Dumb and Dumber

I wrote the following observations in response to an article siting the Princeton Reviews study of the grade levels of language used in the debates. The writer indicated the he or she will be watching the next debate differently because he or she did not realize that the language used was devoid of any intellectual challenges:

Everything these days is 'dumbed' down. Society is less intelligent as a whole and most people do not seek out knowledge, they believe what they hear on TV. I pay attention to the public school education my children are getting and it is very different than the public school education I received. There are a lot of bells and whistles, gadgets, computers, etc...all deflecting from the fact that our public education system is worse. The children graduate knowing less and acting less mature. Thus the reason the candidates have to talk down to America. We no longer expect our leaders to exhibit intelligence. We examine their personalities. We need them to be able to have a drink with us. All silly reasons to vote for anyone whether democrat or republican.

Our leaders need to be intelligent, competent, and able to conduct meetings, interviews with people from all over the world. The funny thing is that people from other countries tend to speak English more intelligently than those born right here in the good old USA. They also tend to do better in our own education systems. I don't need to watch differently because I already noticed that we are a nation that thrives on the lack of knowledge.

I thought I would share because this has been one of my biggest problems with political elections as of late. Here are the debate statistics as they relate to reading levels:

2000 George W. Bush: spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) Al Gore: seventh-grade (7.9)

1992 Bill Clinton scored in the seventh grade (7.6), President George Bush in the sixth grade (6.8), and Ross Perot at a sixth-grade level (6.3).

1960 Kennedy and Nixon, both of whom spoke in a vocabulary appropriate for tenth graders.

1858 Lincoln vs. Douglas: Lincoln spoke at an eleventh grade level (11.2); Douglas 12.0

Looking at these results reinforces the fact that America is getting dumber. Sad indeed.