Radiofree West Hartford - THE FRUITS OF "DUMBING DOWN" by Tim Siggia

THE FRUITS OF "DUMBING DOWN"

By Tim Siggia

April 08, 2006

Speech tends to be pretty much like everything else. Some are gifted in its use, and others are not. When it comes to professional broadcasters, however, I do not believe it is unreasonable to expect them to be gifted in the use of speech. It is, after all, their stock-in-trade. Just as we expect people like automobile mechanics, for instance, to be gifted in manual skills, and accountants to be gifted in mathematics, so do many of us look to radio announcers to set the standard for what is and isn't correct in the area of speech and communication.

Listening to one particular AM station in Hartford, Connecticut, however, may lead one to scratch his head in amazement. It first manifests itself in the phenomenon I call the "Berries". Try as I may, no matter how diligently I scrutinize a map of Connecticut, I am unable to find a city named Waterberry. Nor am I able to find any towns named Danberry or Glastonberry. Yet according to the announcers of this radio station (which, out of compassion and generosity -- or, perhaps, cowardice -- I will not name) these places do exist, for they make constant reference to them. For those who do not live in Connecticut, the cities and towns in question are Waterbury, Danbury and Glastonbury.

It doesn't end there, of course. Listening to this same station, I have heard February called "Febuary", library pronounced as "liberry" (there's another "berry" for you) and comfortable pronounced as "cumfterble." We hear these common errors made by our friends and neighbors all the time. But is this now to be expected from those who market themselves to us as professionals?

I remember back in my Navy days how a tour of duty in Hawaii presented me with a problem in this regard never previously encountered. In Hawaii, due to a one-time necessity become a sort of tradition, pidgin English is to a great extent the talk of the land. So it is that phrases like "dissen datten dem udda tings," long frowned upon by grammar school English teachers all over the mainland United States, are considered acceptable speech in Hawaii. So it was that my three sons, who were in the first grade and kindergarten respectively (two of them are twins), soon acquired a dese-dem-dose problem they didn't have when they arrived. Since in school this wasn't considered a problem, it was therefore left for my wife and me to correct at home, on a daily basis. We survived those three years in Hawaii, and today those sons, all of whom are grown men, two with children of their own, speak according to mainland standards. Now the question is, what has happened to those mainland standards?

What has happened is glaringly obvious: The standards have been "dumbed down.' I learned the rudiments of broadcasting at the Defense Information School, which was then located at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. It was there I learned that it was none other than The Most Trusted Man In America, Walter Cronkite, who made "Febuary" and "liberry" acceptable pronunciations for broadcast, simply because he himself was unable to pronounce these words properly. My Defense Information School, or DINFOS, education took place 25 years ago. Today the airwaves are rampant with mispronunciations.

It all begs a question: If the results of dumbed-down requirements are making themselves known in broadcasting, what about so many other areas where those results may not be so readily obvious? Do we also have dumbed-down standards for things like science and engineering? For building and architecture? Fifty years ago, bridges that collapse, buildings that buckle, and automobiles whose fuel tanks explode and catch fire upon impact would not have been tolerated. The word "recall", in its present context, was unheard of. The United States led the world in nearly every industry. Where is it today?

It would be easy and convenient, of course, to blame the teachers. And, to be sure, the standards for teaching, like those for practically everything else, have been dumbed down, with recent studies having shown many teachers ignorant of the same level of knowledge for which their students are responsible. But many first-rate teachers today find themselves hamstrung and frustrated by a dumbed-down curriculum they have no choice but to teach.

It is not only our education community, but we ourselves who are responsible for this mess. Parents need to become more involved in their children's education. Teachers need to listen more to parent-teacher groups, and less to their unions. Instead of complaining about unfunded mandates, state and local governments should be asking themselves why those mandates were not in effect right along. Unless all concerned start getting serious about education right now, what we hear on the radio may be indicative of a general decline in American culture which will ultimately prove irreversible.