Customer Reviews

Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture

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This book could have been so much more. While some of the essays include genuine insight into this serious problem, others suffer from the all too common temptation to catalog whatever the authors don't like. To conservatives, dumbing down is the fault of all those liberals; to liberals, it's all those conservatives; to humanities snobs, it's anything connected to science and technology.

Some of the examples of dumbing down are nothing short of fatuous. Is it really a sign of dumbing down that a newspaper publishes a science section? Is the art world truly waging war on heterosexuality?

Also, some authors tend to limit their evidence to what is happening in New York. Is the topic of the book the dumbing down of America or the dumbing down of New York?

Perhaps the worst offender is David Klinghoffer's essay on kitsch religion. Klinghoffer lectures us on the state of Judaism and Christianity, but he is clearly much more attuned to secular politics than to Jewish (let alone Christian) theology. He completely ignores the spectacular growth of the New Age movement, which is a glaring counter-example to his thesis. Moreover, while he calls for a return to thou-shalt-nots, he does not seem to care whether they come from Orthodox Judaism or Baptist fundamentalism; instead, it seems that any old set of thou-shalt-nots will do. That's what I call dumbing down.

A mixed bag - like many edited collections. Many of the essays are vigorous and unsparing such as MacDonald's fine essay on the erosion of composition skills in our nation's universities, Epstein's virtolic attack against the political prejudices of the NEA, and Klinghoffer's witty account of kitsch religion. Moreover, the essays on the erosion and degradation of the physical and social sciences are persuasive and well-argued. Many of the essays, however, and more surprisingly those of the more renowed authors, have far less substance than style. Cynthia Ozick's essay on the decline of literate culture veers off into a discussion of Henry James and ends up seeming beside the point; John Simon's elitist and pretentious grousing makes one sympathetic to the defenders of popular culture; Kennan just rehashes Tocqueville and adds little else. Sadly, many articles also display a particularly slanted point of view - thus, for example, the trouble with education are multiculturalist teachers not the tragic underfunding of American education which the eloquent books of Jonathan Kozol amply disprove. Many of the essayists ignore larger social and economic factors which played a role in our cultural deterioration and instead point fingers at egregious culprits - spacey lit. crit. teachers, television talk show hosts. I still recommend the book despite its numerous flaws - including a totally needless introductory composite of extracts signaling our incipient doom (one quotes dates all the way back to 1960 which made me wonder why they just didn't up and cite Spengler while they were at it) - because a fair number of essays provide enough incisive commentary into the deleterious effects of a completely commercialized culture to warrant a sustained reading.

This must be the most politically incorrect book that you could read. But that is its strongest point. You have to be incorrect today to think properly. Behind every great movement which overturned a declining society there has been incorrectness. This book bucks the tide. It is unashamedly non-conformist. For that reason, it is a wonderfully stimulating read. My guess is that it will only appeal to those who already think like the authors. But if it does enlighten a dyed in the wool follower of political correctness that will be a welcome marvel!

This book, along with Berman's "Twilight of American Culture" are *must-reads* for anyone 20-40yrs old with small children or contemplating family life. Not all essays in this book are good - and some are downright muddled. But the importance of the messages here should *not* be disregarded. It is hard to be calm in the face of what is obvious to any thinking person in the US today - the thin veneer of "civility" that is the hallmark of culture (indeed, civilization) is quickly being "stripped" from all facets of American life. Rudeness, brutishness, and brashness have become the dominant methods of interaction in this society - and the *only* rewarded methods of "speaking" today. I tremble at the thought of the *next* generation of youngsters, when the grandparents of today are long buried and "civility" has completely disappeared from our lives. In short, there *will* be many more Columbines, many more "road rage" shootings, many more "debates" between tweedledee and tweedledum in our political spheres. (Even our top-rated TV show "Survivor" lauds cut-throat cruelty as the way to "get ahead." I suppose that true "deserted island" messages that one gets from, say, the famous Shackleton south-pole survival mission are just too *boring*.) Secondly, it is high time that "leftists" stop pretending that we are somehow muddling through; I personally abhor the simplistic positions of right-wing demagogues. But do not kid yourself that "pop culure" will somehow right itself. You do not have to vote for extreme-right politics to know that this society is far "off the rails." The left managed to overthrow traditional authority. This did *not* free us from authority, but rather transferred authority to the nebulous realm of marketing and advertising (and besides, isn't everyone doing it?)! Read this book. Read Berman's book. And if I may be so bold as to suggest something - if the state of US "culture" bothers you, maybe you could try doing the little things again, things that your grandmother took for granted (like speaking to your neighbors!). If the leftists ever got anything right, it is true - the children *are* watching.

A collection of fairly well-written essays which are generally critical of how the current American systems, educational and otherwise,expect less and less of us citizens intellectually. While some balance of views was attempted by the authors, most of the essays carry the message that we, as a nation, are headed the wrongway down the cultural and intellectual roadway. I found the articles very timely and very informative, particularly those about the educational theories which gave rise to a lower expectation of achievement in reading and writing. All in all, a very thought-provoking collection, although I certainly did not agree with all of the views expressed in the various essays. It was refreshing to view a collection of views, rather than reading a group of critiques which all flowed from the same pen. I strongly recommend this work - It may be the best of the culteral "doom and gloom" books which are prevalent today.

Most of the essays in the book are interesting. One of essays got bogged down with a lot of fuzzy technical and philosophical arguments. Some of the essays on language use and grammar will remind you of your spinster curmudgeon English teacher; they were a bit too hard-core reactionary for me, but not without their truths. A lot of the essays exude a lot of wit and I laughed out loud in a lot of places. Particularly I liked one essay by a self-proclaimed snob who said that college was a waste of time for a lot of people and why didn't we just have college for people who are actually interested in learning for its own sake? Before WWII, people could get good jobs without having to go to college. The businesses trained them at their own expense, which is what businesses should do.

I read a lot, but there is no book I have reread as much as Dumbing Down. The editors--Wasburn and Thornton - have chosen their twenty-five essays with such care that one hardly minds he is in pretty well-walked over territory: the attack on zany feminism, the indecipherable mission of current secondary school curricula, the total surrender of English departments in their once noble chore of trying to teach composition, MTV as felt thought, postmodernism, and the now arcane epistemology of once what was an accessible field-- the social sciences. To this last field, the essayist and Chair of the Department of Sociology of City College, City University of New York, Steven Goldberg, shares with the reader what he calls a "haggis of overwritten nonsense" common to introductory texts:

We need a language that enables us to perpetually and conceptually
negotiate our way between sameness and opposition,
that permits the recognition of kinship in difference and difference
among kin; a language that encodes respect for difference,
particularly , alterity without repudiating the underlying
affinity that is the first prerequisite for knowledge (98).


Every essay is as well written as Goldberg's and equal to the task of allowing the target to blow himself up with his own petard. Thus, if the postmodern scene is not quite to your liking -- but you never knew quite why-- these twenty-five essayists will give you the compass.

The writers pepper the Forward and Introduction with stimulating vocabulary, beautiful poetry, and sharp epigraphs ("Nothing gives [one] such a sense of the infinite as stupidity.") And an early section called "Dumbing Down: Some Leading Indicators" presents some gems from popular periodicals decrying the decline of civility, decay of culture and contempt for elitism.

But early in the first essay (on education) the writer's argument loses clarity, and he starts contradicting himself. He complains about "the laissez-faire attitude toward dress and courtesy" at today's schools, but in the next pages complains about "non-academic courses focusing on personal behavior" (the offending subject: Respect.)

The writer sees social studies classes as wasting too much time "invested in the doctrine of ... rights of privacy, rights of children, rights of criminals, rights of pornographers, rights of everyone to everything - [without] any suggestion of the baleful consequences of that doctrine..." Regarding the teaching of American history, the writer laments the minimization of "older paradigms of federalism, industrialism, and expansionism" and the changing of a "once triumphal Columbian conquest" to one where "disease-carrying Europeans encounter and enslave innocent people of color." In World history the Greeks suffer from inattention, while too much time is wasted on Coptic Ethiopia. History courses, the writer argues, have become too "empathetic" and that "historical sufferers and victims groups receive belated recognition and redress." By learning of this "unfulfilled national promise," children might become more virtuous and sensitive, he argues, but, alas, dumber.

The writer complains that children are being taught "critical thinking" instead of rote learning, then complains that "Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to the radical egalitarianism." The writer sounds as though he doesn't really mind kids being taught critical thinking as long as at the end of twelve years, they are able to use those skills to realize that the art, poetry, music, and literature that the writer prefers are the only good ones. It's not enough to love Shakespeare; you have to hate "Dances With Wolves," "Pulp Fiction," and "Forest Gump," too. (He also complains that there are no dramas today about anything except AIDS.) But besides loving Shakespeare, you have to view the casting of any non-white actor in a Shakespeare's play as evidence of the "dumbing down" of America,

There is no doubt that discourse in America has been "dumbed down," but the arguments these writers make are uninformed, naïve, racist, and, well, stupid.

There are not many rare, surprising or sophisticated essays in this collection. Most bore with their sclerotic whingeing. I enjoyed Slavitt, Kalfus, the writer who critiques Freudian etiology, perhaps one or two others. Simon, Lopate, and Epstein are, as usual, tedious and inflexible. Also, the preponderance of the opening quotes detailing our decline and fall were culled from the New York media complex (Times, WSJ, The New Yorker and on and on) as though nothing of interest and nobody of perspicacity could possibly exist "out there". This is New York provincialism at its most loathsome. This is primarily a roster of soreheads and reactionaries rehearsing thier solipsism. Pardon me if I cease to lend an ear.

Dumbing Down was very informative and struck a chord with me. For years I've been thinking that most Americans lack common sense in the simplest things. That we are forced by our culture to make simple tasks complicated for the sake of saying we are intelligent. How easily as a nation we have spiralled downwards into sophisticated stupidity. This book should be required reading for anyone trying to rise out of the dung in this age of educated ignorance. -Concerned American