{"id":104,"date":"2008-03-28T12:59:43","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T11:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/?p=104"},"modified":"2008-03-28T12:59:43","modified_gmt":"2008-03-28T11:59:43","slug":"dumbing-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Dumbing down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dumbing down is the topic of the moment at our house.\u00a0 We, the adults, are reading through John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education<\/em><\/a> on the Internet, with his theory that public schools were created to make people dumb.\u00a0 Mike is really into conspiracy theories right now, so I had to divert him to a new one, just so we could talk.<\/p>\n

I see dumbing down in the media particularly – since we don’t have too much to do with schools right now.\u00a0 The ‘good’ characters in movies and TV programs, the ones you are supposed to identify with, seem to be getting thicker and thicker by the year.\u00a0 Now they even talk like retarded 4-year olds, even if their adults.\u00a0 At least 99% of adult human beings are capable of doing better than that.\u00a0 And I’m not just complaining about movies aimed at children.\u00a0 If, by chance, an intelligent character strolls into the plot, he\/she is bound to be on the side of evil.<\/p>\n

Antonia has been doing a narration of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for a homeschool magazine we sometimes participate in.\u00a0 We both agree that Helena is a total dummy and an idiot, and that she and Demetrius just about deserve each other.\u00a0 Now, compare a monologue by Helena trying to make sense of life, with a monologue by any dummy in a contemporary movie of your choice.\u00a0 Shrek was the movie that came up in our conversations.\u00a0 It’s scary.<\/p>\n

I will be keeping my eyes open for movies that portray the intelligent and capable in a positive light from now on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dumbing down is the topic of the moment at our house.\u00a0 We, the adults, are reading through John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education on the Internet, with his theory that public schools were created to make people dumb.\u00a0 Mike is really into conspiracy theories right now, so I had to divert him to … Continue reading Dumbing down<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowhousehomeschool.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}