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by Naomi Musch
The phrase, "dumbing down" made popular in the last decade by the John Taylor Gatto book *Dumbing Us Down, has got to be just about the most insulting, humiliating phrase I've ever heard. It characterizes a certain absurdity and vulnerability about the human intellect that allows us to be manipulated into dullness. I immediately picture a row of people staring blankly ahead like zombies while someone similar to a hypnotist stands before them dictating their thoughts and their wills. The idea of dumbing down implies that an instructor doesn't trust the intelligence or comprehension of the individual they are instructing. At the core of it is the notion that someone is either too young, too ignorant, too naive, or too apathetic to learn.
Many people who are considering home education are concerned about the dumbing down that seems to be taking place in many of our nation's schools through poorly written texts, busy-work, or sometimes apathetic teachers. Even homeschoolers have to be on guard against the dumbing down that has occurred in so many text books. We carefully filter all our children's curriculum for inaccuracies, falsehoods, and pages of busy-work that don't produce knowledge. But in the end, can even we loving parents become guilty of "dumbing down" when we teach our children?
Homeschooling is an often exhausting and daunting task consuming much of our time and energy. Throw in three or four different age levels and it becomes more than just one full time job. Therefore it can become easy to falter when we grow weary. In a tired state of mind it may seem simpler to let our children become slothful in their study efforts. By our own weariness we begin to let things go that we once felt were very important, whether it's devotions or a family read aloud time. Through simple exhaustion we might excuse excellent but time consuming projects, and thus shortchange our children's educational experience. Yet, thankfully, most parents are aware of this tendency toward burnout and try hard to keep a vigil against it. There is a more subtle area that we might be in danger of dumbing down our children however.
Mom's are probably more likely to fall into this abstruse trap than are dads because of our tendency toward soft-heartedness and not wanting to see our child struggle. We fear we might be working them too hard, whether it's with a school project or a physical task. We tell ourselves, "They're only children. They've done enough." We can only seem to take so many tears and complaints before we say to junior, "Oh, all right, you don't have to write that essay if it's going to kill you."
What have we just taught him by so doing? Nothing? Wrong. We definitely taught something. We taught him that it's all right to whine and complain when he has to do something he doesn't like. We taught him that if you do it long enough and loud enough the system (in this case meaning the parent, but it still works in the rest of the world) will cater to you. We taught him that laziness will be excused, that perseverance doesn't matter. You can just quit when the going gets tough.
Did we teach him better writing, thinking, or creative skills? No, we let him off, we dumbed him down. After all, isn't that the essence of that humiliating phrase -- to take the easy way?
Children are not naive so they should not be treated as if they are. They can be taught at a very early age to become master manipulators if we allow them. They may indeed be apathetic, but the system of government schooling already in place which furthers the problem of apathy is what you want to stay away from, so don't bend to the trend. Children are, for the most part, bright, curious, confident, amazingly adaptable human beings who are capable of taking on tremendous challenges if we don't hold them back with our own distrust, slothfulness, or misplaced pity.
I'm not suggesting that there's no room for leeway in school work, or that we should all become ruthless overseers ready at a moment's notice to crack the whip. But if we're not careful, no matter what wonderful material we have to teach from, it will all be for naught if we don't remember to teach them how to think, how to obey, how to do their best, how to persevere and not give up. These things they will either learn or not learn by our larger example. We can't afford to dumb them down by making their road so smooth that they never have to look where they're going.
*John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down-the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, PA
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