Talk:Dumbing down/Archive 1

Coinage
Does anyone know when this phrase was coined?

I know this
The term is related to the improvements made to automobiles. Those improvements made driving an automobile simpler and easier. The automatic transmission is the most important of them. Driving an automobile became simpler when the manual foot-operated clutch was eliminated. The term appeared around 1955 to 1960.

By the way, let me say this: in the 1940s few women drove automobiles. Some automobiles required the use of a hand crank to start the engine. Only strong men could start a car that used a hand crank. Today, electric starters allow anyone to start an automobile.

I had wished to answer the question at the top of this page in 2006, but I kept on putting it off.Velocicaptor 13:59, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Early automobiles required the driver to manually control ignition timing and operate a hand fuel pump, changing gear often required the use of pre-selectors or "double de-clutching" techniques. The elimination of the clutch with auto boxes has never been universally adopted so can't be the "most important". Besides it hasn't benn "eliminated"; I've never owned a car with automatic transmission.77.89.161.162 (talk) 10:00, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The connection to American slavery
This page is one of the best pages in the Wikipedia. I located it less than an hour ago.

The practice of keeping Negroes in a mentally inferior position was a practice which ensured that peaceful slaves would form the bulk of their group.

At times, the leader of a group of slaves would be killed to remove the most capable person from the group. Wiki Apalachee reveals that Spanish missionaries were slain in order to weaken a group of Indians. Dumbing down of slaves is an old practice. It has resurged in the United States since 1950. The appearance of new laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 produced hostility amidst the more numerous white people. Negroes have undergone a dumbing down in the USA since 1950. There are fewer educated Negroes today, particularly doctors (including dentists) and nurses. Modern people claim that Negroes are too dumb to be dentists, despite the fact that Negro doctors and nurses were commonly-seen components of the United States before 1970.

Even very simple tasks such as driving a truck are now viewed as being things that Negroes are too dumb to accomplish. Slaves had cooked food for their masters, but modern Negroes are regarded as being too dumb to learn how to prepare food. The dumbing down of Negroes is an industry in the USA. Superslum 16:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Under the older way of life called "racial segregation'" colored people in the United States were forced to produce their own doctors, dentists, nurses, restaurateurs, nightclub owners, taxi-cab company owners, and other people because that was their only way to receive various common services. (Taxi-cab companies would not ride Negroes). After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, "racial integration" appeared.  Under the new "racial integration" way of life, it is theoretically possible for a colored physician to treat white patients in a medical facility.  The way to keep that scenario from becoming a reality is to keep the colored people too dumb to become skilled medical practitioners.  Ergo, dumbing down is rampant, pernicious, and ubiquitous, now.  There used to be a need for colored doctors, dentists, nurses, etc., but "racial integration" has replaced them with people of other racial types.  Superslum 00:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That made no sense as it had no context.-h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 20:49, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

What a bizarre pair of posts, a series of racist generalizations with absolutely no supporting evidence, using obsolete terms ("Negroes", "coloreds"), all in support of the idea that civil rights gains have led to the "dumbing down" of a race. And these gems of quotes:

Under the new "racial integration" way of life, it is theoretically possible for a colored physician to treat white patients in a medical facility.

Slaves had cooked food for their masters, but modern Negroes are regarded as being too dumb to learn how to prepare food.

Maybe it's better not to call out absurd, lying bullshit like this because it only gives the bullshitter attention and wastes time on discussing nonsense, but a talk page for a Wikipedia article might be the place to do it. Or maybe it's just a troll, too bad.74.196.205.92 (talk) 08:39, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Bias in this Article
This article is biased and starts, and continues, on the assumption, which is unverified, that the dumbing down phenomenon is not real. The article labels those who hold the view that dumbing down is a real and worrying aspect of modern capitalist societies as irrational and stupid.

Please remove the bias and value judgements in this article and present the views of both sides of the argument in an unbiased way. After all, this is what an encyclopedia is supposed to do!

Where is the information that would enable a reader to evaluate these two positions for themselves? It is not possible on the basis of this article which is one-sided.

definitely not good enough!
 * Readers are active and unlikely to be influenced by this article. Obviously. I bet if it were a rant about declining standards then the article wouldn't have as much criticism. The JPS talk to me  09:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course readers are likely to be influenced by this article. An encyclopedia worth its salt is supposed to be authoritative and present a rounded picture of a specific subject area without bias. This article is clearly biased. I'm not asking for a rant, which this article is, but a clear exposition of thinking about "dumbing down" that presents, without bias, all major opinions on the area in question and that provides sources and quotes. Where are the references and citations in this article?
 * I agree that yje article needs development, and lacks citations. I disagree that readers would be influenced. For instance, you clearly weren't! It's peculiar, but common, trend to assume that others will be influenced, but not ourselves.  The JPS talk to me  09:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the major issue, of course, is that this article is biased. How do I indicate this on Wikipedia? I would like to tag this article as biased and inadequate. The issue of reader influence is neither here nor there - a piece of vapid fluff of no real importance. The fact is that this article is not adequate for any encyclopedia whatever it's provenance, internet or print, and it is likely to mislead the reader about the area of knowledge in question. Definitely not good enough!
 * Surprisingly enough - to me, at least - was the lack of consideration in this article of an aspect of "dumbing down" that's been current in discussion within these United States for nearly two decades, and that is the ways in which standardized curricula and pedagogic methods in our government-run schools have been reducing the children educated therein to states of confusion and intellectual ineffectiveness. I've taken steps to incorporate mention of the work of John Taylor Gatto's book Dumbing Us Down. Let's see if the educationists expunge it.

Inappropriate Link?
This link: Dumbed Down? Eric Hufschmid: Have we been dumbed down? leads to a site that explains that we have not been dumbed down, but rather that the world, the Catholic church, etc are run by a secret cabal of Illuminati and "Zionist Jews". Is this appropriate for an objective encyclopedia? --Sukkoth 10:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Media" section
this section needs some work, it seems to me...

how can "increased competition" and "Media consolidation" jive? should this not be "DECREASED" competition? that's certainly the trend i've seen in my years as a USian TV-viewer.

perhaps Complicated argument is made as simple as possible in order to "sell it" / communicate to the largest number of people possible. should read: Complicated arguments are made as simple as possible in order to "sell" them to the largest possible market.

the quoting of "dumbing down" is inconsistent in this section at least (perhaps the whole article)

there are no references to any of this stuff at all! doesn't this Fiasco fella have a web page with the lyrics in question?

the line about Jay-Z should probably be deleted outright, or at least punctuated and capitalized properly (and referred!)

gah. i'll be back Johndoh75 (talk) 23:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Need for examples
Every time I suggest to someone that we need to explain something in simpler times - and they don't want to - they accuse me of trying to "dumb the the subject down". I wish they would dumb down their idea of dumbing down! ;-)

The current article doesn't have a single example of an explanation that was dumbed down. I'd like to see something explained the usual way, then in a "dumbed down" way. That would provide writers with an excellent example of How not to simplify. --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. This article seems to be guilty of the kind of thing it is protesting against.  I've put in one or two  tags on unsupported statements.  I'm tempted to rip the statements out completely.  Good scholarship requires that you cite your sources.  --Publunch (talk) 21:17, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of which . ..
Nobody noticed that an article about dumbing down featured an egregious typo in the originator's name? "Ken E Smith."

So it goes. 68Kustom (talk) 05:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia
Having only just seen the winners of the "U2 are a rock band" versus "U2 is a rock band" saga, it is so bloody tempting to include a paragraph in this article on the role Wikipedia plays in dumbing down. *sigh* WillE (talk) 20:28, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Charlotte Iserbyt
If a person Googles ("Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"), links to author Charlotte Iserbyt's books come up. Her books evidence via the paper trail showing it to be a deliberate, scientific, step-by-step execution of a plan. A wikipedia user has already marked the Wikipedia article about Charlotte Iserbyt for notability / eventual deletion because mainstream media coverage of Iserbyt's criticism of their elite bosses has been eliminated from their coverage of the topic (if any). Iserbyt has been interviewed by several community access cable shows, Alex Jones, and possibly others--as seen by Google video search results. Oldspammer (talk) 10:09, 13 July 2011 (UTC)