jaylar
It was always imagined (save in dystopian novels and films) that people in the future would be so much more intelligent. The rise of the I.Q. from 1900 to 1950 suggested this. The increase in education, that is, both the numbers enrolled at school, and the raising of the level of education, was expected to continue. Some assuming children would enter earlier, graduate later, and the curriculum would be, for High School similar to that at University.
Only dystopian novels and films, such as Idiocracy, imagined that people would be stupider in 2018 then they were in 1958. Only in dystopian novels and films did the perception that the ‘dumbing down’ would be officially sanctioned.
In Jamaica, in the early 1970s, University Education was free and based on merit, and merit alone. Money, power, position, who you knew did not count, scholastic achievement was the measure.
This meant that the child of the maid might gain that place at University, while the child of the employer did not.
This led to outrage, and the implementation of particular policies as well as the election of politicians which believed in the Class system.
One of the policies was the ‘patwa fi wi langwij’. (Patois is our language).
Jamaicans once spoke proper English. They might speak anything at home, but in public they spoke as if they were BBC News Presenters.
If the underclass could be deceived to think that ‘patwa’ was a language, that it was acceptable, then they would not be able to pass an English examination, enter the better High Schools, certainly not attend University, and could not obtain the better jobs.
In the United States, the attempt to disenfranchise Blacks by telling them Black English or Ebonics was their language fell flat, because most appreciated that this was a form of branding on the tongue.
In Jamaica, it was swallowed whole, so that all those beneath middle class would disqualify themselves.
There need be no official ‘apartheid’ the underclass would create their own. By embracing ‘patwa’ as their language they disqualified themselves.
Getting the underclass, or a segment of the population to disqualify themselves, to select the unhealthy or otherwise detrimental option is a hall mark of an idiocracy.
