( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Originally posted on ePluribus Media as Education For The Common Good: We’re All Out Of Our Minds.
People in the United States of America have been “asleep at the wheel” while their airwaves, traditional media, education and political discourse have been perpetually “dumbed down” to the point where the average citizen is often unaware and indifferent of major people, places and events of the world and from history.
If you don’t think education matters, and that news like the latest pop-glam scandal are more important than knowing what goes into our food, our environment, our foreign and domestic policies and what’s happening around the world, then you’ll probably fail to grasp the significance of the following video:
Note: suspected spoof video
There are serious problems with our capacity to understand the world around us, and this is often used to our disadvantage by special interests and politicians.
We not only need to improve our quality of education — the standards and the methods, and not simply “teach to the test” in a manner that further narrows our awareness — we also need to improve and protect our channels for communication, and to silence the screaming peacock of infomedia before it completely subverts the true legacy of the news and traditional media: the role of informing the public.
The most insidious danger facing our nation today is not the undermining of our Constitution or the subversion of our democracy. It is not the wave of (predominantly Republican-sponsored) perversion and corruption that has swept unchecked through our nation’s government and washed away the checks and balances that worked so long at preserving our national integrity.
It is the growing intellectual and social apathy of the public.
We cannot hope to simply coast through life and have all our needs met; that’s the arrogance and contempt oft associated with a detached royalty. If we do not fight the trend to keep us unaware and uninformed, we are in effect surrendering ourselves to the vested self-interests of those who have already demonstrated that they hold in contempt those things that we value most. Those who most wish for us to abdicate our responsibility and our integrity have shown us that they themselves have none, and that they are wholly unable to manage a nation.
It’s time we started waking up our fellow citizens and alert them to the impending loss of our collective sanity.
Failure to do so would be beyond negligent — it would be simply insane.
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Also available on DailyKos.
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About the video…
I’d seen videos similar in the past and other “man on the street” type interviews (ever seen “Jaywalking” or remember seeing / hearing / reading Art Linkletter’s “Kids say the darndest things”?), and a friend pointed out that the video presented is, quite likely, entirely scripted (note the “CNNN” logo somewhere within).
(Hat-tip Decon66 of Delphiforums.)
That doesn’t mean that people really aren’t that stupid — that simply means that we should take this particular video with a grain of salt, and hope that we can’t so easily find a clueless segment of our populace.
However…that said, does anyone believe that Mike Huckabee was in on this?
(hat-tip to Nulwee)
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Check out some of the other cool stuff we’ve been posting on ePluribus Media, too, when you have a moment.
Thanks!
but I may have to reconsider after that video. Good grief. How hard is it to emigrate to Great Britain?
Forget about evolution, I think Mike Huckabee doesn’t believe in respiration.
Author
Here we go:
CNNNN
I don’t believe in conspiracies–but I do believe in the force of evil. Big brother wants to keep the populace in the dark to make it easier to have control. I was teaching 4th grade in NYC when the social studies curriculum was changed from NYC to tropical rain forests. The people in power wanted to ensure continued ignorance of the minority children they feared.
Now they overemphasize reading and math at the expense of social studies, science, phys ed, music, and art. Rote trumps thought provocation. Is there a cabal directing this? No–but money is offered by the “man” to keep the “darkies” down. The bastards.
in keeping Americans ignorant and apathetic about politics.
That’s why, to me, the Obama, Huckabee and Paul candidacies are so interesting…because they awaken and engage segments of the electorate.
Also why none of these three will become president.
Great, funny video. More than a grain of truth, of course.
I’ve been fascinated with books, and with exploring and learning, for as long as I can remember.
I don’t understand how anyone can not want to… know everything they can know. How can someone have no curiosity?
Is there a minimum level of education a person needs to be able to be aware that there is so much more they don’t know?
has something on the decline of reading in the most recent Harper’s — LeGuin argues that reading is not really on the decline, as most people have not historically been readers, either; but, rather, the publishing houses are now making reading look bad with their obsession with blockbusters, as schools once made reading look bad by forcing reading upon people.