Since I did not have my morning class I prepared a cup of hot green tea and flipped on the Today show. Before the commercial break smiley Matt and Meredith gave the promo for the next segment...Is America getting dumber? plugging a couple new book by some unrecognizable authors. Intrigued, I stayed tuned for the segment.
It was introduced by a series of clips put together by the Today show that included Miss South Carolina's beauty pageant answer, Kelly Pickler on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, and Jessica Simpson. In the few short minutes of the interview it was debated whether technology (TV and Internet mainly) which originally was viewed as a great tool to access unlimited amounts of information is actually turning against us and making us more dumb. One of the authors insisted that reality TV is the root of Americans losing brain cells. But can we really blame reality TV? I don't think that's fair. I'm not saying it's making us smarter by any means because let's be honest, the stuff is junk, but it's definitely not the root of the problem. The root in my opinion...arrogance.
I once had an argument with my mother in which she argued that people today are not as smart as our founding fathers. She came to this conclusion because she was having trouble reading and understanding some piece written by Thomas Jefferson. I could not agree with her (surprise, surprise). For one she was having trouble because people talked different back then. They used different phrases, different words, and even different spellings in some cases. For another, how could we have advanced thus far scientifically and technologically if people were getting increasingly more dumb? Every day were are being exposed to more and more information and discovering more and more new things about the world we live in.
x amount of information = x amount of knowledge
The problem is some information (aka reality TV, celebrity news, etc) produces knowledge that is not meaningful and ultimately distracts us from accessing meaningful knowledge. In the Today show segment they showed a picture of Bill Gates to a person on the street and asked if they knew who it was. "Nope." Then the next picture was of Harry Potter and right away they answered, "Oh, that's Harry Potter." So why do some choose to surround themselves with useless information? Arrogance.
arrogance: offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride
For some reason Americans, arguably more than the rest of the world, believe they are superior. Therefore accessing information to acquire knowledge about the world, other cultures, beliefs, values, and languages comes second to the latest scoop on Britney's downward spiral. Most of us have lost that inquisitive, curious nature, giving way to lazy acceptance of all information thrown in our face.
Nope, I refuse to believe we are any less knowledgeable than our founding fathers. Rather most have just channeled their knowledge into meaningless areas.
And to sum up all this knowledge talk I think it's appropriate to refer to an old proverb:
Nope, I refuse to believe we are any less knowledgeable than our founding fathers. Rather most have just channeled their knowledge into meaningless areas.
And to sum up all this knowledge talk I think it's appropriate to refer to an old proverb:
He who gets wisdom loves his own soul;
he would cherishes understanding prospers. -Proverbs 19:8
he would cherishes understanding prospers. -Proverbs 19:8
1 comment:
So I said I would post on your blog. And here I am a week later, finally posting on your blog. These are good thoughts. I have often thought about the idea that we seem to know fewer facts than generations before us. We no longer memorize dates in history class, and I'm quite embarassed sometimes at my ignorance of "common knowledge" things. Yea, I think you're right that we focus our energy toward useless knowledge. It's a cyclical problem, too, because then that useless knowledge becomes important, and if you don't know where Britney Spears is on her crazy journey, than you are uninformed. I think another problem sometimes is too much information. I get overwhelmed. There's too much to keep up with, and I give up--and I'm studying journalism! I supposedly like information. It's so hard to distinguish fact from fiction some days.
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