Reviews for Dumbing down

The average rating for Dumbing down based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-11 00:00:00 JEANETTE Robinson The insights in this book are brilliant. I don't agree with a few of the authors, but I suppose that inevitable with a long collection of essays, no 2 written by the same person. That's not what prevented a 5 star rating for this book. Here's what did: The book consistently equates the degrading of values and intelligence in America with the degrading of tradition. Far too many essays hold the opinion that since we don't value the same things we once did, we must not have any values. Chief among them is the essay on religion that seems to be advocating a return to a middle-ages mindset. Following closely behind is the guy who finds it tragic that in school we are no longer required to memorize century-old poems for in-class recital. It's true that things are degrading; the solution is not to return to old (and mostly outdated) value systems but to create new value systems. Not a single essay in the book suggested anything remotely like that. That aside, everything the book said is absolutely true. We are getting dumber at a frightening rate. If you have ever seen the movie Idiocracy, and found it funny but too ridiculous to be taken seriously, reed this book. If you have not, read this book and then watch the movie. Unless something is done, that's where we're headed.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-23 00:00:00 Ben Bettridge Right-wing monster William Bennett's blurb was used on the cover of the hardcover edition, but for the trade paperback the publishers wisely switched to Neil Postman. There's some dumb stuff here--John Simon's cranky introduction, Armstrong Williams' view that needle-exchange programs exist to give young black men needles (no, Mr. Williams, they exist to give needles to anyone who walks in with used needles), and a description of Kurt Cobain as menacing when in fact his appeal was largely based on his cuddly androgyny. But for the most part these pieces are useful, thought-provoking, lacking in overt ideological bias. The targets--shopping malls, political correctness and questionable educational trends, processed food, the Internet as a substitute for meaningful human communication--may be familiar but the writing tends to be fresh. Trivia note: the editors mention that the earliest citation they found for the phrase "dumb down" is from "one H.T. Webster", apparently they didn't know that Webster was a cartoonist, best known for having created the famous character Caspar Milquetoast.