The New York Times

"There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. They don’t even teach kids how to deal with money in school — the one thing you think they would teach in America."

The novelist Walter Mosley thinks America is getting dumber.

4:40 PM · Feb 10, 2023https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1624161326581833736

On Friday, February 10, 2023 at 6:04:43 PM UTC-5, chromebook test wrote:
> The New York Times
>
> "There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. They don’t even teach kids how to deal with money in school — the one thing you think they would teach in America."
>
>
> The novelist Walter Mosley thinks America is getting dumber.
>
> 4:40 PM · Feb 10, 2023https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1624161326581833736

Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber
Feb. 5, 2023 David Marchese
https://archive.ph/FJ6M7

You mentioned Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I know you’ve always been a big comic fan, but what do you make of the cultural dominance of the Marvel Universe? Because I guess one way of looking at it is that those stories constitute our modern myths. Another way is that their ubiquity is a sign of a dumbed-down culture.

Yeah, that’s true, but why is it true? We’re living in a dumbed-down culture because the education of most people in America is sad and not useful. There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. They don’t even teach kids how to deal with money in school — the one thing you think they would teach in America. So the fact that the people turn to comic books and pornography and other seemingly lower-level things? I’m not sure that they are lower-level, but the reason that things are selling is because of how America is dealing with its citizens. It’s a symptom: He’s sneezing. Why is he sneezing? We live next to a pepper factory. Maybe it’s the pepper!

So the implication is that cultural tastes would be different if people were educated differently?

What’s the biggest problem facing almost all Americans? Money. But you go to high school, and they don’t teach you about money. They don’t tell you: You’re going to live to be 90, but you’re going to retire at 65, and the money the government gives you is not meant to be enough to take care of you. That’s a perfect example of how we educate in ignorance. You have these people coming out into the world, and they don’t know what to do. My God. Our educational system has failed 90 percent of the people.