America

America is, in fact, the leading case in point of what may be thought of as the third great crisis in Western education. The first occurred in the fifth century B.C., when Athens underwent a change from an oral culture to an alphabet-writing culture. To understand what this meant, we must read Plato. The second occurred in the sixteenth century, when Europe underwent a radical transformation as a result of the printing press. To understand what this meant, we must read John Locke. The third is happening now, in America, as a result of the electronic revolution, particularly the invention of television. To understand what this means, we must read Marshall McLuhan.

Neil Postman

Here, then, is motley multitude with intellectual wants to be supplied. These new votaries of the pleasure of the mind have not all had the same education; they are not guided by the same lights, do not resemble their own fathers; and they themselves are changing every moment with changing place of residence, feelings, and fortune. So there are no traditions, or common habits, to forge links between their minds, and they have neither the power nor the wish nor the time to come to common understanding. But it is from this heterogeneous, stirring crowd that authors spring, and from it they must win profit and renown.

Alexis de Tocqueville

In America parties do not write books to combat each other’s opinions, but pamphlets, which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity and then expire.

Alexis de Tocqueville

For all of the Twain’s enthusiasm for the giantism of American industry, the totality of his work is an affirmation of the pre-technological values. Personal loyalty, regional tradition, the continuity of family life, the relevance of the tales and wisdom of the elderly, are the soul of his books.

Neil Postman

The symbolic for of television does not require any special instruction or learning. In America, television-viewing begins at about the age of eighteen months, and by thirty-six months children begin to understand and respond to television imagery… There is no need for any preparation or prerequisite training for watching television… Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such things as remedial television-watching. That is also why you are not better today at watching television than you were five years ago, or ten.

Neil Postman

All their aggressiveness had been channeled into the struggle for money, and that struggle made them forget the bloody lessons of the Civil War. Later on, every one of them had so trained himself to forget, that during the depression he regarded unemployment as shameful proof of his own personal inability. I esteemed these men; I was an admirer of their America. At least no one here could justify his laziness by sighing: “If only nations were not predestined, if it weren’t for the Czar, if it weren’t for the government, if it weren’t for the bourgeoisie …” But paradoxically, that triumph of the individual had wrought an inner sterility; they had souls of shiny plastic. Only the Negroes, obsessed like us …, were alive, tragic and spontaneous.

Czesław Miłosz

Americans accepted their society as if it had arisen from the very order of nature; so saturated with it were they that they tended to pity rest of humanity for having strayed from the norm, If I at least understood that all was not well with me, they did not realize the opposite disablement affected them: a loss of the sense of history and, therefore, of a sense of the tragic, which is only born of historical experience.

Czesław Miłosz

But America is a rather odd country. It’s very religious, and at the same time it allows the broadcast of the pope’s funeral t be interrupted by advertisements, many of which were the direct embodiment of what he had criticized fir his entire life. I found it truly hard to understand, and it made me more and more uncomfortable, until I finally switched the television off.

Václav Havel