Dumbing down is the topic of the moment at our house.  We, the adults, are reading through John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education on the Internet, with his theory that public schools were created to make people dumb.  Mike is really into conspiracy theories right now, so I had to divert him to a new one, just so we could talk.

I see dumbing down in the media particularly – since we don’t have too much to do with schools right now.  The ‘good’ characters in movies and TV programs, the ones you are supposed to identify with, seem to be getting thicker and thicker by the year.  Now they even talk like retarded 4-year olds, even if their adults.  At least 99% of adult human beings are capable of doing better than that.  And I’m not just complaining about movies aimed at children.  If, by chance, an intelligent character strolls into the plot, he/she is bound to be on the side of evil.

Antonia has been doing a narration of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for a homeschool magazine we sometimes participate in.  We both agree that Helena is a total dummy and an idiot, and that she and Demetrius just about deserve each other.  Now, compare a monologue by Helena trying to make sense of life, with a monologue by any dummy in a contemporary movie of your choice.  Shrek was the movie that came up in our conversations.  It’s scary.

I will be keeping my eyes open for movies that portray the intelligent and capable in a positive light from now on.