America is being "dumbed down"

I agree, that the debate is about "America is being "dumbed down"" Texting Typing with text lingo, may have "naturally developed" but that doesn't make it smart. My opponent points out that it's designed for cell phone communication. I have pointed out that it now appears on student term papers, which brings down grades. My opponent admits it takes less effort to type that way. I would add that it takes a caveman less effort to grunt and point, rather than put together a modern sentence. That's what makes texting "dumbed down". My opponent also pointed out that people who do not go along and conform to this dumbed down practice of text lingo will be ridiculed for it. This pressure, encourages people to abandon their educated way of communicating in favor of a dumbed down version of communication. That's the perfect example of how America is being dumbed down. My opponent wants to claim that this is "a natural and necessary stage of their maturity development". Where is the proof for that? Texting is really a dumbed down lazy form of communication that is being forced on young people with ridicule. That's like saying bullying is a "natural and necessary stage of their maturity development". A child that is forced to dumb down their communication skills through ridicule is far from "natural and necessary". There is a trend in American education to concentrate on making a student feel "full and confident", rather than smart and educated. That's another form of dumbing down. My opponent has pointed out that self esteem is the perceived road to success by avoiding being featured on the news for bad reasons. Being ridiculed does not help a person become "full and confident". It makes a person compliant to the bullies. It does not encourage free thinking or create self esteem. It does the exact opposite by causing a person to become insecure and willing to abandon a form of communication that will help them in their future professional and academic careers, in favor of a dumbed down version of communication. As far as cursive writing is concerned, there really is no need to abandon traditional forms of education in favor of technology based education. You must understand the concept of numbers before you can use a pocket calculator. Educators should be building on top of traditional education, not eliminating it. Technology itself is dumbing down America. People now use calculators instead of doing math in their heads. People now don't bother to learn how to spell, since computers auto-correct what they type. There are cars that will actually parallel park themselves, so that people won't bother to learn how to do so. GPS devices are rendering people helpless when confronted with a traditional map. Not many Americans know how to drive a stick shift, due to the popularity of automatic transmissions. That's how America is being dumbed down. It's not very easy to understand what an automatic transmission does if you never have driven a stick. Most don't even want to understand it. Their sense of curiosity has dwindled. Americans don't care how things work anymore, as long as they just work. Instead of being able to fix something, they just throw it away and buy a new one. Religion and Science I think my opponent needs a more dumbed down example of what I mean. Let's say 1 person believe in evolution and 2 people believes in creationism. That's twice as many people that believe in creationism. Now, as the population grows, we add an equal amount of people to both sides. If you add 1 to both sides, you have 2 people believing in evolution and 3 who believe in creationism. Now it's no longer twice as many. Population does count. State of the Union vs. Super Bowl My opponent claims "A desire to be entertained does not equal a lack of desire to be educated" Once again, let's do some math. Let's say you have 10 hours a day to either be entertained or educated. The more hours you spend being entertained, the less hours you spend being educated. If you spend 1 hour being entertained you have 9 hours for education. If you desire to spend 9 hours being entertained, you only desire 1 hour of education. Yes, many doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc are football fans. However, I dare say that most successful doctors, lawyers and politicians have spent more time educating themselves due to a desire to be educated compared to the average garbage truck driver who spends more time being entertained due to a desire to be entertained. It's a given fact that most higher paid jobs require higher education. Education My opponent said "Other countries improving their education system does not mean that Americans are becoming dumber, it means other countries are becoming smarter" Once again, let's do some math. If 50% of the smart population of the world comes from America and 50% come from other countries, then America is smarter than the rest of the world. If the other countries are improving their education systems and now 75% of the smart people on the planet come from other countries, that leaves America with only 25% of the smart people world population. So, yes. Other countries improving their education system does, in fact, mean that Americans are becoming dumber, while other countries are becoming smarter. My opponent also said "Today"s world is much more complex then it used to be and as a result a simple education which would have earned a decent living years ago simply won"t do it anymore." Which person would you rather have working at NASA...a person who can take out a pen and paper and use a slide rule to figure out a complex math problem, or somebody who only knows how to punch some numbers into a computer to get the answer? The person who knows the basics and understands WHY the answer is correct is better (smarter) than somebody who only wants the correct answer. A mechanic that knows how to fix a transmission is better (smarter) than one who can only replace one. Without "simple education", complex technology is useless. A monkey can press buttons on a computer. Only a human can build a computer and understand how it works. Americans are being dumbed down to how to operate things without the basic understandings of how they work.