On Wed, 7 May 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Could be more sinister than that, an attempt to stigmatize thinkers as weird. Especially when you look at the phenomenon of the rise of ADD. When I was growing up, there was no such thing as ADD, and,indeed, I don't remember having kids in my school who exhibited those symtoms. There were dumb kids, of course, and daydreamers, but I don't recall the weirdly restless, buzzy kids you see so many of now. So what caused ADD -- something in the water, like flouride? Or some food additive, or some form of pollution? We know that there are a number of
Sugar. That's all. Kids get really hyper when fed tons of soda, candy and chocolate. There's a good example of how to eliminate the problem right here in Wisconsin - the Appleton (or Oshkosh, but there abouts) school systems have gone to feeding kids bread, carrots and milk several times during the day, and have no behavioural problems. Getting the obvious to be seen in Madison is quite a chore!
chemicals in the environment today that mimic various hormones which then cause imbalances in animals, or, for instance, aluminum suspected in alzhimers. Perhaps in the dumbing down of Americans -- and there is a true dumbdown, US kids consistently get lower scores than kids in other countries -- those who weren't exposed to the same nerve agents, say, need to be now demonized as the "odd ones", the "weirdos", "too smart for their own good", and definitely "too smart for *our* good" that the proles need to watch out for along with the other terrorists.
It's more like the "publish or perish" syndrome. Some field of profs needs to create a new thing so they can keep getting funding for "research". Dumbing down of Americans has been going on for a long time. But I'm not sure that's real either. How long have the majority of people been going past 8th grade education? I don't think that was true 100 years ago. I don't think people are any dumber now than they have been over the past 10,000 years. We're giving primates cars and supprised they don't understand basic physics. We used to think DDT was great stuff. It took a while to learn otherwise. Maybe smarts comes from being "sick". But I kinda doubt it, it's more likely we're still on the learning curve and we need to get our environment right to optimize collective social intellegence. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike