T.V. — No Pain, No Gain!

Some interesting facts come from City Pages:

Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day.

Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training. No wonder they relocate elsewhere!

Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent . We’re not the place to be anymore.

I propose that there is a reason literacy in the U.S. is stagnating and that reason is television. What one can gain by watching T.V., is relatively nil. Furthermore, the medium is an opiate, drugging us with brainless entertainment; viewers just love to sit in front of the “boob tube” in a state of blissful euphoria watching shows like “Survivor.” They do nothing in the way of enhancing their basic levels of intelligence. Reading books has become too painful and almost like a dose of castor oil or a laxative, so they avoid it. Unfortunately, once in a while, we all need a cathartic to cleanse the mind. TV producers will continue to feed us a diet of “dummie” programming until the day we want something a lot better.

Boy O Boy! Are we in trouble!