A Scary Proposition

In Hedges’ article he defines literacy as the ability to cope with complexity and to separate illusion from truth. He states that many Americans today are unable to accomplish this feat, and rely on pictures and fancy announcers to tell them what to eat or buy. Even the workers at these restaurants rely on pictures to tell them what the customers have ordered. We are living in a country where reading is no longer considered the, “cool,” thing to do, and due to this many people have stopped reading entirely. Most grade school children I have talked to actually despise reading, which is frightening considering that they will soon be a part of the workforce. I also found it surprising, and almost scary for that matter, that the speaking levels of the recent presidents have dropped so dramatically from the great men of the past. Our voters do not grasp the concept of civic literacy as they just vote for their favorite person , and then disappear for a few years. I feel that the levels of speaking should have risen dramatically from over one hundred years ago, due to the fact that we have advanced so far technologically. It’s as if all these hi-tech advances have only made us dumber. This decrease in intelligence points back to Carr’s theory that technology is, indeed, making us stupider. We use it to take the easy way out of problems, not our great American reasoning that we were once so proud of. Technology has such great potential to bring about a great new life for everyone, but only if we use it along with reasoning, and critical thinking, not just for an easy way out.