craigm wrote:

Lucky wrote:

Hi Peter

Our society has become so dumbed down by terrible public schools and mass
migration of 5th grade educated aliens. So, they don't have the capacity nor
the comprehension to be even remotely interested in SW.

It is so easy to place the blame on the schools. Much of the blame also
goes to the parents who don't/won't instill the need for education.
People need to take responsibility and not look for the easy scapegoat.
Parents have a responsibility to their children. The school system is
not a means to escape that responsibility.

Agreed, but the parents are part of the problem too. All they care about
is getting the easy A, getting the kid into Harvard so they can put
pressure on the poor professors to hand out A's because that's the only
acceptable return on their investment, and then making sure the kid gets
an MBA so that he/she can go straight to the top. It's all part of the
culture of instant gratification. Getting an actual education has been
kicked to the side in favor of getting an easy degree in order to get a
high paying job. It's the high paying job that's important, not the
actual education. 35 years ago, college students said in surveys that
the most important reason for a college education was to become a better
person, to broaden one's horizons, and all that "hippie stuff". Today
all the kids care about is getting in and out as fast as possible and
getting to the corner office as fast as possible, along with the Lexus,
the hot secretary, and the mansion. The whole culture has become
coarsened, and the only thing that's important is making a lot of money,
not becoming a better person.


I know you don't have to be the most intelligent to operate a receiver, but
to know about it and be interested in it you must have some decent education
and culture.

Does that mean some elite requirements to be a shortwave listener. I
would t hink that all that is needed is a radio, the knowlege of what
might be out ther (to listen to) and the desire to listen.

SW radio can be a vehicle to provide some education, however education
need not be a requirement.

SW radio tends to have more intellectual programming than say network
TV. In America, the breakout TV hit of the summer is an abomination
called "Dancing with the Stars", where washed up celebrities pair off
with professional dancers in order to win a multiweek dancing
competition. The costumes are titillating and the set looks like it came
out of a disco hall. A culture that makes "Dancing with the Stars" a hit
is not one that is interested in crackly, fading radio broadcasts on
Ethiopian culture and news broadcasts that lack car chases and murders
du jour. All of American culture caters to the lowest common
denominator, and SW radio tends to set its sights higher. That's why
hardly anybody in America listens to SW. People have been dumbed down by
many different factors over the past 30 years, and they're simply not
interested in SW's highbrow fare. It's a tragedy, and it may yet be the
end of us.


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