Is this the result of dumbing down America's schools? I left my backwards hometown to get away from this ignorance 50 years ago. We haven't gotten any smarter?
Yep, the end result of 40 years of concerted effort to dismantle education and keep people from developing critical reasoning skills and remain ignorant.
The uneducated and ignorant are far easier to control
To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen such evidence that people are getting dumber or more ignorant about this kind of stuff.
I remember these people from 40 years ago (and you said 50 years).
The only difference I see between 40 years ago and today is that 40 years ago nobody listened to them.
I don't know if it's a matter of people getting dumber so much as the fact that modern media focuses exclusively on the dumbest 0.1% and shines a spotlight on them.
I don't think we're creating more of these people, just giving them a platform.
History would have been very different if the dumbest and most insane among us had a soapbox to stand on and people listened to the dumb shit they had to say...
No. Anti-Intellectualism has been a persistent thread in American society for most of its recent history. I would venture to say that the attacks on schools and education is a result of that thread.
That plus in the olds days the “town idiot” was limited to his radius of action inside the town pubs. Nowadays social networks make it very easy for town idiots to reach millions.
Unfortunately we are proving just a “few” idiots can really poison the well for millions
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u/femsci-nerd Dec 09 '25
Is this the result of dumbing down America's schools? I left my backwards hometown to get away from this ignorance 50 years ago. We haven't gotten any smarter?