Is America Becoming Stupid?

I am currently reading Postman and I wonder; is he saying that society is becoming dumber as we move further into the future? In chapter 4, The Typographic Mind, he contrasts Americans of today with the Americans of the 18^th century, and he states that “The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.” Are we becoming dumber because we are reading less? How often do we look at a 30 page manual on how to do something and never even bother to open it? When was the last time that you opened a manual and actually read the instructions? We are TOO busy for casual reading. We just don’t have time with all the media and entertainment around us, we have to watch the latest episodes of House and Lost; play our Halo 3; we have to go on face book and my space; and chat with friends on aim, msn, or yahoo. We have simplified the English Language, we abbreviated words that do not take long to type, we have dumb down the words and made them smaller such as laugh out loud to simply “lol.” Honestly how long does it take to type out the extra 11 characters? We are constantly surrounded by distractions and bombarded with advertisement in this “Age of Show Business.” I recently read an article titled, “America Skips School” by Benjamin R. Barber and he provides an excellent point, kids spend 900 hours at school and 1,800 hours in from of the television set or the computer. We spend twice as much time in front of the computer than we do learning at school. It would come as no surprise then if Americans are becoming dumber. The article also contained a quiz.

Real World Cultural Literacy

1. According to television, having fun in America means
   a) going blond
   b) drinking Pepsi
   c) playing Wii ( Any other game consoles Xbox, Playstation 3)
   d) wearing Air Jordans
   e) reading Mark Twain

2. A good way to prepare for a high-income career and to acquire status in our society is to
a) win a slam-dunk contest
b) take over a company and sell off its assets
c) start a successful rock band
d) earn a professional degree
e) become a kindergarten teacher

3. Book publishers are financially rewarded today for publishing
a) mega-cookbooks
b) mega-cat books
c) megabooks by Michael Crichton
d) megabooks by John Grisham
e) mini-books by Voltaire

4. A major California bank that advertised "no previous credit history required" in inviting Berkeley students to apply for Visa cards nonetheless turned down one group of applicants because
a) their parents had poor credit histories
b) they had never held jobs
c) they had outstanding student loans
d) they were "humanities majors"

5. Colleges and universities are financially rewarded today for
a) supporting bowl-quality football teams (USC, UCLA)
b) forging research relationships with large corporations
c) sustaining professional programs in law and business
d) stroking wealthy alumni
e) fostering outstanding philosophy departments

6. Familiarity with Henry IV, Part 11 is likely to be of vital importance in
a) planning a corporate takeover
b) evaluating budget cuts in the Department of Education
c) initiating a medical-malpractice lawsuit
d) writing an impressive job resume
e) taking a test on what our seventeen-year-olds know

7. To help the young learn that "history is a living thing," Scholastic, Inc., a publisher of school magazines and paperbacks, recently distributed to 40,000 junior and senior high-school classrooms
a) a complimentary video of the award-winning series The Civil War
b) free copies of Plato's Dialogues
c) an abridgment of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
d) a wall-size Periodic Table of the Elements
e) gratis copies of Billy Joel's hit single "We Didn't Start the Fire" (which recounts history via a vaguely chronological list of warbled celebrity names)

After taking the quiz what do you think? Is America becoming dumber? Is it because of our lack of reading? Do we not have enough time to read because we are so busy with Halo 3, Rock Band, Lost and House? Maybe we simply chose not to read and make up excuses to justify our inner motives?