Comments for ActiveCatalyst

Comment on Time Isn’t Money: Study Finds That We Spend The Resources Differently by consultski

consultski — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:02:11 +0000

Have just brushed up on my quantum physics and the 10th dimension… that might help explain how I had this thought on March 21st not knowing anything about your post until today:

http://consultski.blogspot.com/2008/03/time-does-not-equal-money.html

-ski

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by activecatalyst

activecatalyst — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:45:55 +0000

So you’re saying that the only good reason you can think of for knowing where Canada is on a map of North America is if you wanted to go there.

I place significantly greater demands than that on the level of general education of those who presume to share power with me in a democracy, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Thanks for your comments.

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by Steve Rosenbaum

Steve Rosenbaum — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:26:25 +0000

More people will record TV shows that will go to Canada. And if you know how to use Google Maps, you can see every street from space. I know several Ph.Ds who still have to use fold up maps.

But here is a good question for the author of the book. If there is a conspiracy to dumb down American’s, why do we know have the knowledge of the world at our finger tips. Schools are no longer the centers of knowledge. It’s the world wide network of people and resources.

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by activecatalyst

activecatalyst — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:55:38 +0000

What does your larger point have to do with the book?

The point that I would want to stress is that it may not be very important that you can program the clock on your DVD if you can’t find Canada on a map of North America.

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by Steve Rosenbaum

Steve Rosenbaum — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:59:48 +0000

What people know on average isn’t really a good comparison. It’s the old adage that if you have one foot in a bucket of ice water and a bucket of boiling water, on average you feel comfortable.

Here’s something interesting, we have 7 U.S. Presidents who never graduated from high school. Andrew Johnson, never went to a day of school. Try running for any elective office today without a college degree.

But my larger point is that if you gave someone from 50 years ago a test on today’s knowledge, they would fail miseably. Even the smartest individuals.

I could quickly give you a hundred questions that are common knowledge now that Albert Einstein would get wrong.

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by activecatalyst

activecatalyst — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:24:19 +0000

Aren’t you confusing what there is to know with what people know on average?

Comment on the deliberate dumbing down of america by Steve Rosenbaum

Steve Rosenbaum — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:21:12 +0000

I tried reading some of this book. Very difficult to get through. Reads like a doctoral disortation.

But consider this, if you have a 1900 or a 1950s education, how much stuff would you know that we now know is wrong, and how much stuff that we’ve learned in the last 50 or 100 years would you be missing?

I’ll give you an example, let’s take the smartest person you can find in 1920 and ask the question, “can something be in two places at the same time?” I bet they’d think that was a silly question. But we now know from quatum physics that things can be in two places at the same time. We have absolute proof.

Let’s take vocabulary. In 1950, there were about 100,000 words in the English language today there are more than a million. Ask a graduate of the class of 1961, if they had enough RAM to download an MPEG from VPOD. Whose looking dumb now?

At the turn of the last century, William Mckinley wanted to shut down the patent office because everything that was worth inventing had already been invented.

Final test of who is better educated. Which generation is most likely to have their DVD recorder blinking 12:00?