dumbing down

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Wed Oct 18 09:24:48 PDT 2000


For many years now capitalist culture has made a virtue of simplistic, unreflective prejudice. That anyone could object to the idea that the culture is dumbing down makes no sense to me, but they do.

In message <p04330105b610d7905768@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> Criticisms of the educational system (in the sense of assigning to it the
>>*cause* of any social phenomenon) are unavoidably grounded in an
>>individualistic
>>metaphysic.
>
>Why's that? Why can't you criticize the U.S., or any other,
>educational citizen for socializing people into conformity and
>choking any remnants of intellectual curiousy? Why can't you draw
>connections between that educational system and the whole apparatus
>of capitalist culture that continues the work? Political candidates
>address the public as if they were simpletons because that's the way
>the ruling class wants the public to be (except on the job, of
>course).
>
>Doug

-- James Heartfield



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