How we have become a civilization of know-nothings

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“Yes, young Americans are energetic, ambitious, enterprising, and good, but their talents and interests and money thrust them not into books and ideas and history and civics, but into a whole other realm and other consciousness. A different social life and a different mental life have formed among them. Technology has bred it, but the result doesn’t tally with the fulsome descriptions of digital empowerment, global awareness, and virtual communities. Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them. Young people have never been so intensely mindful of and present to one another, so enabled in adolescent contact. Teen images and songs, hot gossip and games, and youth-to-youth communications no longer limited by time or space wrap them up in a generational cocoon reaching all the way into their bedrooms. The autonomy has a cost: the more they attend to themselves, the less they remember the past and envision the future. They have all the advantages of modernity and democracy, but when the gifts of life lead to social joys, not intellectual labor, the minds of the young plateau at 18. The fonts of knowledge are everywhere, but the rising generation is camped in the desert, passing stories, pictures, tunes, texts back and forth, living off the thrill of peer attention. Meanwhile their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are up to now.” ~ Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation, 2007
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On top of the above problems as a result of education, fluoride, vaccinations, media and communication overload then throw in the HUGE diversion and ego-driven aspect of our modern culture that has a great many of them more concerned with cultural Marxist propagandizing ~ far too many spend far too much time defining themselves by their sexuality. This is so terribly ego-driven in so many cases.
Or their selfies and phones. This heavily connected communication they have makes for an incredible hive mindset. Sort of the generation gap taken to an entirely new level.
I have watched over the years as the education system changed and “unnecessary and unproductive” course such as history take a back seat. History was once required, warped or not, it was still a necessary topic to graduate. No longer.
Every time something “new” happens in the world it is presented by the media as an “on the spot event” and rarely is history given. Just the here and now. This makes it very easy for the media to twist the story considering the general ignorance of their audience. If one did not do a little research or keep up to date, one would believe everything is instantaneous…. no background. But we know better than that, don’t we?
Kids do not get an education nowadays… they get TRAINING. They get streamlined and they strive and some do well, some not so well, but no longer are they taught to THINK… they are taught to obey and trained for various careers. The following article is an excellent one explaining what has been done, what is being done, and how the meaning of words is also being changed through education to remove ethical considerations.
The Destruction of American Education
http://www.hermes-press.com/education_index.htm