche bag (her name eludes me) she's been on the O'Reilly show a few times proclaimed Bush the greatest president ever in her newspaper column she was let go shortly after that due to her right wing views but here was an educated person and yet she was stupid.

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In the mid 70's I worked at a medium sized library. There was a decline in reading, more time watching TV and a sudden increase in reading problems among children. It didn't take years of gathering data, it was right in front of my face and everyone else's. This was before computers. We are informed & enter -tained to death and saturated with opinions from every direction. Knowledge is not what other people get paid to think so they can sell us something at the same time. Thanks, ANNA

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I’ve experienced American ignorance first hand. When I’ve told Americans where I was born they’d never heard of such a place or guessed it to be at an entirely inaccurate location, continents from where it is. It is more than a lack of knowledge regarding facts it is a total lack of understanding of other people. Americans generally seem uncomfortable with foreigners especially of the non western European variety. You tell them you’re form another country and they get a wild look in their eyes. You may as well tell them you’ve come from Mars. Generally they will proceed to ask a series of asinine rude and trivial questions. The total ignorance seems to be rooted in the arrogant belief that America is the center of the world and Americans don’t need to know anything about anyone.

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In a recent NY Times piece it is mentioned that 18 percent of Americans, according to one poll, believe that the sun goes around the earth.

But a smaller percentage of Americans, no more than 15%, disapproved of President Bush in the months after the 9-11 attacks.

That says it all.

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When I was in public school, by the time I was 9 years old, I had thoroughly memorized all the Latin names of the dinosaurs, the prehistoric mammals, their corresponding epochs, had developed an interest in history, especially WWII after being enraptured by a TV miniseries based on Gore Vidal's "Winds of War," had memorized all of our presidents, etc. Then, as I moved through elementary school, and then into high-school, I became more shiftless, bullied, beaten up, etc, until in high school I was put on Ritalin.

What I remember about all of my public school experiences was being a high-IQ working class kid stuck in classrooms with mainstreamed children with fetal alcohol syndrome, handicapped kids, etc. All of these children with low-IQ's and handicaps were catered to FIRST, while the rest of us, the ones with the ability to learn were left high and dry by a system dedicated to coddling children who did not belong in the same classroom as us.

We are losing our gifted and talented children in the public school system which is medicating high-IQ, gifted children because of egalitarianism and "Feel-goodism" in the classroom.

All our future leaders and educators are being decimated by this "coddle the dumbest kid" mentality. We spend more on public education than Europe, but get less results. Maybe it is because my mother in law gets over 40 grand a year to sit next to an autistic kid in a REGULAR classroom in public school.

Finland has some of the best education in the West for primary and secondary school. WHY? No insane multiculturalism, NO self-esteem therapy, no coddle the fat kid, etc. There is TRACKING OF STUDENTS, meaning learning deficient students get put to the vocational training, while students with an aptitude toward creativity, philosophy, science, etc. get pushed on to those fields. Instead of giving gifted kids the opportunity to excel, we give them medication.

Then we wonder why this mass standardization of the American mind has produced uneducated consumer drones.

Hmm?

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Americans find stupidity charming that is how Jessica Simpson managed to become one of Americas sweethearts. Her extreme idiocy alone made her a standout winning her fame and fortune.

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Americans fill their lives with meaningless activities like watching reality tv shows, going to the mall, doing drugs, daydreaming and the like. We have no system of priorities whatsoever. Most of us are severely socially disconnected so we compensate for the lack of meaning with materialism and trying to conform with everyone else. It's all we think we have. We are too proud to put ourselves aside for the common good anymore.

You can see this attitude in every city in the country. Celebrity fetishism is rampant. No talent ass clowns are competing for their 15 minutes of fame. Public education is a joke and rife with historical revisionism. Rote memorization is all that is being taught in public schools, not how to think and reason. CNN and Fox spew propaganda 24/7 while people that read "alternative" news, meaning the truth, are called loonies, fringe elements or just dorks and nerds.

When I talk to people about the obvious attack by this government and Israel on Americans on 9/11 they hear the damning evidence but most just don't care. They tell me that it doesn't affect them. Well it does. They just don't understand how it affects them because they are so woefully uninformed. People are disconnected from themselves, from their governments and from reality. Hyperindividualism has taken over and it is no mistake. The elite pay billions of dollars for researchers to experiment on our minds via psy-ops for the desired mind-numbing effect. It has obviously proven very successful.

Can the country turn this around? Yes. Will it? No. There are no longer enough people living in reality as we all should know it to do anything about this mess. People hate reading. They are taught to hate it at an early age. If parents don't read then children won't read and most parents are either physically not there or only physically there. The future is bleak for coming generations and they know it. Perhaps it explains why so many are seeking quick-rich schemes. They know Social Security will be eviscerated and gutted by the time they turn 65. I'm 38 and I don't even count on it being there. And with all of these people Americans still find the time and energy to hate each other over religion, race, guns, abortion, gender and sexual preferences. We are a sick bunch indeed and the cure may just be returning us to another Great Depression. I'm experiencing my own just thinking about it.

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I love watching C-Span Journal in the morning to get my engine running they have the best guests and you get a lot of information but then when the phone calls start coming in even after the situation was just explained in detail by one of the best experts the phone calls are a great example of just how ignorant so many Americans are...and how influenced they are by the government propaganda or the same Fox News puts out it's incredible and even somewhat depressing...

The current Oil prices and gas crisis is a great example even this morning a Congressman Larsen explains the Speculators and and Futures Trading having become "the wild west" and oil being used not as a commodity but currency, and these idiots many from the south and some the mid west and all they talk about is drilling oil here in America and how it's all the Democrats and "Tree-huggers" fault and it obvious they didn't get one word of what he just finished saying..

Then there are still on C-Span the repeated calls about how Obama is a Muslim how his middle name is Saddam Mohamed Obama it's just incredible how ignorant and dumber than dirt so many in America are and they cling to their ignorance..

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During college, I spent a summer working in a loan-processing office. One day the woman in the cubicle next to mine, a older lady of at least fifty, had to send a delinquency letter to someone in "NE" and wanted to know what state that was. I said that I thought it was Nebraska, but I wasn't totally certain -- I couldn't remember whether Nebraska was NE or NB.

"No," she said, "I think it's New England."

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Elected Bush twice.

Nuff said.

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I don't really know the amendments because I don't need to know them, they don't apply in my every day life. I live separate from the government (mentally) and I could care less what those amendments are. I just know that I have free speech, freedom of my religion, and so on, not because they are amendments but because it's what makes sense. I'm not going to waste my time learning all that legal bullshit because most of it isn't about morals, but about profit which totally negates any value of the laws. If they took away the amendments, it wouldn't make much of a difference anyways because people would still go on doing whatever they want just like before.

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I used to train directory assistance operators. The first thing we did was give a quiz on the abbreviations for the 50 states - it was very rare that anyone passed the first time (they could only get 2 wrong). Once I had a class of 20, only one person got 100% the first time - she was from Brazil!

Stupidity works for politicians of the Bush ilk, it makes it so much easier to play on the "fears" of people who don't bother to find out the truth or critically think about an issue.

For example - have you heard this one yet - "I'm not sure about Obama - that whole Muslim thing..." First of all the assumption is that Muslim is synonymous with bad or terrorist - not true. Secondly, several sources have put out the news that the school he attended in Indonesia was not Muslim. And finally, who cares what religiion his father was? How many people turn away from whatever church or ideology they grew up with? Not to mention the fact that he's been a Christian for decades!

RESEARCH PEOPLE! AND THINK FOR YOURSELVES!!

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When he evidently doesn't understand the difference between "ignorant" "stupid" and "dumb"?

(unknowing, incapable of learning, and incapable of speech, respectively)

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In these articles? It's always "Americans can't find X on the map" or "Don't know Y law" or "didn't know when Z happened."

What happened to math, science, literature, sociology, or comparative religion?

Being able to balance your own budget is much more likely to make a difference in your life than being able to find Gabooklestan on a map.

Knowing when the war of 1812 started isn't going to help you make an informed choice on global warming.

Can't honestly say I disagree with the author's conclusions, though.

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Don't forget that listening to the left wing is just as bad. Both are used in the controlled opposition to limit the scope of the argument.

For example, Ann Coulter writes something about the libs. The libs jump back on her. A distracting argument ensues. Supporters of each side line up behind their favorite. But neither the right or left mention what the real problems are, they just attack each other never proposing a real solution.

Another example, Universal Health Care. Rather than recognizing that is un-Constitutional for the government to redistribute wealth via illegal over taxation & that State's should decide the issue for themselves, the left & right argue about how best to implement an illegal Federal (not illegal for the States) government program. Health care is not the business of the Federal gov. It's a State's right issue that has been usurped by the feds. You never hear that from the R's or D's. Same with the medical MJ raids in States that decrimmed MJ. The feds have NO business interfering. NONE!! They do NOT have the Constitutional authority to over ride State's rights decisions.

Though a candidate may say States that have decrimmed should be left alone, they never mention the fact that government has gotten way out of control & should be brought back to to what the Constitution says & allows. Ron Paul is the only one to point that out.

If the US gov followed the Constitution & money was legal according to the Constitution the States would have plenty of finances available to look out for them selves. Another thing that is ignored is the illegality of the feds to steal our money then give it back with strings attached.

The 'debates' between right v left are framed & controlled while the important elements are ignored as each side shouts at the other. The main article delineates one of them, the under uneducated US citizen. Another critical component, lack of true Constitutional knowledge & over sight to reign in the out of control US gov., is ALWAYS ignored by the 'leaders' of all arguments between the left & right.

SamFox

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Simply put, it does not matter what you know, but how you use what you know.

This is in regards to writings by Dr. Dick Feynman. He was one one of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Later he helped decide on what books where used to educate kids. Basically they all stunk. The books just taught rudimentary knowledge. Not how this knowledge came about.

"Energy makes it go." But not where the energy came from.

Also he played a joke on classmates proving that it is "how" we use what we are taught not "what" we are taught that matters. The joke being that they were in engineering class using french curves. He said hold the curve "like so" and the curve makes a curtain angle. The point being that no matter how you hold the curve you make that "curtain" curve. They were being taught all this stuff and not using it in a critical sense it was just there as general knowledge.

Use what you know don't just know stuff.

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Our public education system would still be better if we actually taught with some back-bone of knowledge memorization. People forget that critical thinking requires something about which to think critically. Most of the greatest critical thinkers of the last 200 years have, for as critical as they are of everything from sex to class to education itself, emerged out of rigorous study that often came down to memorizing lots of stuff.

The problem isn't memorization per se, nor entirely the quality of the stuff being memorized, but the motivation for memorizing. When you're memorizing stuff for a test, you aren't investing yourself in long-term retention. Those memories are as ephemeral as the ends they serve. When you can connect what you're learning to some sort of value structure, ideally that has a place in it for learning, then you're investing what you learn in something that will stay with you.

The common attempt at this is to "make learning fun" or to tap into the late capitalist wisdom-tradition called entertainment. The rewards of learning are more important than their entertainment value though, which like tests, are ephemeral and fickle.

Learning, critical thinking and these other intellectual values we hold are just that: values. Critical thinking especially, requires the greatest strength. So before we have a conversation about American pedagogy, shouldn't we have a conversation the kind of commitment that creating an educated society requires?

Maybe, as some other commenters illustrate, education or political responsibility aren't for everyone. Maybe, by so rigidly structuring economic well-being around education, we do a dis-service to workers and education alike. When what most people want is comfort, and the route to comfort is set to run through this obstacle course called "an education," by which I mostly mean higher education, is it more important to end up comfortable or educated?

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that are necessary to adapt to a fast changing world. So what do you have to lose. Check out

http://theendpoint.blogspot.com/

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People from other nations may know world geography better than some Americans, and they may know a great deal more about the United States than Americans know about their countries, but they can be woefully ignorant of OTHER nations.

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some diehard republican voters told us they were going to vote for bush for his 2nd term because "we can't change horses midstream" (in regards to the iraq war). Pretty stupid since no republican politician is the horse, it is American sons and daughters in uniform being led to their deaths.

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I'm not so sure that Americans are "stupid", which I would define as lacking in basic intelligence, but I would say that many of us are "ignorant" in many areas. The difference is that ignorance can be "cured" by applying knowledge in sufficient quantities; stupidity, alas, is a lifetime condition.

As a former teacher, and a person who works with college students every day, I don't see young people as stupid, but lazy, uninformed, incurious, often slackers... well, yes, some of them. Every time there is an international academic competition, American students score rather poorly. Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that the average American school year lasts only 180 days, while the average school year in most other countries is 220-240 days? Could it be that the time has come to dump the summer break and extend the school year? Also, could it be that it is time to allow students to pass or fail according to the grades they have earned instead of grading on a curve so almost everyone passes, whether they have "earned" it or not?

I think we have lowered our expectations for young people to the point where they don't even know that they are receiving a poor education; hence the un-selfconsciousness of the participants in Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, which demonstrate Americans' lack of basic knowledge.

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Just 'cause I'm a nice guy, I'll give it to you. Not that it will matter, because you won't recognize it as being the answer, it will not make sense to you because you won't have the context to process it.

The answer: "Self Awareness", or, alternatively, "Awareness of Self".

Two slightly different but essentially interchangeable TOOLS for LEARNING.

Most people have either NO self-awareness, or a highly damaged or non-functional self-awareness. From this, flows all else.

Someone who IS self-aware, can see themselves, at least fleetingly or ephemerally, in an objective light. While it is truly impossible to TRULY perceive one's self in an objective way, we can get glimpses and hints.

When a person can do that, in the presence of a little bit of knowledge, they suddenly understand something very important...


...CONTEXT.


We see ourselves within a context. And by doing so, we immediately understand that, for such a thing to even exist, means that there MUST be many contexts, a continuum of contexts, infinite, perhaps.

And in understanding this, we find ourselves able to consider the abstract. Not "our" abstract, or "my" abstract, but "THE" abstract.

And in understanding this, we find ourselves able to consider facts, things, and events, in a cogent way. We can trim away the irrelevancy, focus on the core meaning.

In this world we inhabit, "facts" swirl around and reassemble themselves constantly, taking on different meanings and different implications from even one moment to the next, depending on where one focuses his attention.

This may seem disconcerting, disorienting, to have the world not be a nice, stable thing, that you can know...to have the world be a maelstrom of shifting phantoms...but it isn't really.

You see, while the "facts" become false, the PATTERNS do not. A falsehood has a pattern, a lie has a pattern. One learns to see the patterns, and use them instead of the facts.

But none of this means ANYTHING, if you haven't started from self-awareness.



You know that guy that answers the customer service phone at your least favorite company? the one who CAN'T go off-script, even to exchange honest pleasantries? It's because his awareness is anchored in the SCRIPT, not in his SELF. He doesn't even know what the script MEANS.

That's most of America. Most of the world, really...but certainly we've got a lot of it here.

lexicon

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I'm probably going to get raked over the coals for this, but here goes.

It's said, perhaps apocryphally, that if you catch a bunch of crabs and throw them into a bucket, and one starts to climb out, the others will pull it back down. They'd seemingly rather that all of them get boiled together than even a single one manage to escape. That kind of mentality seems to be behind America's longstanding allergy to "elitism," which IMO is just as prevalent as on the Left as it is on the Right. Americans are taught from an early age that if they try to better themselves intellectually, they'll be ostracized as geeks and snobs. And heaven help them if they try to better themselves morally or spiritually -- then they're insufferable, smug, holier-than-thou twits, and probably hypocrites to boot. Is it any wonder that America is perceived as a nation of warmongering idiots?

In his Revolt of the Masses, the pre-WWII Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset characterizes the true "elite" of humanity as basically no more than the minority of people who constantly demand more of themselves on the intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and artistic levels. There is no consideration of social class, age or race or gender, national origin, or formal educational level, or even actual success in achieving these goals -- just a recognition of high standards, a sincere attempt to live up to them, and an aversion to complacency. Nor does it imply either an arrogant, dismissive attitude towards others or withdrawal into some ivory tower while society crumbles around you.

We need more of that kind of elitism, and we need to stop mocking and insulting people, especially kids, for aspiring to it. Because for whatever reason, just the mere thought of someone taking pleasure in learning something or in trying to live ethically seems to provoke something really ugly, cruel, and destructive in a lot of people. Other societies don't do this, and they probably correlate strongly with the ones demolishing American students on knowledge and skill surveys.

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Being able to balance your own budget is much more likely to make a difference in your life than being able to find Gabooklestan on a map.


Since 2001 the suffix stan has been attached to all manner of made up places to convey the idea of any dangerous or unfathomable place. On at least three separate occasions I’ve actually witnessed prime time television show characters bemoan the unfathomable ness of “the stans”. They actually used that term each time “the stans” as if it were something so beyond their ability to even understand. If it weren’t so racist and pathetic it could possibly be amusing. This illustrates the ignorance and rudeness of Americans perfectly. The suffix stan simply means land. I don’t ridicule the term land which is part of several countries names nor am I bewildered by it or mystified by it as Americans and westerners in general seem to be by the term stan. It’s quite obnoxious to attach the suffix to any place you find useless, exotic or dangerous, incredibly rude, especially stupid and typical of they way many Americans treat foreigners as unfathomable non human creatures. Don’t be so mystified by the “stans”. It’s embarrassing for you, gives the impression of excessive vulnerability. Makes you sound like a stereotypical American buffoon. It would be like me losing my mind over Ireland, England, Netherlands or Finland. There are a lot of “lands” but I think I can manage to get them all straight.

Incidentally I come from Central Asia, stan is actually special to me. I don’t appreciate the new found fashion of smearing this term so that its association is only with that which is dangerous and mystifying in the minds of idiots. If I did as much to your language I think Glen Beck would devote a segment of his show to the hate mongering madness going on in Central Asia.

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Yes, on a cash basis it is, but not if you consider future obligations (as required by generally accepted accounting procedures). In fact, the general public may understand more than this author, even if they didn't get specific facts right. Future obligations will destroy this system.

Of course, dumping the present surplus in the stock market will make things much worse (not to mention corrupt the system). Now let's see how many idiots believe in financial "perpetual motion", telling me that the stock market will "guarrantee" a return of 9 percent.

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underestimate the stupidity of the American people. One example might be the two-term President presently sitting in our White House.

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More than our levels of ignorance and stupidity is the fact that Americans no longer have adequate analytical skills. They are not taught. You can have all the knowledge in the world and be intelligent, but still lack analytical skills. Let's face it, the current political environment does not play to analytical skills, but to "gut feelings" and reliance on emotions. Why, because you don't have to LEARN these "skills" and they are so easy to use. Also, they don't call it the BOOB TUBE for nothing!

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Not that much. Thanks NEA.

Lack of education is a big part. Ever see Jay Walking on the Tonight Show? Nuff said.

My remarks are not aimed at every individual. Some of the kids in school, 'nerds', took the time to study & learn something. But they are the exception not the rule.

When was the last time students in public schools studied the US Constitution? Or trained to be good US citizens rather than encouraged to become easily manipulated pleasure unit pawns who know more about the Simpsons than math, science, philosophy & taught to be critical thinking individuals rather than part of the herd.

I graduated in '67. Even then the Constitution was not taught.

There a growing shortage of scientific minds, engineers, nurses...My son in law graduated HS & can barely read. My son dropped out, but he can at least read & is good at math & self taught on the PC. The key is self taught & that he was home schooled for 3 years.

I am not all that brilliant. Few of us are. I did not like school from day one in 1st grade. But I was thrown in with the rest of the kids & scholastically I drowned. (I needed individual attention, Montessori style.) Most of us have been playing catch up to add to our education. Thanks to the net & public libraries we can make up for a lot of lost time.

We are not the only stupid ones. Look at most of Congress & many of the Presidents we have had.

One 'tell' on how uninformed US citizens are in general, is that the 3 candidates, BO, HC & JMc, even got a second look by voters. That they have any support at all bears witness to the ignorance of the uninformed masses. They have support not because every one knows their voting records or platforms but because of race, gender or party affiliation. None of them mention the greatest need the US has. Returning the US gov. to original intent Constitutional government. In fact they all continue to advocate failed tax & spend policies. In JMc's case we'd be in Iraq a 100 years.

If the gov had been following the Constitution we would not be in Iraq or busy bodies around the world, exporting foolishness like the drug war. The US would not be facing the greatest financial threat to a nation in world history because of an illegal monetary system. We would still be an economically healthy nation rather than amassing huge debt to China & would not be the most debt ridden nation in history. We would not have allowed Congress to illegally transfer control of the US monetary system to one world private banking conglomerates or be bullied by the Gestapo IRS. That treason took place in 1913, continues today & should be protested long & loudly by the US citizen.

Why is the inflation machine known as the 'Federal' Reserve allowed to continue printing US currency out of thin air? Where are the demands for 'change' back to the Constitution??? If any of the 3 CFR stooges get elected we'll be lucky to have any change in our pockets. They will 'change' our money, lives, liberties & pursuit of happiness to control of the North American Union. NOT a good thing.

Another 'tell' is that citizens in mass are not protesting the lack of Constitutional over sight & are not demanding a return to it. Many do not even know that the US has been led away from our founding document.

Returning criminals like Chappaquiddick Kennedy & to congress every year & reelecting Clinton & GWB also screams 'Stupid US Americans!'. As does open borders & the phony 2 party set up.

Part of the ignorance comes from a faulty education system, some from controlled media & partly because many of us did not study hard in school because of the herd mentality of Throw 'em all together & hope for the best. It is also stupid to pay athletes & entertainers more than school teachers.

SamFox

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Spot on. I call a significant segment of the population "Wretched Refuse." But most of it did not get here via Ellis Island.

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This website ought to help us overcome our ignorance on THE BIG DAY:

2008 Election ProCon.org

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Unfortunately, I have been saying this for several months. I don't know if it is a product of our society not wanting the next generation to have it as hard as the present or past generations had it or if it is just a natural tendency to take the easy way out (or perhaps both).

See my thoughts on the matter at Teach Your Children

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Americans prefer Bible-babble to science. Calculus is hard and they can always "brain drain" Third World for brains with good high school math. And science is answers that cause more questions. Bible is simple: kill them all and colllect their foreskins!

America's problem is 60s, 70s, 80s me-ist screw heads who thought sex and drugs better than education boomers-- too old to learn too used to having it easy. We elected Clinton and Bush because they were either as crooked or/and as lazy liars as us. So who cares, as boomers exhibit the "ain't my kid going to Iraq" disconnect syndrome. Boomers like Bush because he's as simple, as lying, as lazy as they are-- or want to be. As he bragged, he's living proof that a "C" student can be president. McCain's chances are good of being living proof that a genteleman's "D" student can be president-- proof that people in US are unchanged despite the fact that the Greenland ice is melted and raining on Midwest or that the kid next door is back from Iraq with an eye and two limbs missing and severely brain damaged-- Congress will pay for him to go to college, what else could he want? So we go on thinking that they'll make oil cheap for our SUVs and give us back the money the Bush "entrepreneurs" stole from us because they don't want us to get mad, as we did in the 60s...Lord what crap!

But if my kids and those their age decide to take America out of our boomer hands and mass to vote for their peer Obama, they may realize that with decision comes responsibility. As I eat my kids' pension while I watch Opra on TV, I can understand why their generation asks of us boomers: WHY AREN'T YOU DEAD YET?

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This is obviously a privileged white male mentality that totally ignores the struggle that black people and women had to undergo just for the right to stuff that "meaningless" piece of paper into some box. Look at all the countries around the world fighting for that very right, risking their lives just to be counted. Black people suffered literacy tests and poll taxes in order to cast a vote. Failing that, they were beaten and lynched in droves for daring to assert their rights as citizens and even now are being disenfranchised in large numbers. That's the fight we need to be taking on, not skipping out altogether. Black men with prison records who have served their time are still not allowed to participate in the political process--THIS is the injustice, but once again deafening silence from the privileged white male contingent here in alternet.

So no, I will NOT be staying home with my thumb up my ass thinking I'm doing something "radical" by not voting. I am casting my vote and as always will remain radically civic minded as I tutor young kids in my urban neighborhood and get involved in those things that will change my community and others in the process. Better education--you better believe it!

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As a teacher I try to avoid the word stupid in class as it is considered inappropriate by Administrators and Parents too.

My definition of Ignorance is not knowing something, lacking information and education.

Stupid from my perspective is knowing something but not using that information well.

If you know it is not a good idea to drink and drive and you drive, you are being stupid.

If you don't know the rules or lack the knowledge about drinking and driving to make a correct decision, you are being ignorant.

Unfortunately, many people in this country prefer to remain ignorant because it entails less responsibility to take action and do something.

We have lots of people in this category.

We also have lots of stupid people who seem to know lots of things and have been exposed to enough information available to know how to do things better.

Students in school find everything boring except for their ipods and cell phones - which fascinate them almost as much as the mindless video games they waste time on. Who has time for homework or to learn a vocabulary so that reading would be interesting and informing?

Who cares anymore what happens to anyone else until the same circumstances suddenly slap us in the face and make us wake up and protest? Too much selfishness and not enough sense of community.

Our society has been dumbed down by trying to cater to the lowest common denominator. There will always be ignorant people. But, what is astonishing is the number of very well educated people who are successful in their fields but who are also really stupid. Plenty of information floating around in their brains but not many connections being made - either intentionally from selfish interest or just pure laziness.

Where it will end is probably the same route the great Roman Empire took... into oblivion! The joke is that this country will have taken its walk across the face of civilization in so much less time than those ignorant Romans who produced some of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known.

How many more years do we have?

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Americans in general know very little.At one point in the article the fact that young people do not watch the news is mentioned...most news casts are horrible: they have been transformed into irrelevant entertainment, and no solid information is ever provided, with a very few exceptions.Schools do not teach the basics, and students are not given the skills that would help them to think critically and search for more knowledge.The situation is indeed dire!!!

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The fact is that the bell curve is not a myth.

At least 80% of humanity is "stupid" in comparison to someone towards the top end of that curve. I happen to consider somewhere around 80% of everyone I meet stupid.

They can read and write. They can function in our system. They can write checks and perform a narrowly specialized duty in some larger bureaucratic organization.

But could they do much more than that? The truth is that they can't. How many people do you know with rather mundane jobs and lives that are constantly "stressed out?" More than a few I'd wager. The fact is that the extremely easy normalcy that exists in America is pushing the average person to the limit (wake up, get dressed, go to work, perform repetitive duties while not wasting half the day talking to coworkers, leave work, interact with husband/wife/kids, sleep, repeat until death).

This is not a new phenomenon and education cannot fix it. You can't educate away stupidity. It's simply impossible.

The masses will always be at the mercy of the few individuals intelligent enough, ruthless enough, and with enough access to power to rule them. There is no alternative.

Democracy is a false construct to appease the peasantry. Humanity has always, and will always, be ruled from the top.

Most of you should just accept it - you're not smart enough to think for yourselves. But the few of us that are at the top of the bell curve but just as powerless as the rest of you have a tougher time of things.

Luckily we have 12-16+ years of behavioral modification via the public schools and universities to ensure we are "well adjusted" to the system and our place in it (a tool, a cog, a useful idiot).

Sit back, shut up, enjoy the scraps your masters throw you from the table, and realize subservience is your destiny.

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Personally, I'm exhausted with having to keep up with all the national and international garbage that goes on. When I wake up in the morning, must I "check in" to see what's happening in the Middle East, in Indo-China, in Europe, not to mention the bad old USofA
before I can make a move? That's what it feels like sometimes.

I like the Tao. I think I'll adhere to it more intimately from now on and chuck the Constitution, after all, that's what everyone else is doing. I always thought the Constitution was a hinderance to the Bill of Rights anymore.

Self-education is an obligation we owe ourselves since we live in the world. News, whatever that is, can go take a giant leap off the old proverbial bridge and splat right into the lake.

That's all, folks.

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What if the problem is that, according to "the Bell Curve" by Murray and Hernstein, that dysgenic Americans have been outbreeding Americans of higher intelligence for the last thirty years. This is not factoring in race.

What if Americans biologically CANNOT learn? Or don't have the capability of being curious. I have noticed that the Americans who are intelligent, who are capable of learning, have good genes, distinctly Western European facial features, and strong, clear eyes. Some of the overweight people, southerners, etc of mixed European ancestry, the Americans with the "baby pie faces" seem to have more problems.

This might sound very cruel, but it is something to think about.

Maybe democracy was biologically destined to end this way. Maybe Plato was correct when Socrates talked of being led by the "Philosopher King" in the Republic.

Or maybe "God" or who I like to call "Dog" created us all equal with equal abilities and it is all about "environment" and "income."

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What if the problem is that, according to "the Bell Curve" by Murray and Hernstein, that dysgenic Americans have been outbreeding Americans of higher intelligence for the last thirty years. This is not factoring in race.

What if Americans biologically CANNOT learn? Or don't have the capability of being curious. I have noticed that the Americans who are intelligent, who are capable of learning, have good genes, distinctly EASTERN European facial features, and strong, clear eyes. Some of the overweight people, southerners, etc of mixed European ancestry, the Americans with the "baby pie faces" seem to have more problems.

This might sound very cruel, but it is something to think about.

Maybe democracy was biologically destined to end this way. Maybe Plato was correct when Socrates talked of being led by the "Philosopher King" in the Republic.

Or maybe "God" or who I like to call "Dog" created us all equal with equal abilities and it is all about "environment" and "income."

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The fifth defining characteristic as described in this article could probably be accurately termed "credulity."

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The recently deceased John Dewey was applauded by the American press as the most representative figure of American civilisation. This is quite right. His theories are entirely representative of the vision of man and life which is the premise of Americanism and its 'democracy'.The essence of such theories is this: that everyone can become what he wants to, within the limits of the technological means at his disposal. Equally, a person is not what he is from his true nature and there is no real difference between people, only differences in qualifications. According to this theory anyone can be anyone he wants to be if he knows how to train himself. This is obviously the case with the 'self-made man'; in a society which has lost all sense of tradition the notion of personal aggrandisement will extend into every aspect of human existence, reinforcing the egalitarian doctrine of pure democracy. If the basis of such ideas is accepted, then all natural diversity has to be abandoned. Each person can presume to possess the potential of everyone else and the terms 'superior' and 'inferior' lose their meaning; every notion of distance and respect loses meaning; all life-styles are open to all. To all organic conceptions of life Americans oppose a mechanistic conception. In a society which has 'started from scratch', everything has the characteristic of being fabricated. In American society appearances are masks not faces. At the same time, proponents of the American way of life are hostile to personality.
The Americans' 'open-mindedness', which is sometimes cited in their favour, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their 'individualism'. Individualism and personality are not the same: the one belongs to the formless world of quantity, the other to the world of quality and hierarchy. The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind', puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardisation. In a superior civilisation, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste (in the original meaning of the word), not even that of servant or shudra, would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.
There is a popular notion about the United States that it is a 'young nation' with a 'great future before it'. Apparent American defects are then described as the 'faults of youth' or 'growing pains'. It is not difficult to see that the myth of 'progress' plays a large part in this judgement. According to the idea that everything new is good, America has a privileged role to play among civilised nations. In the First World War the United States intervened in the role of 'the civilised world' par excellence. The 'most evolved' nation had not only a right but a duty to interfere in the destinies of other peoples.The structure of history is, however, cyclical not evolutionary. It is far from being the case that the most recent civilisations are necessarily 'superior'. They may be, in fact, senile and decadent. There is a necessary correspondence between the most advanced stages of a historical cycle and the most primitive. America is the final stage of modern Europe. Guenon called the United States 'the far West', in the novel sense that the United States represents the reductio ad absurdum of the negative and the most senile aspects of Western civilisation. What in Europe exists in diluted form are magnified in the United States and revealed as the symptoms of human regression which shows mental atrophy towards all higher interests and higher sensibilities.

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Keep an open mind when reading this:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6824/evola.htm

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GAs is $2/ gallon in Mexico. 58 cents in Saudia Arabia. Venezuela about 40 cent/ gal., Europe, well over $10/gal.

Here, we charge everything drive guzzlers for trivial pursuits, wander in our vehicles looking to entertain ourselves constantly.

Mean while the nation has allowed pirates to do a Coup d'tat on our country and continually be aloud to plummet on nation into unfathomable debt alll while devouring biomass to make fuel for our cars while Americans here in our own country actually are going without food and shelter We don't have to look at Darfur for sadness.
American Indians here in their alotted reservations live in the dirt in mud abobe shelters.
But Americans think "IT" all happens somewhere else.

Nope, Americans just don't give a shit. But they can't afford to either because most all of us have been captured at birth and forced to confide in an economic system that keep them endlessly struggling to maintain a stance in pitiful economic conundrum.
Oh, hell why talk about it. No one's caring will make a difference anyway.

I'm doing what I can to keep the government from stealing what ever I have. Which is all just illusionary wealth anyway, even if I'm still living humbly at over 50 years of age. But my Carbon foot print is much smaller than those that are some how compelled to celebrate "independance Day" all well blowing tons of unnecessary carbon back into the atmosphere for something that is long gone.

Yup, just continue the march into oblivion.

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"Assembly" and "Petition" are 18th-century words. The same trick questions are used to show that most young people favor drilling for offshore oil reserves that will not affect the market for over 20 years.

Besides, how many Christians can name all 10 Commandments? Even modern playwright Arthur Miller poked fun at that.

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In case you didn't notice, nothing matters besides Nascar, football, hockey, video games, stars and stripes.

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When I was a kid, they didn't teach civics in school. They didn't teach much about U.S. history or other countries. Whatever they did teach was superficial and pre-packaged to make sure everyone ended up with the same opinion. If you ask me, the system is designed to keep people ignorant. Information is not available in schools. It certainly isn't available on television news programming, nor in the newspapers. The best way to get information about what's going on in the world seems to be by reading foreign newspapers and non-fiction books. Regardless, one always has to sort through layers of nonsense to get at what might resemble the truth. The powers that be have nothing to gain by informing and empowering people. As others point out, even if we knew more, what could we do about it? Politicians themselves have rendered politics irrelevant. In my opinion, we can only work with whatever connections we have in our own communities to get our basic needs met. We can't control the government, which cares nothing about us and only serves wealthy special interests. We can't control what happens in other countries. Most of us can barely pay our bills. The entertainment industry promotes consumerism and the worship of false gods (money, celebrity, acquisition) that obscure the public's view of what really matters in life, using smoke and mirrors to keep us broke and confused. While the author of the article has valid points, his criticism mainly serves to bolster the egos of the "informed" - because he hasn't offered a solution. My solution: make lots of friends and learn to grow your own food, because in the coming crisis, we are all going to need to rely on each other for survival. Tune out the static, but try to stay alert.

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This is the AGE of INCURIOUS . . . celebrating ignorance.

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Good for the young people, and even old people, who watch CNN, probably one of the least informative news stations I have ever watched. Its addictive but the information is useless and hopelessly watered down. If that is the type of news network that young, or old Americans, have to rely on then America is going to have even more problems with ignorance down the road.

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It's about an average IQ Army private and a prostitute who are put into an experiment and wake up 500 years in the future in an America COMPLETELY dumbed down, beyond what we have today. Nobody reads, everyone, even lawyers and government officials, talks in a mix of ebonics/hillbilly talk. Water has been replaced by an energy sports drink, even for agriculture. The President is a former pro wrestler and the whole cabinet was chosen for their sex appeal on TV rather tha actual talent. Here's a more detailed description of the movie- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

If things keep going the way they are, we may well end up like this.

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who is the audience of this article? is it the "stupid" people, who, i presume, the author expects will greet this appellation by recognizing its justice and determining to mend their ways? or is it the "smart" people, who can once again wring their hands over the state of things, hopelessly but with the smug knowledge that it's not their fault?
where is the analysis about what keeps people uninformed? where are the suggestions for inspiring people to access important information and participate in civic debate? i hope there is more of this in the book, but considering its title, which seems to rely on the shaky proposition that you can simultaneously inspire and ridicule people, i have my doubts.

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Y'know--I spend a little time here, and on other comment boards in a sporadic way. I also do some work for Obama with a little committee in my neighborhood. When I'm writing about issues, or discussing the campaign, I start to think that everyone is involved.

Most days I wear a big button that says something about Obama on my suit jacket--it looks a little foolish, and I do it to spark conversation with strangers.

You know how many conversations I've had? Zero. Zip. None.

I was getting a hot dog at the concession over by the Home Depot the other day. I was standing in a mini-crowd of about ten or twelve people, all waiting or chewing. I looked around me, and listened to some of the conversations, and I started to think that none of these people care a damn. I'm not able to explain to myself why I was so sure of that, but I was.

Apathy.

It's a scary thought that I have to go and seek out people in order to talk politics or the state of the world--that the interest just isn't there on the street.

Only 54% of eligible voters go to the polls. So when they say the approval rating for the administration is 17%, who are they polling?

There's one thing I've always known: that involvement and information for a person is only as good as the person's comfort with reading. While actual illiteracy isn't the biggest problem in this country, my bet is that there's a large segment of the population which does fine and reads well enough, but isn't comfortable enough with reading to read for pleasure, or for detailed information.

That makes them prey to the slant on whatever news shows they watch to find things out. I'm glad that this isn't the 'eighties or nineties, when student apathy was just about total. We need young, astute people to vote if not enough boomers are going to do it.

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We're currently experiencing a second dark ages where religion/superstition are triumphed over science, where art is not valued, and civic life thoroughly degraded. Naturally, Americans are more stupid being the mega capitalist power of the world...under a system of negative consumption, isn't the perfect state having slavish and mindless consumers. It could be called its own triumph, in a way, this system which has made being into all-eating, all-stupid consumers. Many said W was a poor representative for the US; to me, he's the perfect encapsulation of all that is fearsome about the US.

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the motive to learn about government and the structure of the government via the Constitution.

In that sense, the article is weak in an important way. It fails to mention the motive of ignorance—because the system is largely immune from voters who want change unless they are very wealthy.

The US system of government is a money-dominated, two-party system. That’s because we have winner-take-all, district-based elections for the Senate and the House. And unlike any other modern, establish democracies, we allow money to control the discourse during elections. And we have an electoral college, not instant runoff (or regular runoff) voting for President. And we have a judiciary controlled by the Senate, one of the most unrepresentative bodies among established democracies. And we lack the most basic democratic right of all: the American people cannot vote, via a referendum, to decide any question, not even who becomes president. Many other countries have this, indeed, many of our own states do.

States have had over 200 state constitutional conventions, whereas at the national level, we have had only two: one to establish the first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the second 1787 convention to establish the current Constitution. It's been 221 years!

Yes, people don’t know about the government, in part, because we don’t pay teachers well or otherwise invest in education. Schools dumb us down and so does media. (Australia has a law that requires facts and evidence in advertising on TV.) But also, the self-interest motive is lacking, unlike in many other countries. The government is structured to prevent The People from controlling it. We lack even an amendment to impeach the President and Vice-President via a recall election, like California did a few years ago. But wallowing in such problems is not enough. There ARE solutions. Ask anyone from Sweden, Germany, New Zealand and many other countries with modern electoral systems and constitutions.

What are solutions to make our government structured so public policy matches public opinion, and to make it actually representative of and controlled by The People? Easy. For starts, proportional representation in the legislature. Germany has this. New Zealand adopted it in the 1990s, from a two-party system. Sweden has it, as does Norway, Ireland, Scotland and many other nations. Directly voting for president would help. It could be an instant runoff, or an actual runoff (like France has) to be better. The judicial branch could be chosen by bodies other than the Senate. And if the Senate was representative, California would have 160 senators to Wyoming’s two. That would make it more reflective of The People. All of these changes and more would align the structure of the government with the Constitution’s own Preamble. It says “We the People” not “We the States.”

I cannot in this short space recommend all the changes to improve the Constitution to make the US government more reflective of and a microcosm of its citizens, but the above is a start. For more, read the books by Steven Hill, Robert Dahl, Larry Sabato, Sanford Levinson, and Dan Lazare. They tell a good part of the whole story of the problems and the progressive remedies.

If people could actually make a difference, more would know about it, for they would possess the motive of self-interest.

It is the policy of progressive parties and candidates to make these changes. Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, the Green Party, the state progressive caucuses in the state Democratic Parties advocate such progressive electoral reforms. To make these changes requires progressives to get active on progressive electoral reforms. To do that requires joining progressive parties and/or progressive caucuses in the (still largely corporate Democratic Party) at the state level.

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http://www.hermes-press.com/education_index.htm
DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

America's schools have slowly eroded & the intelligence of the average American become so debilitated. Learning has plummeted & public school performance has sunk since the 1950's because it was planned that way.

Thinking Americans must know that what goes on in society is the created by its rulers who create the social, psychological, economic, & ideological conditions to create excessive wealth for themselves & impoverish the working class.

Education, development of understanding, must be distinguished from training, development of skill. Education happens by knowledge or understanding of something by study, instruction, or experience.

In each culture, public meanings, ideas, & skills transmitted through educational institutions & through the media have always been determined by the ruling elite ~ Politicians, financiers, warriors, priests, scholars, scientists, corporations.

Moneyed interests seek to destroy democracy, to destroy the enlightening "diffusion of knowledge & the free exercise of reason." Their method of rule is not by "consent of the governed" or rational discourse, but by dictation of fascistic tactics.

"In our dream, we have limitless resources, & the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; &, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful & responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply." DAVID ROCKEFELLER

The rulers want the working class trained to not think for themselves & have deliberately devastated the American mind. Go to the above URL.

"The economic well-being of the nation depends on the presence of a large number of men who are content to labor hard all day long. Because men are naturally lazy they will not work unless forced by necessity to do so. The education of the poor threatens to rob the nation of their productivity. Every hour those poor people spend at their books is so much time lost to society. Going to school in comparison to working is idleness."

They have created an educational system focused on training not learning.

"We must overcome the fetishism of the alphabet, of the multiplication tables, of grammars, of scales, & of bibliolatry. It would be no serious loss if a child never learned to read."

"Secret knowledge is the basis of all power. Your source of information depends upon who you are & your position in society. Your source of information determines the reliability of what you know." ~ Steven Jacobson, Mind Control in the U.S.

"The children of the American working-class are a great army of incapables, shading down to those who should be in schools for dullards or subnormal children, for those whose mental development heredity decrees a slow pace & an early arrest."

American students were not taught current events in terms of the machinations of their government. Naive Americans fought WWII unaware that U.S. companies helped set up the Nazi regime & profited from their own deaths.

Now Americans are trained to ignore the rapacious acts of the current regime in the east even WHEN TOLD of these atrocities.

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA

Watch ENDGAME by Alex Jones in Google. LEARN!

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Americans are stupid...sounds bad. The good news of course is that this makes things awfully easy on those of us (geeks) who actually know things. I've never had a *real* job (you know, those things that involve working), because when you're smart, people need you. It's not hard to monetize that.

dboy

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Sure the schools don't teach shit any more! Sure the entire Education Experience is nothing but a warm up for a life of toil and stripped away civil rights which they don't even TEACH at school any more!

Do you think the Government, and Big Business actually WANT people smart enough to see they're getting fucked? Rational, critical thought? Well! We just can't have any of THAT, thank you, very much!

When the recruiter turns up at the school to convince our youth to sell their lives to Uncle Sam, we MUST make sure that they are at their well-trained, and obedient best! When we order them to run head first into a meat grinder, that meat grinder shall NOT go hungry!

Of course we must introduce them to the wonders of urinalysis, so they won't have the mistaken opinion that they actually OWN their own bodies, or have anything like civil rights, and such!

All those hooligans from the 60's and 70's got taught all that civil rights stuff, and look what a mess THEY made! Riding around on those noisy motorcycles! Smoking weed, and fucking in the grass! We'll have no more of THAT behavior! It could lead to DANCING!!!

Oh yea! The Government has this "Dumbing down" trick to a science! Don't believe me? Look who we got for President!

Want to do something about it? Make sure your kids know the Bill of Rights, and what it means! TEACH THEM THEIR RIGHTS! The Government won't do it!

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Americans aren't really stupid, just ignorant.Clinton realized this and encourage the expansion of civics education in schools.
The Center for Civic Education, a non-profit,non-partisan education organization that is dedicated to promoting an enlightened and responsible
citizenry, holds the cure.
The internet,while full of promise, has been underused as a tool of self-education.
A very informative and enlightening article can be found at www.civiced.org. under research, paper and speeches.

It's title,"An Introduction to the Political Philosophy of the Constitution" by Duane Smith will be the most interesting thing you will read or hear on this 4th of July.
I used these materials to home school my kid and wound up getting an education myself.

Invite your family to read it too.

It beats being dumbed-down by the MSM and you will feel pride in being an American again.

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Are none of you students of history? Have none of you studied the past? Do none of you understand humanity on any meaningful level?

Human history shows what happens when people are left to their own devices: poverty, starvation, superstition, fear, famine, disease, and rule by religious fanatics.

Is that really what you want? Is our modern system and structure really so bad compared to where we have been as a species?

Only when a strong individual or group steps in and leads do we have civilization and order. Most of humanity does not have the intellect or personal energy to do anything but eat, sleep, and hump the opposite sex until they die.

In fact, I would argue that is still what most of humanity does today. The only difference is we have a structure, an international order in place, that allows these fundamentally worthless people to serve some good with their existence.

"Feed me, cloth me, shelter me, give me health care." This is what the masses are saying to those who rule them. Those on the left seem to want to fulfill these requests. What can do that other than a huge and powerful bureaucracy?

So, make no mistake, the left does not have a difference of opinion with me on this matter. They consider the majority of humanity as irreparably stupid as I do. They fully agree and only want control. Your masters on the left consider you just as biologically child like as your masters on the right. The primary difference is what to do with billions of biologically worthless people.

Control the schools and media for one generation and you control a nation forever. Watch how Iraq changes over the next 30-50 years. "Korean model?" Try Germany and Japan.

Are your masters on the left really as benevolent as you believe? I think not. The 100 million+ murdered in the name of Communism over the past century give us some insight into the "benevolence" of the leftist elites.

The current international order (read: system of financial control) is not perfect, but I'd rather be alive here and now than at any other time and place in history. America sits at the apex of human civilization and has a great destiny before it. Survival is so easy as to be virtually guaranteed. Access to goods and services is phenomenal for those with any meaningful will and capacity for work.

Enjoy your 4th and consider just how lucky you were to have been born in the United States in the post-WW2 era.

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Excellent article, as was the one Alternet posted on this subject not too long ago. Stupidity, self-absorption, and extremist individualism have been validated as some kind of personal code of living by the current administration. At the same time, shame was legislated out of existence, as was the responsibility to look ahead and try to solve problems for mankind before they became crises (e.g. the energy crisis).

You can see it in our culture....when you go to the music stores, what do you see? The same kind of In Da Club rap....where can you find alternative, interesting rap?....Certainly not easily. Or for that matter, alternative and interesting movies....it is all so boring that I no longer listen to current radio (I don't have satellite radio)...I no longer care about the movies....the suburbs have the same boring big movie studio selections everywhere...to see something interesting you have to drive far, to an alternate movie studio. Is this cultural shallowness pressed upon us on purpose?

Game shows...same thing. Deal or No Deal requires no skill.....just a guessing game with Maxim girls.

I-pods are soma for the masses...so that they can bury their ears and not have to face the cultural and amoral mess.

At the same time, this administration promotes "education" as the way to get ahead. Say what? How can you be for education and yet be anti-elitist at the same time? If America doesn't see this paradox, then we are not thinking enough...which, interestingly enough, is just what this administration wanted. As to family values...if any administration were more anti-family values, it would win a prize. This tops them all....bankrupting workers....crippling safety valves such as the FDA, CDC and HUD....not enacting better labor practices...and so on. Did it have to take so much damage for Americans to see this agenda for what it really is? To see that the "free" market is only free to those who work the system? It must be regulated so that it is not hijacked by the finance moguls for their own benefit.

Why was dumbing down and rampant consumerism so effective? Exactly so that they could enable the hedge fund managers to hijack the economy with no repercussions....and at the same time strengthen the usury practices of credit card companies and other financial institutions...so that people would be enslaved by debt...fearful of protest, and so on. And not question corporations as to why their benefits are reduced, why they aren't given 8 weeks of leave like progressive countries have.....and so on.

Now we have the disastrous result of head in the sand living and anti-intellectualism. At least Barack has made it cool to be smart again. Now voters have to look at the whole picture...not knee jerk issues...not contextually corrupted sound bites....and see just how these agendas will affect their lives in sum total. In order to save ourselves, we will have to embrace intellectualism and activism again - can't happen too soon.

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I was just thinking about this today. I'm 59 and back in the 50's, 60's, 70's -- in other words before 24/7 cable news -- we were much better informed. Back then the news was really the news. It wasn't just broadcasters filling empty airwaves. We were much better informed. Newspapers actually informed us. So did TV. The reason this country is so dumbed down is because the airwaves are filled with nothing more than talking heads. They don't have to worry about balance since Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Back in the good old days, networks didn't expect the newsrooms to be profitable. They expected them to go out, get the stories and report those stories. In this day and age, Watergate would've never been reported. Which shows how low the media has sunk. Watergate in comparison to the degredations to our Constitution was really a 3rd rate breakin, as Nixon said.

God help our country. We aren't dumb. It's just that you have to dig so hard to find the truth.

Hugs & Kisses.

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And there it is, in a nutshell.
The reason that Bush and his fascists were put into power and have retained it for nearly eight years without much protest.

After all, Bush was the candidate that more people would want to have a beer with. God help us!

That being said, I personally believe that to those in power there is no benefit in having a well-educated, thinking, questioning populace. Indeed, having the "little people" questioning their masters would be a huge drawback to them.

So, keep 'em fat, dumb and watching "American Idol" and they will never notice when you take their freedoms and rights one by one, when you send their jobs overseas and cut their Social Security benefits and pensions.

Give the middle class just enough to survive and be sure that you keep the myth of the "welfare chiselers" out there so that they keep looking down and blaming the poor. That way, they will never look up the ladder and see what kind of royal screwing they are getting from their owners up on top of the food chain.

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More so than being "stupid," I think most Americans are disenfranchised, disconcerned (waiting for "Armageddon"), fearful of the govt.'s covert operations potential (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc), and some are in the, "We're the richest. Let's be happy," semi-Woodstock mentality. The Browning of U.S., Muslimism dominating the world religions, being on idle factors, are really just what makes-up the beginning of a new, day and time.

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I can't say how many times I've thought this but since early in W's first term I've thought that once he leaves office we(that is us in the United States) need to do some painful soul searching and figure out how we managed to elect someone as grossly unqualified for the Presidency as George Bush. I'm not saying conservative; I wouldn't be writing this if, say Richard Lugar or even Orrin Hatch were president. What combination of poor press coverage, Republican spin, far-right election fraud (I actually discount this. The 2000 election shouldn't have been close enough to steal), voter apathy and anti-intellectualism allowed someone who was entirely contemptuous of learning, ignorant of the rest of the world, unbelievably inarticulate and a failure at every enterprise in which he had been involved, to become the guy who sets the national agenda, enforces the laws and who we trust with the nukes. I believe this article spotlights the most painful part of the answer.I don't know if this soul searching is ever going to take place but we REALLY need it.

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the posts to This slashdot article sure look relevant here.

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... that the best customer is a stupid one that you've convinced is smart for buying what you're selling. Make 'em proud of how little they know and they will venture no further.

The pride-trick never fails. Pride is all a stupid person has left. That's why it's one of the Deadly Sins.

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Our worsening national stupidity is inflicted on us by our public school system (especially by its viciously anti-intellectual policies of social promotion and valuing “self esteem” over learning) and it is maintained by Big Business media (which is so filled with lies and distractions it has become the U.S. equivalent of the Nazis’ Voelkischer Beobachter).

But it is not enough to acknowledge we have the industrial world’s most deceptive mass media and the industrial world’s worst public schools.

Nor is it enough to admit that the “education majors” required for teacher-certification are notorious for being so unchallenging they attract legions of dullards; or that the brave and iconoclastic journalists of yesteryear have been methodically purged and replaced with corporate drones -- mere clerks hired to fill the time and space between advertisements.

We already know we have been reduced to Moron Nation, and that our reduction has been a long time coming. What we need to do is ask why this has been done to us -- who and what it serves.

Alas, to find the answer we need to turn to history -- the very subject so many of us have (very deliberately) been taught to hate, not by history itself, but by the dreadful manner it is taught in public schools (memorization of disconnected names, places and dates) and by the people typically hired to teach it (football coaches and their ilk, invariably those whose linguistic acumen and intellectual skills generally are scarcely above the level of the local primate house).

If we manage to defeat the resultant censorship-by-aversion (for that is precisely what it is), we may discover collectively what some of us already know: that history is the ultimate drama -- the story of humanity (and particularly of the class-struggles that express the eternal human yearning for freedom) -- that it is as fascinating as any great work of literature, theater or film. And that it is not about rote recitation but rather the investigation and understanding of causes and effects.

That said -- taking as a given the reality of Moron Nation -- we might next ask if there is anywhere in history a precedent for such ignorance.

The answer -- which should terrify us all -- is that indeed there is: the legendary and legendarily vicious ignorance of the Mujiki, the peasantry that kept the Russian Tsar in power. The Tsar deliberately deprived the Mujiki of education lest knowledge radicalize them, and as a further guarantee of their obedience, catechized them via the Russian Orthodox Church into murderous theocracy scarcely different from the Ku Klux Klan.

So effective was this policy, the Mujiki violently resisted education for decades after the Soviet revolution -- with the result that, finally, the Soviet government withdrew its teachers and healthcare workers and sent in soldiers instead.

Obviously Moron Nation serves the same purpose. An ignorant population -- and we are now so moronated our ignorance already approaches that of the Mujiki -- is a population effortlessly oppressed. And as the capitalist ruling class prepares to survive terminal climate change and the end of the petroleum age, such oppression -- the imposition of theocracy and fascism -- is its only option, the only way capitalism can guarantee its survival. Hence Moron Nation: the New Mujiki of the neo-Dark Age fast approaching.

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America is not exceptional in this regard.

You cannot educate away stupidity.

The fact that most of you can drive a car, read at a 6th grade level, and write checks to pay your bills amazes me.

Consider this: is the American way of life so simplistic in order to turn you into simpletons, or is it designed from the ground up by and for AVERAGE people, i.e. simpletons?

I think you know my answer.

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Note to Delight: You make a vital point about the way that civics has been watered down and removed from education since the '80's. History has also been in the process of removal from schools. The focus increasingly became on memorization of names, dates and places rather than any analysis of the issues that drive history. Folks, if we don't know where we've been, we can't see where we're going!

I'm struck today by how much we are repeating the most grievous mistakes of the past, simply because we don't know about previous results. We can't see that we are repeating the same horrendous mistakes, with the same results, and we don't understand that there ARE still solutions.

Without that knowledge, we aren't capable of making the decisions necessary to survive as a nation. I think most people are "getting it" when it comes to the current wars of choice, so let me note another issue that is striking because although it has been having a profound impact on us, and is a repeat of history, we don't get it yet.

That issue is "welfare reform". It's too complex to address here, but I feel confident saying that most Americans have no idea of how much these policies impact their own lives. Consider the facts: Via these policies, we let the government know that we don't object to allowing a specific group of law-abiding citizens to be stripped of some of their fundamental legal and human rights. Since 1997, and as a result, we've seen government increasingly pare back the rights of citizens, one group at a time.

Think a minute: Two important things happened since the "Reagan Revolution": A massive number of jobs have been (and continue to be) outsourced to Third World nations in search of bottom wage/no rights/no options labor. Add in the impact of Clinton's welfare "reform": the creation of a massive, mandatory workforce, separate from "free" Americans, that can be paid bottom wages and have no workers' rights or protections. People weren't "moved from welfare to work"; many merely became involuntary replacement labor, effectively forced to accept job "assignments", used to crush unions and suppress wages. It doesn't hurt only the poor
(and we learned not to care about that). But while all the working class is sinking deeper into poverty, the few with corporate/political power has been swimming in wealth. The poorer that Americans (as a whole) become, the less power they have, the more power the "leaders" have.

But we don't know it because we don't know about our own history, much less the history of concentrated power, and of people's movements to restore the balance of power. And we all suffer as a result.

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Excerpt ripped from Silent Weapons about the setup and economic manipulation of the masses, which has been going on since before the late 1940's...
Read it and weep... sheep.

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"In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the low-class elements of society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be housebroken, trained, and assigned a yoke and long-term social duties from a very early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of the matter. In order to achieve such conformity, the lower-class family unit must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the parents and the establishment of government-operated day-care centers for the occupationally orphaned children.

The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintain some measure of social order, peace, and tranquillity for the ruling upper class."

Great book that everyone out there with a brain should definitely read.
It has an entire section devoted to a system in which the ruling higher class can control the economy. The electrical theory has been transfered over and put to use in the flow of currency and trade goods. Thous controlling the market's highs and lows which in turn controls the world population.

It is a very complicated system that was worked out by a German genius in 17th century. He was of course a member of the Bavarian Illuminati that was later outlawed and went underground.

Once again anyone with a good degree of intelligence that considers themselves free thinkers really need to read this book.

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Not once in all the commentary is there one statement about the fact that the Constitution prohibits Ex Post Facto laws. To make a law that "retroactively" changes the law was correctly recognized to DESTROY the Rule of Law. If the Law does not mean what it says at the time it says because it can be Ex Post Facto changed then there is NO LAW....

That above all makes this law a GRAVE CRIME. The Democrats have shown themselves to be as bad as Bush and the Conservatives, what they are conserving I do not know because it isn't the Constitution, Obama unfit for any office and McCain a coward....

Perhaps We the People no longer enjoy the protections of the Constitution because we don't know it...

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