The deliberate dumbing down of America

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1. vezzy-fnordDec 2013
   It does not blow my mind.

   Not one bit.

   I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted from the beginning, others mutating later on) with the compulsory schooling system and how the classroom model is ineffectual.

   Remember: education != schooling. Never forget that. This is one of the most common misconceptions of our time.

   What does blows my mind is just how thoroughly the masses have accepted public school curricula as the only true and legitimate form of education. People like you blow my mind. I don't mean to be smug or arrogant, I'm glad you're awakening.

   Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor.

   Here are some books to read:

   John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down, Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education.

   Charlotte Iserbyt: the deliberate dumbing down of america.

   Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society.

   John Holt: Anything at all, but particularly How Children Fail and How Children Learn.

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   Besides Sudsbury schools, there's several other alternative school models: anarchistic free schools and democratic schools. Look those up, as well.

   Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. Yet schooling has killed the will to autodidact for many people, or has delegitimized it in favor of formal schooling and credentials.

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2. reedlawSep 2009
   For those of you looking for a possible explanation as to why our education system is such a failure, I suggest Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf
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3. vesterthackerOct 2025
   The paper Artificial Writing and Automated Detection by Brian Jabarian and Alex Imas examines the strange boundary that now divides human expression from mechanical imitation. Within their analysis one feels not only the logic of research but the deeper unease of our age, the question of whether language still belongs to those who think or only to those who simulate thought. They weigh false positives and false negatives, yet behind those terms lives an older struggle, the human desire to prove its own reality in a world of imitation.

   I read their work and sense the same anxiety in myself. When I write with care, when I choose words that carry rhythm and reason, I feel suspicion rather than understanding. Readers ask whether a machine has written the text. I lower my tone, I break the structure, I remove what once gave meaning to style, only to make the words appear more human. In doing so, I betray something essential, not in the language but in myself.

   The authors speak of false positives, of systems that mistake human writing for artificial output. But that error already spreads beyond algorithms. It enters conversation, education, and the smallest corners of daily life. A clear sentence now sounds inhuman; a careless one, sincere. Truth begins to look artificial, and confusion passes for honesty.

   I recall the warning of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt in The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. She foresaw a culture that would teach obedience in place of thought. That warning now feels less like prophecy and more like description.

   When people begin to distrust eloquence, when they scorn precision as vanity and mistake simplicity for virtue, they turn against their own mind. And when a society grows ashamed of clear language, it prepares its own silence. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of forgetfulness, the kind that falls when no one believes in the power of words any longer.

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4. raintreesSep 2024
   Logical and critical thinking would be a challenge to those in power, apparently the Trivium had been removed from a classical liberal education some time ago. I learned about the Trivium in an online school long after I left college...

   Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" may be a case in point.

   https://deliberatedumbingdown.com/ddd/

   Conspiracy surrounds us, "conspiracy theory" seems to be a tactic first used by an "intelligence" agency to discourage those who question the "authorized" narrative.

   Free thinking is a gift, that can also be a challenge when it goes counter to main stream culture.

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5. vezzy-fnordDec 2013
   One of the biggest reasons for that lack of interest is that students have been turned off to the subjects as they move from kindergarten to high school. Many are being taught by teachers who have no particular expertise in the subjects. They are following outdated curriculums and textbooks. They become convinced they’re “no good at math,” that math and science are only for nerds, and fall behind.

   That’s because the American system of teaching these subjects is broken. For all the reform campaigns over the years, most schools continue to teach math and science in an off-putting way that appeals only to the most fervent students. The mathematical sequence has changed little since the Sputnik era: arithmetic, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and, for only 17 percent of students, calculus. Science is generally limited to the familiar trinity of biology, chemistry, physics and, occasionally, earth science.

   These two paragraphs capture the essence of the issue.

   In fact, forgive me for bringing up the topic of compulsory schooling and deliberately defective education again, but I think I might have an interesting tidbit to share on this, which paints a rather ugly picture of the whole situation.

   An excerpt from Charlotte Iserbyt's the deliberate dumbing down of america (Revised and Abridged Edition [2011], Ch 2: The Turning of the Tides, p. 31, c. 1928):

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   "1928: A deliberate math "dumb down" was seriously discussed in 1928. A teacher named O.A. Nelson, John Dewey, Edward Thorndike (who conducted early behavioral psychology experiments on chickens), and other Council on Foreign Relations members attended a Progressive Education Association meeting in 1928 at which O. A. Nelson was informed that the purpose of "new math" was to dumb down students. Nelson revealed in a later interview with Young Parents Alert that the Progressive Education Association was a communist front. According to the National Educator (July 1979):

   Mr. O. A. Nelson, retired educator, has supplied the vitally important documentation needed to support the link-up between the textbooks and the Council on Foreign Relations. His letter was first printed in "Young Parents Alert" (Lake Elmo, Minnesota). His story is self-explanatory.

   I know from personal experience what I am talking about. In December 1928, I was asked to talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On December 27th, naïve and inexperienced, I agreed. I had done some special work in teaching functional physics in high school. That was to be my topic. The next day, the 28th, a Dr. Ziegler asked me if I would attend a special educational meeting in his room after the AAAS meeting. We met from 10 o'clock [p.m.] until after 2:30 a.m.

   We were 13 at the meeting. Two things caused Dr. Ziegler, who was chairman of the Educational Committee of the Council of Foreign Relations, to ask me to attend… my talk on the teaching of functional physics in high school, and the fact that I was a member of a group known as the Progressive Educators of America, which was nothing but a Communist front. I thought the word "progressive" meant progress for better schools.

   Eleven of those attending the meeting were leaders in education. Drs. John Dewey and Edward Thorndike, from Columbia University, were there, and the others were of equal rank. I checked later and found that ALL were paid members of the Communist Party of Russia. I was classified as a member of the Party, but I did not know it at the time.

   The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! We spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called "Modern Math." At one point I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said,

   "Nelson, wake up! That is what we want… a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!"

   That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change. A milder course by Dr. Beckner was substituted but it was also worthless, as far as understanding math was concerned. The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don't blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless."

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6. iterationxJan 2010
   From the article >>In this approach math is substantially dumbed down for "equity" reasons and students are asked to discover age-old principles on their own.

   Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, wrote the free eBook (pdf) "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

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