NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. 73 percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. 44 percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights.
In all: 38 percent failed. Ouch.
In which I nitpick Newsweak’s (yes, it’s my new name for their Tumblr) poor journalistic standards.
Princeton’s dictionary defines dumb as:
- dense: slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity; “so dense he never understands anything I say to him”; “never met anyone quite so dim”; “although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick”- Thackeray; “dumb officials make some really dumb decisions”; “he …
- speechless: temporarily incapable of speaking; "struck dumb”; “speechless with shock”
- lacking the power of human speech; “dumb animals”
- unable to speak because of hereditary deafness
Newsweak, you are a multimillion dollar media corporation with a global reach of billions of readers. Please buy a dictionary. And stop saying “dumb” when you simply mean “uneducated”. They are not equivalent terms.
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