Disowning Dumbing-down

I swore I’d never do this, but I’ve been suckered into reading ‘management’ self-improvement books.   Last week I saw a copy of the ubiquitous  Who Moved My Cheese? on a colleague’s desk, and scoffed at the ‘wacky’ title.  “Well, have you read it?” he asked.  Um, no.  “Well, it’s about managing change.  As you’re in Change Management, maybe you should give it a go.”   Never  one to resist a ‘challenge’ I borrowed  the book and  dutifully read it.

And it’s alright… It doesn’t offer any great insights or points of view (how could it in a mere 100 pages of wide-spaced, large type?), but its basic premise is: Change is inevitable; expect it, and move with it when it happens.  (There, I’ve saved you the one hour it took me to read it.)   Now I don’t disagree with the message, but I do find fault with the way the message is communicated – it’s just so dumbed down.

Central to the book is a ‘story’ of two mice and two humans in a maze looking for ‘cheese’. Cheese is used a metaphor for something (anything) that you want.  The author is kind enough to point this out, just in case you thought the book really was about the dairy product.  Clearly the author doesn’t credit his readers with much in the way of intelligence (despite the book presumably being aimed at professional people) as the message is so transparent (one wonders if the author has ever even heard the word ‘allegory’) and proffered so bluntly that there is zero need for interpretation – indeed, there’s really no need to think at all. But in case you somehow miss the point, each chapter finishes with a summary ‘bullet-point’ (such as “Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese”) in big, bold type, taking up a whole page.  And then, just in case you’re still not sure, the story is book-ended by two ‘chapters’ describing a bunch of people discussing the story and its meaning: “‘Oh, I see’, said Mary-Anne, ‘the mice adapted to the change!’”.  Well, duh!

Anyway, I did my duty and read it, and armed now with justifiable disdain, I went to return it to my colleague.  But now there was a new book on his desk.  This one called Fish! I groaned.  He pointed out that our senior manager (my boss’s boss) has latched onto this particular book with a fervor, and is mandating that everyone in her group ‘reads and inwardly digests’.  She’s even organized a five-hour team meeting around it.  Unfortunately I’ll miss the meeting as I’ll be on a business trip to Europe at the time, but to show willing, I thought I’d better get a copy of the book and read it.  Just in case she stops by my desk and inquires as to how I’m incorporating the ‘fish philosophy’ into my daily work.

So this weekend I went off to my local Barnes and Noble to get a copy.  It took me a while to find it, and I was forced to trawl (pun intended) the ‘Management’ section several times before I found it, nestled between Yes Lives in the Land of No, and The Power of Nice. (Really.  You couldn’t make this stuff up.)  And it turns out there are dozens of these books – all slim volumes with stupid titles, and all promising to improve your workplace and/or career.  There is Eat That Frog!, What Color is Your Parachute? and (I kid you not) Letting Go Of Your Bananas.  I flicked through a couple (furtively checking over my shoulder to make sure no-one saw me – much like the guy in the ‘adult interests’ section) and they’re all pretty similar: big text, judicious use of white space, and a handy-dandy summary at the end of every chapter setting out the key point (there’s rarely more than one per chapter) in words my five-year-old could understand. It’s shocking, really.  What has happened to intelligent reading?  Why is it necessary to have everything simplified to the level of a bulleted list in a PowerPoint presentation?  Are people today so incapable of forming their own thoughts, of drawing their own inferences?  Is comprehension now a lost art?

Well I’m not buying into it.  I’m making a stand for intelligence and intellect (I’m no Chomsky, but I have a little of both).  I’m starting a movement against dumbing down.  I’m going to publish a book called Hey, It’s OK to Think! It will be thousands of pages long, and will simply consist of copies of the great novels of Dickens, Dostoyevsky, the Brontes, Hardy, Tolstoy, and so on, all stuck together in a great big book.  There will be no summaries, no indication of what lessons will be learnt – just the unabridged novels.  People will have to read them, and then just think for themselves…