Rating: 
Summary: A mostly well-written collection of essays
Review: A collection of fairly well-written essays which are generally critical of how the current American systems, educational and otherwise,expect less and less of us citizens intellectually. While some balance of views was attempted by the authors, most of the essays carry the message that we, as a nation, are headed the wrongway down the cultural and intellectual roadway. I found the articles very timely and very informative, particularly those about the educational theories which gave rise to a lower expectation of achievement in reading and writing. All in all, a very thought-provoking collection, although I certainly did not agree with all of the views expressed in the various essays. It was refreshing to view a collection of views, rather than reading a group of critiques which all flowed from the same pen. I strongly recommend this work - It may be the best of the culteral "doom and gloom" books which are prevalent today.
Rating: 
Summary: Dumbing Down Is Smart But Too Scabrous
Review: A mixed bag - like many edited collections. Many of the essays are vigorous and unsparing such as MacDonald's fine essay on the erosion of composition skills in our nation's universities, Epstein's virtolic attack against the political prejudices of the NEA, and Klinghoffer's witty account of kitsch religion. Moreover, the essays on the erosion and degradation of the physical and social sciences are persuasive and well-argued. Many of the essays, however, and more surprisingly those of the more renowed authors, have far less substance than style. Cynthia Ozick's essay on the decline of literate culture veers off into a discussion of Henry James and ends up seeming beside the point; John Simon's elitist and pretentious grousing makes one sympathetic to the defenders of popular culture; Kennan just rehashes Tocqueville and adds little else. Sadly, many articles also display a particularly slanted point of view - thus, for example, the trouble with education are multiculturalist teachers not the tragic underfunding of American education which the eloquent books of Jonathan Kozol amply disprove. Many of the essayists ignore larger social and economic factors which played a role in our cultural deterioration and instead point fingers at egregious culprits - spacey lit. crit. teachers, television talk show hosts. I still recommend the book despite its numerous flaws - including a totally needless introductory composite of extracts signaling our incipient doom (one quotes dates all the way back to 1960 which made me wonder why they just didn't up and cite Spengler while they were at it) - because a fair number of essays provide enough incisive commentary into the deleterious effects of a completely commercialized culture to warrant a sustained reading.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, Informative and sadly very true.
Review: Dumbing Down was very informative and struck a chord with me. For years I've been thinking that most Americans lack common sense in the simplest things. That we are forced by our culture to make simple tasks complicated for the sake of saying we are intelligent. How easily as a nation we have spiralled downwards into sophisticated stupidity. This book should be required reading for anyone trying to rise out of the dung in this age of educated ignorance. -Concerned American
Rating: 
Summary: Evidence of dumbing down
Review: Here's one bit of evidence of dumbing down in America: I paid money for this crabby, unscientific, pompous book. Don't make the same mistake.
Rating: 
Summary: An awful whining book!
Review: I was sucked into this book as one of the "campanion" books to a book that I was purchasing through Amazon. I was hoping for an insightful book on our culture, instead it was just a bunch of whining people who use tiny examples of people behaving badly in public and try to roll it into an argument that our society is basically bad. Honestly, they use examples like people acting rudely on a bus!
The only type of person who would enjoy this book is a crotchety old fart who is looking for evidence that his bitchy, whining, and negative view of the world is correct. Everyone else should avoid this book!
Oh, the introduction is written in an extreme acedemic style. It's been awhile since I studied up for the GRE, so I had to pull my thesaurus out a number of times to try to follow the editor's introduction. I gave up after awhile because it was obvious that he had a bigger thesaurus than mine. (I couldn't find some of the words!) Okay, I'm impressed, your vacabulary is bigger than mine, but you lost your audience, so what's the point?!!
Save your money, and avoid this book.
Patrick Robinson
Rating:
Summary: Never has the decline of civilization been so funny!
Review: Most of the essays in the book are interesting. One of essays got bogged down with a lot of fuzzy technical and philosophical arguments. Some of the essays on language use and grammar will remind you of your spinster curmudgeon English teacher; they were a bit too hard-core reactionary for me, but not without their truths. A lot of the essays exude a lot of wit and I laughed out loud in a lot of places. Particularly I liked one essay by a self-proclaimed snob who said that college was a waste of time for a lot of people and why didn't we just have college for people who are actually interested in learning for its own sake? Before WWII, people could get good jobs without having to go to college. The businesses trained them at their own expense, which is what businesses should do.
Rating:
Summary: Simplistic and Contradictory
Review: The writers pepper the Forward and Introduction with stimulating vocabulary, beautiful poetry, and sharp epigraphs ("Nothing gives [one] such a sense of the infinite as stupidity.") And an early section called "Dumbing Down: Some Leading Indicators" presents some gems from popular periodicals decrying the decline of civility, decay of culture and contempt for elitism.But early in the first essay (on education) the writer's argument loses clarity, and he starts contradicting himself. He complains about "the laissez-faire attitude toward dress and courtesy" at today's schools, but in the next pages complains about "non-academic courses focusing on personal behavior" (the offending subject: Respect.) The writer sees social studies classes as wasting too much time "invested in the doctrine of ... rights of privacy, rights of children, rights of criminals, rights of pornographers, rights of everyone to everything - [without] any suggestion of the baleful consequences of that doctrine..." Regarding the teaching of American history, the writer laments the minimization of "older paradigms of federalism, industrialism, and expansionism" and the changing of a "once triumphal Columbian conquest" to one where "disease-carrying Europeans encounter and enslave innocent people of color." In World history the Greeks suffer from inattention, while too much time is wasted on Coptic Ethiopia. History courses, the writer argues, have become too "empathetic" and that "historical sufferers and victims groups receive belated recognition and redress." By learning of this "unfulfilled national promise," children might become more virtuous and sensitive, he argues, but, alas, dumber. The writer complains that children are being taught "critical thinking" instead of rote learning, then complains that "Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to the radical egalitarianism." The writer sounds as though he doesn't really mind kids being taught critical thinking as long as at the end of twelve years, they are able to use those skills to realize that the art, poetry, music, and literature that the writer prefers are the only good ones. It's not enough to love Shakespeare; you have to hate "Dances With Wolves," "Pulp Fiction," and "Forest Gump," too. (He also complains that there are no dramas today about anything except AIDS.) But besides loving Shakespeare, you have to view the casting of any non-white actor in a Shakespeare's play as evidence of the "dumbing down" of America, There is no doubt that discourse in America has been "dumbed down," but the arguments these writers make are uninformed, naïve, racist, and, well, stupid.
Rating:
Summary: definitely a mixed bag -- but a must read in any case!
Review: There are not many rare, surprising or sophisticated essays in this collection. Most bore with their sclerotic whingeing. I enjoyed Slavitt, Kalfus, the writer who critiques Freudian etiology, perhaps one or two others. Simon, Lopate, and Epstein are, as usual, tedious and inflexible. Also, the preponderance of the opening quotes detailing our decline and fall were culled from the New York media complex (Times, WSJ, The New Yorker and on and on) as though nothing of interest and nobody of perspicacity could possibly exist "out there". This is New York provincialism at its most loathsome. This is primarily a roster of soreheads and reactionaries rehearsing thier solipsism. Pardon me if I cease to lend an ear.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly ossified, with a few moments of excellence
Review: There are not many rare, surprising or sophisticated essays in this collection. Most bore with their sclerotic whingeing. I enjoyed Slavitt, Kalfus, the writer who critiques Freudian etiology, perhaps one or two others. Simon, Lopate, and Epstein are, as usual, tedious and inflexible. Also, the preponderance of the opening quotes detailing our decline and fall were culled from the New York media complex (Times, WSJ, The New Yorker and on and on) as though nothing of interest and nobody of perspicacity could possibly exist "out there". This is New York provincialism at its most loathsome. This is primarily a roster of soreheads and reactionaries rehearsing thier solipsism. Pardon me if I cease to lend an ear.
Rating: 
Summary: This book itself suffers from dumbing down
Review: This book could have been so much more. While some of the essays include genuine insight into this serious problem, others suffer from the all too common temptation to catalog whatever the authors don't like. To conservatives, dumbing down is the fault of all those liberals; to liberals, it's all those conservatives; to humanities snobs, it's anything connected to science and technology. Some of the examples of dumbing down are nothing short of fatuous. Is it really a sign of dumbing down that a newspaper publishes a science section? Is the art world truly waging war on heterosexuality? Also, some authors tend to limit their evidence to what is happening in New York. Is the topic of the book the dumbing down of America or the dumbing down of New York? Perhaps the worst offender is David Klinghoffer's essay on kitsch religion. Klinghoffer lectures us on the state of Judaism and Christianity, but he is clearly much more attuned to secular politics than to Jewish (let alone Christian) theology. He completely ignores the spectacular growth of the New Age movement, which is a glaring counter-example to his thesis. Moreover, while he calls for a return to thou-shalt-nots, he does not seem to care whether they come from Orthodox Judaism or Baptist fundamentalism; instead, it seems that any old set of thou-shalt-nots will do. That's what I call dumbing down.
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