Dangerous Dumbing Down

For decades, the American dream has included the achievement of higher education. We value life-long learning for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren in American culture. Some begin to save for their children's college accounts before their first child is born. At an early age, children are encouraged to strive for academic success. Both parents and teachers instill in children a healthy intellectual appetite and help them to develop curiosity, critical thinking skills, and responsibility for their own learning. To most Americans, education is the key to success and happiness. It is a tool and a measure of a life well lived. Education leads to a better world for everyone.

As a former teacher, I am outraged at the disdain for education shown during this presidential campaign. Throughout the campaign, candidates with knowledge and education have been demonized and treated as suspect. Cynical GOP leadership has created the illusion that its ignornant, unqualified candidate, who lacks a grasp of the complex world, deserves to be elected. At the RNC, speaker after speaker deomonized the opposition candidate's level of higher education and labeled him as an "elitist" or "cosmopolitan," Republican dirty words. After what has become of our country under the current administration, Americans have suffered the consequences of what happens when their President lacks intelligence, curiosity, and knowledge of world cultures, leaders, and events.

The defamation of education began with the 2000 campaign for G. W. Bush. Although the younger Bush was born to an elite, northeastern family and holds degrees from both Yale and Harvard, he was presented to American voters as a born-again, pickup-driving, brush-cutting, small town country boy from Texas. His phoney personna sealed its connection to the American people through country music, Nascar, barbeque, and baseball. Campaign managers created the guy many thought they'd like to sit down and have a beer with. They successfully hid the hard-drinking, womanizing, guard-ducking realities until after the election. Bush continues to pride himself on being a low C student who only occasionally uses "the Internets" and "the Google." That is the message Bush continues to delivers to college graduates across the country. Through fear mongering, manipulations, lies, and 527 vicious attacks against his opponent, Bush was re-elected in 2004, in spite of his glaring incompetence. "The decider" seems to enjoy being underestimated. After almost eight years of failed economic, energy, and foreign policies, Bush proved himself an ignorant, aggressive, unrepentent egomaniac.

The successful GOP strategy of deception continues in 2008. The Republican Party recognizes that it can easily confuse the public. It continues to throw mud at facts and reality in order to make the truth suspect. Using a toxic mix of lies and doubletalk they know that their victory is in denying reality to represent John McCain as someone who connects with small town America. (digby) By focusing a campaign on phoney personality, false rhetoric, and smears and lies about the opponent, the GOP can avoid the facts and McCain's record. GOP talking points are distributed to conservative friends and allies at Fox News Channel, viewed in 25% of American households. Talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingrahm, and Michael Medved, spread vile smears, inuendos, and demeaning commentary across the airwaves. Anyone who questions their claims is dismissed and ridiculed as unpatriotic, sexist, or worst of all, "liberal."

The dumbing down of America plays right into GOP hands. Looking at the election map, it is clear that sections of the country where citizens with the highest levels of education live are blue. Rural, sparsely populated areas of the country that struggle to provide an excellent public education for students are red. As more educated people relocate from blue states to other areas of the country, a state moves from red, to purple, to blue. As a former teacher, I suspect that this is a good part of the reason why the U.S. government has failed to make education a top priority.

What kind of message does this send to our children about the value of education and knowledge? As I see it, dumbing down the educational and intellectual qualities of presidential leadership endangers America. Are we to become a nation that denies the science of evolution, stem cell research, and climate change? Are we to become a nation that devalues women? Are we to become a nation that ridicules higher learning, smart thinking, world knowledge, cultural awareness, and high qualitifications for the leader of the free world? Have we become so dumb that we blindly accept sensational sound bytes, lies, distortions, smears, and mudslinging? The dumbing down of voters and leaders' qualifications threatens our security, our economy, our rights, and our basic freedoms.