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Structural Stupidity

Fantastic Atlantic essay on the impact of social media on democracy. Long but very worthwhile read covering a myriad of themes. The one that was particularly close to my heart is education of our children and how political polarization and corrosion of trust in institutions is negatively impacting that"

The motives of teachers and administrators come into question, and overreaching laws or curricular reforms sometimes follow, dumbing down education and reducing trust in it further. One result is that young people educated in the post-Babel era are less likely to arrive at a coherent story of who we are as a people, and less likely to share any such story with those who attended different schools or who were educated in a different decade.

The calamitous consequences for K-12 education are plainly evident. Every year, things take a turn for the worse with teachers requiring to work like trapeze artists balancing their desire to educate kids while fighting culture wars, identity politics and demands from parents. All of this was true even before the pandemic so it's no surprise many of them want out of the profession entirely - that will only compound the tragedy of children's education

In the 20th century, America built the most capable knowledge-producing institutions in human history. In the past decade, they got stupider en masse.

No surprise there. As long as social-media remains the public square and the serves as the court of public opinion that only dispenses mob justice, there is no way to reduce or reverse the stupefaction of the masses beginning in K-12 classrooms and fanning from there. 

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