The Dumbing Down of America – By Design

Locutus

Adorable Deplorable
Jun 18, 2007
32,230
45
48
65
This presentation focuses on the myriad ways in which the powers-that-be in the United States have been systematically dumbing down Americans as a society for a very long time – all by meticulously calculated design. Originally the term dumbing down was used as a slang expression in 1933 by film screenwriters to mean “revising [the script] so as to appeal to those of lower education or intelligence.”

The most obvious example of how Americans have been dumbed down is through this nation’s failed public education system. At one time not that long ago America reigned supreme as a leading model for the rest of the world providing the best quality free public K-12 education system on the planet. But over the last many decades while much of the rest of the world has been passing us by, it seems an insidious federal agenda has been implemented to condition and brainwash a population of mindless, robotic citizenry that simply does what it’s told, and of course the brainwashing commences early in America’s schools.



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The Dumbing Down of America – By Design | Global Research
 

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
44,850
192
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Nakusp, BC
Unions are killing our childrens future, they are dead against Charter Schools which have proven to be far better than their counterpart, the Public School Systems.

What is a Charter School?
Sorry, but you really don't understand what is going on or who is responsible for this dumbing down process or why. Blaming the little guys is precisely what they want to see happen.
 

BaalsTears

Senate Member
Jan 25, 2011
5,732
0
36
Santa Cruz, California
The best people rarely go into public school teaching in the US these days. Then to compound the problem, teacher training is inferior. They graduate and are sent into the classroom without adequate preparation. Worse still, they become union members which places the interests of unionized teachers above the teacher's duty to his or her students. Public school teaching was once a profession. Now it's a job like bus driving.
 

Grievous

Time Out
Jul 28, 2014
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0
36
Whitby
Yeah, like attacking scientific facts in the school system.


Red states allowing creationism into the public system is the first step in making people dumb.
 

Ludlow

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 7, 2014
13,588
0
36
wherever i sit down my ars
I'm a big advocate of public libraries. Lots of good books out there to read these days. Less listening, and more reading is my motto. Nothing much better than a good book with good peer reviews. The best part, is public libraries are free. No justifiable reason to be ignorant these days. Even my old wore out Ayce can learn new things.
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
Jan 26, 2006
41,035
201
63
RR1 Distopia 666 Discordia
Yeah, like attacking scientific facts in the school system.


Red states allowing creationism into the public system is the first step in making people dumb.

Darwin was a definite improvement, it was a secular dumb bludgeon. Darwin was an idiot who spent his time playing the markets. I hope you don't believe your parents evolved you.
 

Tecumsehsbones

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 18, 2013
55,620
7,093
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Washington DC
I'm a big advocate of public libraries. Lots of good books out there to read these days. Less listening, and more reading is my motto. Nothing much better than a good book with good peer reviews. The best part, is public libraries are free. No justifiable reason to be ignorant these days. Even my old wore out Ayce can learn new things.
I'm sorry I can only give you +1. I got my entire education at the library.
 

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
21,155
149
63
Shouldn't this conspiracy theory thread be in the alternate theories section?
 

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
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QI





Archimedes could have lifted the Earth more by jumping up and down than using a lever. Archimedes once said: "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth." While he discovered the power of levers, the QI elves have calculated that if he weighted 100kg, and he placed his fulcrum a kilometre away from the bottom of the Earth, in order to balance the planet he would need a lever 6.5 billion light years long. Assuming he could find a lever that long, if he moved his lever by one metre, the Earth would move less than the distance of the diameter of a proton.


If you cross a caterpillar with a butterfly you may end up with an entirely different animal, according to one theory. According to Donald Williamson, formerly of the University of Liverpool, caterpillars and butterflies are different species, in his theory of hybridogenesis. Williamson examined a species of starfish called Luidia sarsi which starts life as a small larva with a tiny starfish inside it. As the larva grows, the starfish migrates to the outside, they separate and the larva settles on the seabed which is normal. However, the larva did not degenerate. The larva swims off and lives for several months as an independent animal. He claims that for millions of years, especially in the sea, hundred of thousands of different species of sperm and seed have mixed, and just once every million years or so they create a double species. (Forfeit: Butterpillar; Caterfly)

Luigi from Bologna galvanised his frog to show that the nervous system worked using electricity. Luigi Galvani, from whom we get the word "galvanisation", found this and his nephew showed this in England and over the rest of Europe. He impressed the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803 where he convulsed the body of executed murderer George Foster. He placed rods on Foster's ears and his jaw moved and an eye opened. When the rod was moved to Foster's rectum, the whole body convulsed as if the body was coming back to live. This experiment was read by Mary Shelley who used it as inspiration for her novel Frankenstein, although no mention of electricity is given in the novel. Galvanised iron and buckets are made by coating them in zinc and thus resisting corrosion - it is an entirely different thing.




University Challenge



The psychologist Raymond Cattell identified ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallised’ as factors of what human capacity, defined by one authority as the extent to which one deals “flexibly and effectively with practical and theoretical problems”?

What name denotes the class of devices used in clocks that intervene between the motive power and the regulator, causing an intermittent impulse to be given to the regulator and converting rotational to oscillatory motion?

A 9th-century poem in Old English contained in the Exeter Book, the posthumously published papers of D.H. Lawrence, a novel for children by E. Nesbit, and an allegorical poem by Shakespeare all refer in their titles to what mythological bird?

The wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta gave birth to two boys, Castor and Pollux, and two girls, Helen and Clytemnestra, after being seduced by Zeus in what form?

Three bonus questions on world history. In each case, give the Chinese dynasty whose time span corresponds to the following events in Europe and West Asia:

(a) The rise of Rome as the dominant Mediterranean power, and the first two centuries of the Roman Empire.
(b) The beginnings and spread of Islam, and the reigns of Charlemagne and King Alfred the Great.
(c) The aftermath of the Black Death, the Reformation, and the start of the English Civil War.

An addition-elimination reaction, in which two or more molecules combine to form a larger one with the loss of a small molecule such as water or alcohol, is usually known by what name?

Which relative of the thistle whose seeds are a source of cooking oil is known as ‘bastard saffron’ because its yellow flowers are often used as a cheap substitute for the spice?

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(a) Who is the subject of the opening lines of the first Idyll, ‘The Coming of Arthur’: ‘Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, / Had one fair daughter, and none other child; / And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth’?
(b) In the Idylls, which young noblewoman declares her love for Lancelot but is dismissed by him with the words: ‘Smile at your own self hereafter, / When you yield your flower of life / To one more fitly yours, not thrice your age’?
(c) Tennyson dedicated the Idylls to which recently deceased public figure, describing him as one ‘who loved one only, and who clave to her’?


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