Redstate

As if on cue, the Washington Post finds Americans are stupid too. The author of their effort on this topic, Susan Jacoby, is not stupid. She spent her thirteenth year "reading for hours in a treehouse," and while she cannot "prove" that this makes her smarter than the current generation, she is deeply suspicious that this is the case. Look, I'm not saying the U.S. is populated exclusively by erudite geniuses. Nor am I saying that our ever shortening attention span is a good thing. But I do think that judging from literacy rates and education expectations (Universal Pre-K! College for everyone!), it's hard to make a serious case that Americans as a whole are any stupider now than they were a century ago. Which leads to the question, why is it so important to the Times and the Post to insist that they are?