Tag: anti-intellectualism

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Disengaged Students, Part 6: What Happened to Political Discourse?

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

While the anti-intellectual mindset is deeply entrenched in American culture, it is seldom discussed. Those who accuse the popular culture of ‘dumbness’ are viewed as offensive and even elitist. Those who say that they find Americans less cultured or intelligent than citizens of other nations are convicted of unpatriotic behavior in the court of public opinion. As a result, little is written about the decline of public knowledge, and when relevant statistics are published they usually come with no commentary. The truth is often hard to hear, but it remains true.  Contemporary Americans are far behind the rest of the civilized world in intellectual terms, and even far behind the Americans of 70 years ago.

No Time for Rational Thought

Americans lack patience when it comes to listening to serious discussion of political issues. The average length of a political message dropped from 42.3 seconds to just 7.8 seconds from 1968 to 2000. Candidates who will not encapsulate what they represent in less than 8 seconds are viewed as weak communicators. Thus Americans place a higher value on the presentation of platforms than on the actual content of a particular candidate’s beliefs.

Take the 2012 Presidential campaigns, for example. The now-iconic Facebook photo of Barack Obama embracing Michelle Obama after victory had been declared garnered over 1 million “likes” in under an hour. The same image with the words “four more years” actually broke Twitter’s record for most retweets in less than an hour, with 350,000. The viral photo is a fitting representation of the role that social media played in the election cycle for the first time. There were people talking about the Presidential election on Facebook and Twitter in 2008, but not in the same numbers or with the same social savvy. Mitt Romney’s campaign did not utilize social media channels as expertly as the Obama team, and on several occasions the viral nature of the Internet hurt the Romney camp.

Romney faced a firestorm of public outcry when he described Americans with incomes too low for taxation as self-declared victims with a high sense of entitlement and a low sense of responsibility.  The comments were secretly recorded at a fundraising event and Romney later admitted he should have stated his position in a more “elegant” fashion. However, he stood by the principle of his statement – that opponent Barack Obama’s tax plan was attractive to people on the lower end of the socio-economic scale. Critics panned Romney for his obvious lack of connection with “average” Americans, and the general public followed suit. That particular recording has been described as the beginning of the end of the Romney Presidential run.

But were Mitt Romney’s comments made in what he thought was a private venue really that different from what he was saying in pre-written addresses across the country? A wealthy capitalist himself, Romney had made similar, more elegantly spoken statements in the past. In fact, anyone who took the time to listen to what he and his running mate Paul Ryan were saying on a daily basis in disclosed meetings would have seen that his super-secret, supposedly character-revealing statements were really not all that secret or revealing. The American people had neither the time nor the concern to truly hear what Romney had to say about their economic states until it was condensed into a short, scandalous, overplayed clip.

Were We Ever Rational Conversationalists?

Susan Jacoby observes in The Age of American Unreason that the Americans of a century ago were much more active than their descendants in seeking out opposing views, even if there was no chance that the information would change their minds. When political candidates held rallies to push their agendas, they spoke to a mixed audience of supporters and detractors.

Jacoby says that when she went on tour to promote her first book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, she was prepared to argue her points with those who found her writing off-base. She says that she looked forward to the debate. Jacoby quickly discovered, however, that the only people showing up to her book events were “the converted.” The people in the audience had exactly the same views and she was essentially “preaching to the choir.” She would not have to defend her points because the people who disagreed with her simply would not show up.

Jacoby mentions this example in the introduction of her second book to illustrate the contrast between the open environment for discourse and curiosity about other opinions that once existed in America on the one hand, and the current state of narrow-mindedness across the belief spectrum on the other. She says “The unwillingness to give a hearing to contradictory viewpoints…represents a departure from the best side of American popular and elite intellectual traditions.”

The effort of defending one’s own views and lending an ear to opposing ones has come to be seen as excessive. This is what might be expected of an over-stimulated, instantly gratified American public that has no use for personal fact-finding missions. It is much easier to wait for outrageous scandals and 400-word summary blog posts that outline the “10 Reasons to Vote for Obama” than to dig into details. Anti-intellectualism then becomes a state of deliberate unknowing and uncaring.

Will the next generation of thinkers care enough to hear all sides of an issue? Or accept the first sound bite that is appealing?

 

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Disengaged Students, Part 5: What the Intellectual Experts Say

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The two authors best known for addressing contemporary anti-intellectualism are Leonard Woolf and Richard Hofstadter. Woolf’s 1935 book Quack, Quack! looks, in part, at how governments and religions contribute to anti-intellectualism. He speaks specifically of his own opposition to fascist regimes like those of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler, and talks about how Fascist rule is set up like a primal tribe with leaders wielding power over “savages” through control of knowledge.

By contrast, Woolf believed that what was good for one person was good for the whole population. He was not religious, but he felt that all people were inherently equal and that all humans had vast potential for improvement. He stated that religious ideals and government-approved messages were not the best tools with which to effect this improvement, but that an increase in rationality raised the equality and knowledge base of all people.

Woolf believed that even the most advanced cultures were perpetually at risk of succumbing to anti-intellectualism, and that even the highest level of free-thinking society could quickly revert to savagery. Woolf viewed intellectualism and rational thought as active philosophies that were at risk of failure without a core group willing to stand behind their thoughts. One wonders how Woolf might have compared the American people of today with his contemporaries. Would he issue a warning designed to keep Americans from falling into a state of savagery previously unseen on U.S. soil?

Woolf and Individuality

Woolf took issue with other peer thinkers like Scottish Thomas Carlyle who felt that every culture needed to hold up hero figures so as to maintain order. Carlyle’s strict Calvinist upbringing predisposed him to believe that figureheads were required for optimal societal function. The idea that the weak needed to be sacrificed in order for the strong to thrive was intrinsic to Carlyle’s philosophies.

Carlyle’s controversial work Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question defended African enslavement by white people as an institution that was basically doing a favor for the inherently lazy black population. Carlyle believed that without forced, unpaid labor Africans would never work, and that slavery should have never been abolished – or at the very least should have been replaced with serfdom.

This type of thinking is certainly outrageous by modern standards but was not necessarily viewed as hateful or discriminatory in the early 20th century. People like Carlyle were respected for their views, even as others like John Stuart Mill published rebuttals. Ideas of a century ago were protected in ways that placed value on the speaker and did not put him on public trial if he offended a particular group. Contrast that with the high stakes associated with casual misstatements in the public eye today. Book deals, endorsements and entire empires fall if the opinion of an individual is viewed as “backward” or at odds with good, clean American ideals.

Hofstadter and the Decline of Intellectualism

Written two decades after World War I, Hofstadter’s 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life looks at movements in the U.S. that contributed to a decline in rationalism. Hofstadter talks in depth about the role of democratic education in promoting anti-intellectual tendencies. He argued that there was a difference between excellence and fairness in education. Schools had two great responsibilities: to educate the public and to produce thinkers to take Americans to the next level of intellectual thought. Hofstadter believed that the first of those responsibilities was being accomplished at the expense of the second.

However, Hofstadter argued that democracy was not the only cause for a decline in rationalism. In his view the influence of Protestant heritage and of a generally excessive reliance on religion had contributed to shallowness in American thought since the dawning of the nation. Long before Americans relied on the evening news or their Twitter feed to sum up what was important in their world, Americans were depending on religious entities for direction. Thinkers like Hofstadter saw great dangers in allowing a larger group to dictate social and religious norms.

Utilitarianism, or placing the rights of a collective group above individuals, was another aspect of the American “majority rule” way of thinking with which Hofstadter took issue.  How can opposing viewpoints be considered if conformity with majority opinions is favored? The idea that the outcome of an action determined its value was flawed, Hofstadter believed, because it provided a very narrow definition of how a society should behave.

Why Hofstadter’s Theories Matter in K-12 Learning

Hofstadter’s assertion can be applied to the current state of K-12 education. The success of a particular school is measured in graduation numbers, college placement rates and improvements in standardized test results from one year to the next. These short-term statistics boost bragging rights and influence public school funding, but they do not take into account the long-term education of the students. The application of cut-and-dry metrics to K-12 education leaves no room for interpretation and no space for critical thinking. Essentially telling students what facts they need to memorize to move up in life deprives them of the satisfaction of learning on their own terms. When educational expectations are reduced to the lowest common denominator, short-term numbers go up but intellectual thought becomes a casualty.

This series will, in part, explore Hofstadter’s claims from half a century ago that the democratization of schools has actually hurt intellectual growth. Public education, measured by initiatives like standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act, is basically democratic. But as we seek to level playing fields and treat all students equally, are we sacrificing intellectual growth? To put it another way, are the American virtues of equality and access to free education actually hurting the progress of intellectual thought in the nation’s children?  Are the next generations of Americans in danger of a descent into savagery because of how they are educated?

 

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Disengaged Students, Part 4: The Evolution of Anti-Intellectualism

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The tendency to view scientific fact as merely one theory in a great sea of possible understandings is deeply ingrained in Americans.  This tendency has been deliberately fostered. Since the nation’s founding, people in authoritative positions have periodically managed to convince citizens that actual science is subjective and on the same plane as other unproven theories. While, the term “scientific theory” actually refers to those understandings which have been tested, proven and accepted as the truth in the scientific community, people opposed to these facts on political or religious grounds have often used the term “theory” to disparage the actual validity of the information.

Perhaps no scientific theory has demonstrated this phenomenon more than evolution. When the now legendary Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925 captured the nation’s attention, the strong forces of scientific thought and religious fundamentalism went up against each other in an attempt to decide what should be taught in public schools. Creationism, which rationalists saw as nothing more than a fictional story with a religious purpose, was pitted against the controversial but certainly evidence-based “theory” of the descent of man made popular by Charles Darwin. High-school science teacher John Scopes was seated in the defendant’s chair, but more than his reputation was on the line. The American people looked to the legal system to sort out what they should believe about where they came from and whether their existence was divine or was simply an evolving state in the grand plan of nature.

The actual impact on American society of Scopes’ guilty verdict is debatable, since it was later overturned. The arguments on the part of the prosecution, including William Jennings Bryan’s assertion of the historical accuracy of the Biblical creation story, may seem antiquated by even fundamentalist standards today. Nevertheless, evolution is still treated by many as just one of several explanations for the existence of man, not as the leading scientific theory. For all the scientific and technological advancements made in nearly a century since the Scopes trial, evolution is still considered a matter of opinion, not fact, when it comes to the how and why of human existence.

Misuse of the Word “Evolution”

Some of this has to do with the careless or disingenuous way in which the concept of evolution has sometimes been used outside actual scientific circles. The 19th English philosopher Herbert Spencer used Darwin’s biological research to support the notion that humans were supposed to live in varying states of privilege. Spencer, and later Ernst Haeckel, used the strictly biological parts of evolution to justify social injustice and even eugenics, claiming that white people were more civilized and intelligent than black people as a result of evolution, and that the men who championed their prospective business industries were highly evolved specimens of humanity who deserved more wealth than less-evolved people.

The problem with this use of scientific theory to describe social conditions, besides its blatant misuse of Darwin’s intentions, was that it made more enemies for the actual theory of evolution. Church groups already leery of Darwin’s disproving of Creationism certainly could not sit by and allow the poor to be treated badly in the name of evolution. The term “survival of the fittest” took on a cut-throat, unfeeling meaning that even non-religious people had to question.

Most people understood that humans are not on the same level as animals. In fact Darwin concurred with this understanding, but some people who claimed to be his followers did not, and the inhumane views propounded by those followers tainted Americans’ understanding of Darwin’s original theory. Now, over a century and a half after On the Origin of the Species was first published, Americans are not much closer to a collective acceptance of the facts than they were in 1859.

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Disengaged Students, Part 3: The Role of Nationalism

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The 20th century saw the rise of a new sort of anti-intellectualism in America, one stemming from a nationalist perspective. The idea that love of country trumped all other ideas and ideals was popularized during both World Wars, and exacerbated by the Communist paranoia and McCarthyism in the decades that followed. Speaking out against war or showing sympathy with other countries at odds with the U.S. was frowned upon, and sometimes outright condemned. Questioning the reasoning of war as a concept was seen as direct disloyalty to the country.

Even today movies that showcase nationalist perspectives, like 1995’s classic Braveheart, remain popular with Americans, despite the fact that nationalism was not actually a European philosophy until the 18th century. It is more likely that 13th-century William Wallace performed his feats of bravery (much exaggerated in the Hollywood version) out of loyalty to his individual tribe rather than a grandiose faithfulness to Scotland. Still, the American tendency to cover all sins with flag-waving patriotism found its roots in the 20th century and still exists today.

Love, Loyalty and Loss of Debate

That school of nationalist thought which was widely accepted following the two world wars came into question as anti-war protests grew in strength during the Vietnam War. The anti-war demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War were met with counter-attacks by pseudo-intellectuals like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Though he attempted to explain the rationale behind the alarming number of U.S. casualties in intellectual terms, the American public saw through his attempt at dumbing down the realities of the war. For demonstrators who spoke out against the Vietnam War, fighting was a poor substitute for the harder work of actually seeking out true change.

Many of the soldiers in Vietnam were the sons of World War I and World War II veterans who were witnessing the cyclical nature of wars that seemingly had no end. As the soldiers from the 1940s and 1950s aged, it is reasonable to assume that at least some of them experienced a feeling of helplessness, believing their sacrifices really had not made enough of an impact, since their own children were back fighting the same battles under a new banner. Even today, as struggles in the Middle East stretch across two decades, Americans have become desensitized to what the ongoing loss of life means in a world that seems unable ever to be truly at peace.

This nationalist challenge to intellectualism, like the fundamentalist challenge discussed earlier, is based on an orthodoxy which forbids questioning and reasoned disagreement.  While it is less pronounced than in previous generations, it still exists and integrates itself in our schools.

But are we building a spirit of national camaraderie at the expense of intellectualist thought?

 

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Disengaged Students, Part 2: The Anti-Intellectualism of Thomas Jefferson

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

It is easy to blame the rise of anti-intellectualism on the vagaries of the digital age, but in fact anti-intellectualism has been present in America from the beginning of our national history, and its roots lie in other civilizations.

The Roman Republic had anti-intellectual overtones, particularly when it came to assimilation of new cultures. Roman culture was seen as providing a model of the “right” way to live, speak and practice religion.  Questioning, dissent and rational analysis were no more welcome in ancient Rome than in certain radical groups of contemporary Americans.  Deportation of “dangerous” free-thinking groups was a common practice in Rome. The Roman fear of letting in outsiders, thus exposing Roman-born citizens to the danger of becoming the minority, is reminiscent of some American sentiments regarding immigration reform today. As the Romans learned, and as Americans have discovered, fear-driven resistance to outside change cannot keep change from happening sooner or later. The idea that control of movement over a particular group can and should be mandated by any government entity is an old one, but alive and well in American culture still.

Fear of outside influences was not the only hallmark of anti-intellectualism in America. As early as colonial times, influential men wrote about the danger of a public educated in progressive thought. The famous Puritan John Cotton spoke out against too much education, saying it made the learned “more fit to act for Satan” and therefore a danger to society.

Another problem for intellectuals in the early days of American colonialism was that they were considered less valuable than those with practical skills like farming, construction or other hands-on tasks. Lofty thoughts without clear application to the practical side of life were seen as irrelevant to the physical tasks of building a new nation. Furthermore, most of the people who arrived in early America were not part of the so-called intellectual group of Europeans. They were working folks who had reason to flee their home countries in pursuit of freedom from persecution. They possessed a type of intellectual thought that cannot be taught, but lacked the education which might have enabled them to relate those thoughts to other revolutionary and intellectual ideas in history.

Jeffersonian Contradictions

Thomas Jefferson has long been described in history books as an intellectual who was partially responsible for founding America on concepts of equality. Contemporary history, however, paints a different picture of Jefferson as a man who owned slaves and fathered illegitimate children through abuse of his master status. Jefferson didn’t actually believe in equality for all; he actually believed in limited equality as long as it benefitted his own gains. Jefferson used his education and position in society to justify his own misdeeds when it came to slavery and general treatment of people in lower classes.

While his writings contribute greatly to the causes of reason and equality, his life seems to have offered some justification for the anti-intellectual tendencies of many of his contemporary compatriots.

 

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Disengaged Students, Part 1: How did American Anti-Intellectualism Begin?

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Americans pride themselves on their high ideals. On national holidays Americans delight in quoting phrases like “all men are created equal” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The ideologies of freedom of religion, democratic government, and socio-economic mobility are ingrained in American children beginning in pre-K educational settings. While these ideologies are admired from a distance, real progress in reaching these goals is undercut by a growing national trend: anti-intellectualism.

The Why of Academic Disengagement

College students today are more academically disengaged than ever before, and this is a direct result of their K-12 classroom experiences. A UCLA survey found that college freshmen in 1997 had spent less time than any previous freshman class on homework and extracurricular activities when they were in high school. K-12 students are shaped by a media-frenzied society which promotes instant gratification and by an educational system that tries simultaneously to compete with attention-grabbing media and to keep all students on the same plane by watering lessons down. The outcome is a growing group of students who know much less than their ancestors did, and who care very little for educational pursuits that do not immediately affect their day-to-day lifestyles.

Academic disengagement does not discriminate. In his book Beyond the Classroom, researcher Laurence Steinberg finds that economic status, race and ethnicity do not have a much of an impact on K-12 student engagement. Steinberg concludes that anti-intellectualism and the accompanying disinterest in educational pursuits is a nationwide epidemic and that the number of students who simply do not care about what is being taught has never been higher. This is what might be expected from students who approach educational pursuits with a feeling of entitlement based on years of low expectations in education settings.  When students encounter a teacher who demands more than some of their previous instructors they become resentful and feel they should not be asked to do so much. A course with difficult requirements is written off by students as being “unfair.”

A Nation of Slackers?

Though the “slacker” mentality certainly affects students in other countries, American students are the poster children for this syndrome. More American children are attending college than ever before, but these students are less interested in what is being taught than their predecessors were. The push for equality in education, starting with the youngest pre-K students, has devalued educational content. Instead of raising the standards for all children, the US has lowered the educational bar under the guise of giving everyone a fair shot.  But in fact equality in educational opportunities and the demands placed on students are not necessarily correlated; difficulty and complexity of education need not suffer in order to promote equal opportunity. Dumbing down American students is not a formula for progress in future generations.

The U.S. has been affected by anti-rationalism and by self-contradiction from its earliest days. The founding fathers wrote movingly about inalienable rights and freedom from persecution, but they avoided outlawing slavery or giving women a share in the governance of the new country when they signed their names to formative documents. The liberties they outlined could be afforded only if they did not stand in the way of personal gain.

This is not to say that the signers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were completely devoid of intellectualism or that they were narrow-minded.  They poured over documents like the 13th century Magna Carta and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 Of the Social Contract to seek guidance for setting up a fair government that blended the best of what was already in existence with fresh, all-American ideas.

There was really no way in which the elite group of men entrusted with writing the country’s blueprints could have addressed every political or social issue with surety, but thankfully they knew enough to include reasonable avenues for change in the future. That “open for interpretation” mentality, however, has handicapped intellectual pursuits since the dawning of this great nation.

Roots in Anti-Intellectualism

From America’s earliest days as a nation to the present day a war between intellectualism, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the “theory that knowledge is wholly or mainly derived from pure reason,” and its enemy anti-intellectualism, often entrenched with deep emotional and spiritual attachments, has raged.  Though less vehement during certain periods of time, particularly prosperous ones, the battle for the adaptation of rational thought in American society has always been present.

It would seem, however, that the nation in the first quarter of the 21st century is in a particularly heightened state of polarization in the intellectualism spectrum. Despite attempts to broaden their world view, and expanding ability to communicate beyond the barriers of the past, Americans seem to be trending toward further division when it comes to the controversial issues of the day. Consider creationism versus evolutionary theory – one is based solely on faith and the other on science, yes the latter is still called into question when taught in certain areas of the country.

So how can the pursuit of intellectual knowledge be regained in our K-12 classrooms? Or is it past the point of no return?