Analysis Of The Dumbing Down Of The American Mind By Doug Soderstrom
By misinterpreting and attacking the nuanced areas of the opposition’s argument, one is able to elevate his own argument while degrading that of the opposition’s. Even when an argument is sound and logical, if it contains a single unclear phrase open to interpretation that is followed by critical mockery, it appears inconsequential and foolish to an audience. Such is the case in an exchange between Richard Seaver, the Executive Vice President of the Grove Press publishing company, and Ira Herbert, an executive of Coca-Cola, regarding their common use of the marketing slogan, “it’s the real thing”. Herbert’s argument is innately logical but poorly supported and executed.
The author, Natalie Wexler is a one of the founders of the board of trustees for the Writing Revolution. In her article, Why Americans Can 't Write, with the advent of email, writing ability has become more important than ever, and writing deficiencies have become increasingly apparent. The writing skills have been lacking in America, and the reason is because schools have only 24% of the students in eighth and 12th grades were proficient in writing and just 3% were advanced. The exercise doesn 't provide kids with the tools they need to write analytically. The standards in middle and in high schools teachers expect students to know things.
Summary In chapter three “In the defense of a Liberal Education” author Fareed Zakaria opens up what he believes to be “central virtue of liberal education”(72). He writes that it teaches one how to think critically and clearly. He explains that thinking is the stronger advantage one could have in writing well. Before writing it helps first people to think in a critical sense so work should be using simple language in a well comprehendible way.
The bi-partisan government in the United States of America is further divided by the ways of the internet. The internet only makes it more readily available to find false information to prove your side of the arguement right. In the article titled “The Things People Say: Rumors in an age of unreason,” published in The New Yorker (November 2009), staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert discusses The spread of rumors across the internet and how it further divides the bipartisan government and argues that due to the filtering of ideas people are more likely to go against evidence when there are people that support their opinions. The author supports this claim by providing examples such as the study done in 1970, quoting multiple sources beyond her political
Brainless.com: Rhetorical Strategies in Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Do we depend on the Internet to answer all of our questions? Nicholas Carr, an American author, wrote “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in 2008 in The Atlantic, and he argues about the effects of the Internet on literacy, cognition, and culture. Carr begins his argument with the ending scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In the article Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris Fiorina addresses the issue of the illusion of political polarization. Political polarization is the separation of political beliefs into two separate extremes. The main illustration Fiorina uses is the use the electoral map. The electoral map is used to gauge which party won an election or polling.
Mark Bauerlein, author of ‘The Dumbest Generation’, argues that today’s youth has had a decline in academics due to new technology in today’s economy. In retrospect, we’re growing up in a different time than the generation before us; the world and it’s products are different as to be expected, and with them we must learn new materials than they did. Today’s generation isn’t ‘dumb’, instead we’re adjusting to the times and retaining different knowledge than the generations before us. Many older generations always thinks that the generation after theirs is ‘dumber’, and think themselves to be the superior one.
In the first chapter of his book, The Political Mind, George Lakoff asserts that “[his] goal is to make the cognitive unconscious as conscious as possible, to make reflexive decisions reflective” (page 34). The author claims that it is a crucial matter, especially when pertaining to the political arena, where extremely important issues are at stake. Lakoff states that people’s live stories consist of narratives which surround individuals not only outside, but also inside—in people’s brains. According to the author, narratives might be simple or complex. In addition to this they have scenarios, roles, and a structure, also known as a frame.
Dumb is defined as not being able to read or write. In every generation there are changes among each generation after another to a certain extent. In today’s generation it is solely based on the uprising of complex technology being used. Past generations have only heard of writing handwritten letters by mail or only having a telephone to communicate. Now today it is about text messaging, cellular phones, emails, and etc.
Today’s college students are becoming more sensitized to the harshness of the outside world. Instead of learning to be resilient to others’ comments, they are being taught to take offense to any little word that could in some way be connected with a bad experience they might have had, and college administrators and professors are aiding this childish behavior. They are backing this movement to make adults into children. With this new movement to rid college campuses of any speech that may make anyone feel uncomfortable, students are being treated less like adults, and more like elementary children.
Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. To put it simply, if the 13 independent States did not ratified the US Constitution in 1789 through synergy, then we would have a government that was out of control and a Congress that acts in government 's best interest instead of the citizens. Meaning…we would have a slow but steading loss of freedom amongst the 13 independent States. However, at the same time synergy would have cause a cognitive dissonance amongst the 13 States because each independent state has their own mindset of handling ongoing issues like slavery, Native American lands, and the expansion and growth of the western regions.
They do not want people to be smart or able to think for themselves. One of their slogans is “Ignorance is strength” because they don’t want the people to be intelligent (Orwell
In the article, “Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America” Ray Williams discusses the increasing trend of anti-intellectualism in American culture. There is an anti-intellectualism that exists in American culture that is the result of the unpopularity of being smart in High School, the lack of the importance of teachers in the U.S. compared to Japan and the effect of reality TV and pop culture. Williams indicates that one of the reasons that anti-intellectualism exists is that education in the United States is not as strong as it once was. Williams says, “After leading the world for decades in 24-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations
The Rhetorical Analysis of the “America Needs its Nerds” The mental capacity is treated as a disadvantage in the America, despite the fact it already helped the country many times. This long-term problem became the main topic of the Leonid Fridman’s essay “America Needs its Nerds”. The work first appeared on January 11, 1990 in the New York Times as a part of the series “Voices of the New Generation”. The author spoke about the negative attitude the American society has to smart people and demonstrates it with the usage of words like “nerd” or “geek”.
The war for America was little and quickly over, be that as it may it was the first go through in American history where various had been not quite recently a long way from home shockingly, yet in outside countries. What they saw and acknowledged there, joined with after war fatigue, presented a sea change in American culture. Never again were they content with the old systems for considering our place on the planet, or the spot of the individual in the general population eye, the change spread to women as well. Solidified with the extended pace of industrialization and the general presentation of acquisition utilizing an advance, and that is when America handled an incredible attitude. Sadly, at whatever point magnificent financial structures
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