The new "Dark Age"

In many respects, the term 'Dark Age' is a conceit of the Enlightenment, coined to emphasize the supposed superiority of their humanistic philosophy over the ignorance of preceding generations.  To paraphrase Billy Joel, however, "the Dark Ages weren't always dark, and tomorrow's not as bright as it seems."  (Yes, I know that does serious violence to the lyrics... but it's my blog, so deal with it.)

Fred has a couple relevant observations:

No longer are we a schooled people. Brash new peasants grin and peck at their iPods. Unknowing, incurious, they gaze at their screens and twiddle, twiddle. They will not preserve the works of five millenia. They cannot. They do not even know why... Ours will be a stranger Dark Age than the old one. Our peasants brush their teeth and wash, imagine themselves of the middle class, but their heads are empty.
And they rule. We have achieved the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hod-carriers in designer jeans, they do not quite burn books but simply ignore them. Their college degrees amount to high-school diplomas, if that, but they neither know nor care.
The things that have forever constituted civilization—respect for learning whether one had it or not, wide reading, careful use of language, manners, such notions as “lady” and “gentleman” -- these are held in contempt. 

Thomas Jefferson said "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." As our education system has collapsed into little more than a humanistic propaganda machine, it should not be surprising that we have a rising generation ill-equipped to be citizens.  Instead, they increasingly resemble the slanderous remark once aimed at Christians: "poor, ignorant, and easily led."