Strategic Assault

It's against all of us

Have you ever been in the midst of telling a story with a powerful conclusion or a funny punchline and the recipient ruins the impact by interrupting you and, thereby, the flow?

He/she does this by:

1. Asking an irrelevant question

2. Trying to guess the details of the story

3. Trying to guess the ending of the story

This has happened to me many times and it’s why I started writing.These same people will ask questions during a movie that neither you nor the person has seen before.

Briefly, I suspected that this trait was evidence of a low IQ; then I discarded that notion because some of the people I know who do this are very smart.

I believe in the physical, metal and spiritual senses with the spiritual having reign over them all; I guess this is defined as ontology. I’ve read very little of those who are called the Great Thinkers, but I know enough about them to know that many of them have laid the basis for these topics. Readers can provide the names of the pertinent ones for me.

Several years back, I became aware of a man named John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018). He was an author and a celebrated English teacher in New York City’s public and private schools. What made him stand out was his scathing condemnation of modern American education in nearly all of its incarnations. His best known book is Dumbing Us Down, a short, simple title encompassing what he - and many others - claim has happened to all Americans in roughly the last 100 years via public education and compulsory schooling. And he made this declaration after he had thrice won Teacher of the Year in NYC.

Mr. Gatto claimed that there is a war on our ability to cogently think and that our various educational systems have been shaped into a vehicle for this assault. One might call these systems rocket launchers for confusion.

In his various YouTube videos and interviews, he provides a great deal of evidence for his assertion, but one piece of evidence has been turning over in my mind since I heard him utter it.

This name may not be familiar to many of you but we old-school bloggers and blog readers remember one Steven Den Beste (1952-2016) - captain of the blog USS Clueless - whose infrequent missives on politics and social issues were indescribably fantastic. He stopped writing to concentrate on anime, of which he was a fan and, most importantly, would make him a lot more money than thinking and providing evidence of it. And who can blame him? I bet anime fans are a lot more attentive.

But was this the fault of Steven’s readers? More and more, I’m coming to the conclusion that it was not.

Here’s the evidence. In one of Mr. Gatto’s interviews, he cites a 19th century directive from a Cambridge organization, which I will paraphrase. Public educational systems were to begin emphasizing the memorization of personalities, events and dates without teaching context - that is explaining the connections between such items and/or teaching students how to make those connections themselves.

If one thinks about it, the effects of “memorization education” have been all around us for decades and, from the beginning of the Internet age, have … you guess it … gone viral.

Regarding the oft-asked question “Have people become more stupid,” my answer has always been “yes” and “no.” 

No: because of instant connection, we not only have access to uncountable amounts of information, but also access to people who, forty years ago, we wouldn’t know existed. The downside to this is that we also have access to a greater amount of stupid people. 

They were always there; you just know more of them.

Yes: Many mistake large amounts of information for intelligence. It is in that way that the Internet has provided many stupid people with the illusion of intelligence. Be advised: stupidity is not defined as lack of information. Stupidity is the limited ability to interpret information, coupled with the refusal to acknowledge the need for this ability. 

Ever know an idiot who was full of hubris and arrogance about some information she has that you don’t have? When attempting to interpret the information, that’s when the name-calling starts - usually involving your alleged stupidity.

I contend that succeeding generations have been made more stupid intentionally and it tarnishes everything we do and all of our communication. And digital communication has made the assault so powerful and speedy that many of us can’t see it.

Examples to come.