assumptions of stupidity: talking down a ten-foot pole

I didn’t question it the first time I was told to talk to adults at a fifth grade level. That was in the advanced speech class that I took in undergraduate school. The class was designed as a preparation for our future preaching or teaching ministry. The professor told us to speak at a fifth grade level, especially in the area of vocabulary. The rationalization was that most people have about a fifth grade vocabulary and prefer to hear simple speech. He also suggested that we repeat our points a few times because, in our modern culture, people have short attention spans because they are used to copious stimulation and television. His description of the people we would be speaking to gave me the mental picture of a bunch of poorly educated people with severe ADHD who spend the week watching sitcoms and trying not to think too much.

I’d never heard anyone speak that way until I went to a church where the pastor repeated absolutely everything he said three times. I know I wasn’t the only one who found that a little annoying. He was a good speaker, though.

Then at work, one of our managers gave me some simple instructions, but instead of saying them once, he said them three times, very slowly. I stood there with a blank look on my face, not because I was mentally handicapped, but because I had understood the instructions the first time he said them, and they were so simple that I definitely wouldn’t have forgotten them. Finally he gave the customary, “Ooookaayyyy?” I walked off in a daze, frantically worrying that I must look autistic or somehow extremely slow and stupid. I felt a little better after someone else told me that the same manager treats her the same way. In fact, we were both glad that we weren’t the only ones treated like mentally handicapped people.

I started to wonder if the managers were I work are taught to talk to us as if we have the brains of children just like my speech class professor taught us to preach or teach as if everyone in the congregation had the education and mental capacity of a fifth grader. Wouldn’t it be better to assume that people are at least reasonably intelligent instead of automatically talking down to them? After all, I don’t know of anyone other than slightly autistic children or mentally handicapped adults who would need a simple instruction repeated three times, very slowly. And many people who go to church are educated and intelligent enough to at least take a few high-school level vocabulary words and to hear what the pastor said the first time (or maybe the second time if they are extremely fatigued or stressed). After all, it’s insulting to be talked down to, and I think that something is wrong with assuming that other people are so much stupider than you that you have to talk down to them.