{"id":15590,"date":"2002-09-06T18:41:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-06T18:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/06\/i-know-i-rant-about-the-dumbing-down-of-america\/"},"modified":"2002-09-06T18:41:00","modified_gmt":"2002-09-06T18:41:00","slug":"i-know-i-rant-about-the-dumbing-down-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/06\/i-know-i-rant-about-the-dumbing-down-of-america\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know I rant about the dumbing-down of America every now and then, but I truly feel that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/09\/01\/magazine\/01SPELLING.html\" target=\"_blank\">subjecting your child to hours and hours of rote spelling memorization for upcoming spelling bees<\/a> is a little too much.  I believe that expanding a child&rsquo;s vocabulary by reading to and with them is extremely important, but when they&rsquo;re learning nothing but words like &ldquo;aition, campanile, kittel, [and] giaour&rdquo; then I debate the usefulness of the endeavour.  And when you convince them to continue by calling it &ldquo;playing&rdquo; and invoking guilt-inducing mantras like &ldquo;Remember the family&rdquo; it borders on unconscionable, in my opinion.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3501955-85422199?l=www.driko.org%2Findex_blogger.html\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know I rant about the dumbing-down of America every now and then, but I truly feel that subjecting your child to hours and hours of rote spelling memorization for upcoming spelling bees is a little too much. I believe that expanding a child&rsquo;s vocabulary by reading to and with them is extremely important, but &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/06\/i-know-i-rant-about-the-dumbing-down-of-america\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-15590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-imported"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}