Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Okay, so here`s a story example. My brother and I both love to cook, and of course have learned to cook from scratch. Long ago, when we`d go to the store, we`d find a very small frozen foods section. It was a new concept, back then, and Swanson had just invented the so-called TV dinner.

We didn`t pay much attention, as did few others who also knew how to cook. Every so often, we`d pick up some new entry to the frozen meals world, give it a shot, see that it didn`t taste very good, and move on.

Well, years passed, people got more frantic, and families started having both parents work. Halloween trick-or-treating on the streets faded away, and McDonald`s took over the world. The frozen food section grew and grew, and the fresh foods, meats, and produce began to shrink.

In the past 10 years, we`ve both noticed an increasing number of young people, anywhere under about 35 years old, who don`t like fresh cooked food, or things cooked from scratch. Being the talkative kinda guys we are, we`ve asked lots of questions.

It turns out that whole generations have grown up without ever having tasted food cooked from scratch, fresh foods, or much of anything that wasn`t from a can or box. To them, the flat, stale, empty taste is "normal." When they taste real food or something other than from a fast-food joint, it just tastes weird to them.

Now, within the past few years, we`re noticing that fewer stores even carry fresh produce. I think the ONLY reason it`s still a big deal is that the Food Network is bringing about a revival of home cooking---maybe. Or maybe it`s just a passing fad.

The point is that although a number of "us" may be able to tell that a site is functional, understandable, and meaningful, ALL of that rests on a learned ability to comprehend "function" and "meaning."

I`m thinking that because of the ongoing degradation of cognitive skills, "idiotic" sites will become so ordinary, routine, and normal that they`ll also become widely acceptable: just as really bad customer service has become acceptable.

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Another excellent arena of example!...Hollywood and the visual entertainment world. People ask themselves how celebrity gossip has risen to the level of viable entertainment, or the reality shows that make demeaning people something exciting to watch. Doesn`t this perfectly show us that fewer people can tell the difference between a great actor or actress, and the average person?

"Do it yourself" used to mean knowing there would be a significant amount of learning involved. Or, it meant that you had certain quality skills and chose to apply them on your own to doing a personal project. Now it seems to mean elevating one`s self to the level of a professional for no reason at all, other than baseless belief.

To have that sort of belief, I think we have to say that the entire concept has collapsed in regard to things like quality, excellence, professionalism, and skill. Good and bad, along with almost all value judgements, seem to be something impossible to understand.

I`m saying that when we examine how students are being taught and have been taught over the past 30 years, it`s not surprising. "Collective learning" explains how Hollywood executives and production people believe copying other people`s work is standard operating procedure. "Outcome-based education" explains the descent to mediocrity.

I think that`s the bottom line: People have become so used to seeing end results they simply don`t understand or even try to understand what goes into the results. I`m linking the thought to modern education and the devaluation of work, but it seems also to be just part of where our culture stands in history these days.