Ordinarily I don't get too excited over Chicken-Little-style shrieking that Americans are getting more ignorant by the day. These things usually blame video, for which I have no patience; visual media are NOT the problem. It's how they're used.
Granted, right now they're being used to foreclose rather than expand. But if the author of this article had thought back to a certain hallowed tome, namely Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, she'd know that words do just fine at that too when given a chance. (Orwell was smart enough to show how stupid language could be.)
And as for bashing "screens," aka computers--go check out Dave Neiwert. I defy you not to learn something.
Again: it ain't the media. It's how it's used.
But this article had one graf that stopped everything for me. Here it is:
"People accustomed to hearing their president...[snap] 'I'm the decider' may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio 'fireside chat' so they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80% of American adults tuned in to hear the president."
"This is," the author justifiably tells us, "...a different country and citizenry."
Yes. One that gave a shit.
That is the difference.
Of course, we are the legacy of those people, so they obviously went wrong somewhere--possibly in believing that everyone would always care as much as they did, so there was no need to actually teach that virtue.
But anyhow, this hit me right between the eyes. Eighty percent? Poring over maps? Listening to the president? Listening to the president admit and discuss defeat? I for one am glad that this kind of kinky, perverted bottoming to "reality" has been abolished on our shores.
And it really has. "Nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it 'not at all important' to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it 'very important.'"
#
Why is this?
Jonathan Schwarz has a theory: "Power makes human beings stupid."
It's real simple. "If you're at the top of the social pyramid"--or under the media-control of those who are--"you won't perceive things that are unbelievably obvious to those lower down."
And you'll start thinking, you know, who cares where France is? Or how they talk? Why do I need to know?
#
You can even see this in the dance world. My daughter's dance company went to a competition last weekend, and let me tell you, it was a hard time to be a bunhead (a serious ballet student). Teachers repeatedly made excuses: "Yeah, yeah, you will have to take a ballet class later on. I know, I know, boring. But [name of teacher] makes it fun! She really does!" In the halls, I heard not one but two random cellphone conversations where a mom said of her daughter: "She hates ballet."
Yeah, it's only the foundation of all western movement, guys. Why should you put up with it? Why should you tolerate it for a minute?
You resent the demands it makes on you. It's hard to pull up, turn out, get your fingers right, and get your head right all at the same time, let alone hold all of that through an excruciatingly slow and demanding grand plie, so you just hate on it.
You are the victim of an ethos which says nothing SHOULD be demanded of you.
At least not without simultaneous massive reward to take away the pain.
You have been spoiled.
#
Who profits from that? Who banks on it?
And what do we lose?
