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Dumbing down is a deliberate oversimplification of the intellectual within education, literature, cinema, news, and culture. The term "dumbing down" originated in 1933 as movie-business slang, used by motion picture screenplay writers, meaning: "() revise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence". Dumbing-down varies according to subject matter along with the reasons for lowering the intellect of the subject or topic. It often involves diminishment of critical thought involving the undermining of intellectual standards within language and learning; thus trivializing cultural, artistic, and academic standards, as is the case of popular culture. Philosophically, the term "dumbing down" is a relative definition, because what is considered dumbing down depends on the taste, value judgement, and intellectual level of the person involved in the matter. In ''Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste'' (1979), the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) proposed that, in a society in which the cultural practices of the ruling class are rendered and established as the legitimate culture of that society, that action then devalues the cultural capital of the subordinate social classes, and thus limits their social mobility within their own society. ==Education== In the late 20th century, the proportion of young people attending university in the UK increased sharply, including many who previously would not have been considered to possess the appropriate scholastic aptitude. In 2003, the UK Minister for Universities, Margaret Hodge, criticised Mickey Mouse degrees as a negative consequence of universities dumbing down their courses to meet "the needs of the market": these are degrees conferred for studies in a field of endeavour "where the content is perhaps not as () rigorous as one would expect, and where the degree, itself, may not have huge relevance in the labour market": thus, a university degree of slight intellectual substance, which the student earned by "simply stacking up numbers on Mickey Mouse courses, is not acceptable".〔"('Irresponsible' Hodge under fire )", BBC News, 14 January 2003. URL accessed on 24 June 2006.〕〔"(50% higher education target doomed, says thinktank )", EducationGuardian.co.uk, 14 July 2005. URL accessed on 24 June 2006.〕 A high school physics instructor, Wellington Grey, published an Internet petition in which he said: "I am a physics teacher. Or, at least, I used to be"; and complained that "() calculations – the very soul of physics – are absent from the new General Certificate of Secondary Education." Among the examples of dumbing-down that he provided were: "Question: Why would radio stations broadcast digital signals, rather than analogue signals? Answer: Can be processed by computer/ipod" to "Question: Why must we develop renewable energy sources?" (a political question). In ''Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling'' (1991, 2002), John Taylor Gatto presented speeches and essays, including "The Psychopathic School", his acceptance speech for the 1990 New York City Teacher of the Year award, and "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher", his acceptance speech upon being named as the New York State Teacher of the Year for 1991.〔The Odysseus Group Web site of John Taylor Gatto (), retrieved 23 February 2009〕 Gatto speculated: In examining the seven lessons of teaching, Gatto concluded that "all of these lessons are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius." That "school is a twelve-year jail sentence, where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school, and win awards doing it. I should know."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「dumbing down」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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