Is "dumb down" common in our society?

In my field there is a culture of "dumb-down" developing.From supervisors to layperson there is poor communication, misleading directions, bad practices and incorrect terminology being perpetuated.

For what reason I do not know and more to the point which social structure has set the "dumb-down" process in motion?

Wysiwyg said:

In my field there is a culture of "dumb-down" developing.From supervisors to layperson there is poor communication, misleading directions, bad practices and incorrect terminology being perpetuated.

For what reason I do not know and more to the point which social structure has set the "dumb-down" process in motion?

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The failure of the public school system.

American English usage.

Technology.

An example:

People say: " I want a spyware program". But what they really mean is " I want an anti-spyware program". It is stuff like this that really infuriates me. It sounds dumb and is getting worse.

It's Snake Pliskin said:

The failure of the public school system.

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totally agree.

Had a great boss/mentor when i was trying to climb corporate ladder as a young bloke(till i realised it was all a wank and became self employed) Anyway one of the best quotes he gave me is-
Tell me and I'll forget
Show me and I may remember
Involve me and I'll understand.

works for me with my staff.

Wysiwyg said:

For what reason I do not know and more to the point which social structure has set the "dumb-down" process in motion?

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The quasi numbers society.

Most fields valued by society today do not have a weighting towards the importance of language or critical thought. The dominance of the economics/ commerce fields are an example of this where displaying thought coherently and accurately in language is not as important in displaying it in numbers, figures and models.

There are many articles and so on relating to the quantification of our society and world and its affects.

CAB SAV said:

Had a great boss/mentor when i was trying to climb corporate ladder as a young bloke(till i realised it was all a wank and became self employed) Anyway one of the best quotes he gave me is-
Tell me and I'll forget
Show me and I may remember
Involve me and I'll understand.

works for me with my staff.

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Excellent CAB excellent.Wish you well.

I'm a teacher in a public school and I'd have to say that there is just an overwhelming sense of kids not wanting to know things in any detail. They majority are content to sit back and do the bare minimum without exerting themselves.

Don't know how that fits with what their parents are telling them, or whether it's what the media are portraying life as being all about enjoying yourself and not taking things too seriously??

Be interested to hear any other teachers opinions.

Or hang on, maybe it's a big conspiracy whereby the intelligentsia are taking control of the world by stealth If everyone is happy to be dumb, then control will fall to those in the know, muhahahahahahaha

chops_a_must said:

There are many articles and so on relating to the quantification of our society and world and its affects.

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So maybe if the machines do all the work and thinking, more humans need know less these days.A select few to do the programming, maintenance and operation.

jonojpsg said:

I'm a teacher in a public school and I'd have to say that there is just an overwhelming sense of kids not wanting to know things in any detail. They majority are content to sit back and do the bare minimum without exerting themselves.

Don't know how that fits with what their parents are telling them, or whether it's what the media are portraying life as being all about enjoying yourself and not taking things too seriously??

Be interested to hear any other teachers opinions.

Or hang on, maybe it's a big conspiracy whereby the intelligentsia are taking control of the world by stealth If everyone is happy to be dumb, then control will fall to those in the know, muhahahahahahaha

Click to expand...

Ahhh... devolution...



Interestingly.... a valid argument against Darwin...

Wysiwyg said:

So maybe if the machines do all the work and thinking, more humans need know less these days.A select few to do the programming, maintenance and operation.

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It's more that everything gets reduced to numbers, that have no actual meaning. So people don't understand the context behind anything, or the methodology used to get there. But this happens on a massive scale.

Don't get me started on trading book authors and editors that cannot put a good thing together that is able to be understood without phoning the author. (not all books though)

A pet hate of mine is the evening news on the FTA commercial TV stations.

If you not a retard before watching you are certain to be one after, total American BS.

Yes, idiocy is becoming fashionable. I don't know who's to blame.

"I'm fat, somebody should pay me to lose weight"
"I have kids, somebody should pay me to raise them"
"I don't like the internet. The gum mint should censor it"
"I borrowed more than I can afford. The banks should lower interest rates"
"I gambled and lost on the stockmarket. The gum mint should do something"

xoa said:

"I gambled and lost on the stockmarket. The gum mint should do something"

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Nioka board kthnxbai.

Scaling in the school system is a classic example.

xoa said:

..."I have kids, somebody should pay me to raise them"...

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Doesn't end there either - I surprised how it is now supposed to be "normal" for grandparents to practically raise their grandkids. Not only do they want to get paid for having kids, but then it's too much like hard work to raise them.

An example I've seen rather a lot of first hand is public knowledge of the power industry. And that knowledge is, of course, largely gained via the media.

Early 1980's in Tasmania during the dams debate I doubt there would have been anyone in the entire state that didn't know what the output of the proposed power plant was and what that meant relative to existing supply. The papers were full of figues in MW literally every day.

Same in the early 1990's when the energy question again loomed large.

Now the best the media can manage is to quote how many houses something could supply. No actual figures anywhere. And even then they get it completey wrong most of the time (well, unless they're expecting us all to start smelting aluminium in the backyard).

It's pretty simple really. Adding supply to a power grid ain't rocket science in terms of the numbers. Simple supply and demand really. But the media's completely dumbed down the population on this one.

And before anyone says it's a niche subject, doesn't matter etc I'll say this. A great many elections in this state have been fought and won over the issue, indeed it lead to the birth of what is now a significant political party worldwide (Greens). And it's the underlying subject behind the climate change issue which was significant at the last Federal election and has itself dominated the news in recent times.

But the mass media can't bring themselves to report any fact that involves simple math, whereas they did it consistently from the early 20th century until the 1990's. And they stopped doing it just as it started to matter at a national and international level with the climate change issue. Yep, there's a dumbing down going on that's for sure.

Another one I see a lot of is training of apprentices. In short, the move is very much toward doing the minimum training and excessive specialisation. The odd one gets through with good training (if the employer makes it happen) but the days of genuinely skilled tradespeople are numbered if this keeps up.

As someone said to me not long ago - "you'll need someone old to do that". Sadly, it's pretty much true and yet the work, whilst technical, wasn't what I'd consider overly difficult. Another dumbing down.

And don't get me started on the economy. It's so much ignorance on the part of so many that has largely got us into this mess in the first place. Interest rates go up and down. Recessions are common. Debt has to be repaid. Again it's all pretty simple stuff that does matter, but somehow we've managed to create a society where most are oblivious to the facts.

Health's another one. How on earth did we end up with a situation where it's normal for people to live on sugar and fat during the week then get smashed on alcohol every weekend. If you think the health system is struggling now, just wait and see what happens when those in their 20's now reach their 40's. Dumb...

The one that really gets me though is this. State any factual information to someone under 30 and the response you'll get is "where does it say that?" or "who told you that?". They just don't get the notion that maybe you actually know it yourself and didn't just read it somewhere before telling them. The notion that anyone actually understands something at a detailed level just doesn't seem to be something they consider possible.

sails said:

I surprised how it is now supposed to be "normal" for grandparents to practically raise their grandkids. Not only do they want to get paid for having kids, but then it's too much like hard work to raise them.

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True. Grandparents foster idiocracy as well, when they expect government payment for minding their own grandkids.

There's always been stupid, infantile people. But they seem to have climbed further up the social totem pole. Many "educated" and professional people are seriously lacking in common sense and are unwilling to own their mistakes.

Look at all the investors (in their $120 Ralph Lauren shirts) who congregate to moan after each stock market dip.

A good overview thanks Smurf1976.

The information presented by newspaper and television companies is a valid point in regard to what we should know, what we want to know and what sells most.Consumer rights apply here as far as viewing the material, let alone seeing it as genuinely informative.After all it is usually just a small group of journalists, editors and cameramen that present a story.

Another one I see a lot of is training of apprentices. In short, the move is very much toward doing the minimum training and excessive specialisation. The odd one gets through with good training (if the employer makes it happen) but the days of genuinely skilled tradespeople are numbered if this keeps up.

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Now this is what I saw starting about 1990-92 with the restructure of apprentice training.The apprentice masters were moved on and the apprentices are now taught by many different tradesman of which many have picked up bad practices themselves.Another thing is the equipment and part stock within companies is poor.Costs to continuously replace stolen equipment, consumables and spare parts are high so the old is re-used or a poor quality job is done to keep things moving.Another dumbing down job well done.

Another "dumb down" is making teachers solely responsible for students’ progress.