http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?ei=5087&em=&en=4165809c79fa2544&ex=1203138000&pagewanted=allIn part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.
Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.
Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”
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This is very disturbing not only because of what it claims but because I think we can all here say we have seen just how dumb and stupid people can be and not because they ARE dumb and stupid but because they CHOOSE to be and remain ignorant.