Dumb

[libertango]

Seth Godin has a great post on the business consequences of "dumbing down."

"The thing is, when you dumb stuff down, you know what you get?

Dumb customers.

And (I'm generalizing here) dumb customers don't spend as much, don't talk as much, don't blog as much, don't vote as much and don't evangelize as much. In other words, they're the worst ones to end up with."

So, here's the thing:

Apply this analysis to news media.

And politics.

UPDATED TO ADD: D'oh! Only now have I noticed the most important part. Think about education. I really believe half of our school problems are because we're convinced our kids don't want to learn.

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. I've abandoned most magazines and newspapers (and all television) as they've been dumbed-down -- I want to be told slightly more than I want to know about many topics, and it's really difficult to find that, nowadays; the media give me cotton-candy when I want all-day suckers.

I think most kids want to learn, but that there's a problem with the way they're being taught, in general. When working at the (L.A. County) Arboretum, I made myself available when school tours went through the working greenhouses. The younger kids were all over the place, scrutinizing the (weirdest-looking) plants and asking (sometimes embarrassingly difficult-to-answer) questions. The older groups stayed in neat, orderly lines and docilely allowed themselves to be shepherded through as rapidly as the teachers could manage, without the distraction of noticing or inquiring about anything. They were, I suppose, examples of successful education. *sigh*