are Americans hostile to knowledge?

[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html

Worth it for the "cultural conservationist" label alone. I've been looking for a phrasing of that sentiment.

Comments

[asa-dachi.livejournal.com]

On the overall topic, the dumber-ing of Americans, I have to say this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Anti-intellectualism was one of the forces that helped Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson in back-to-back elections.

I think perhaps the sentiment behind this is a combination of jealousy, fear, anger, frustration... on both parts. When people who are too lazy, ill-equipped or uninterested to study a topic have their opinions questioned they choose to react from the guy instead of listening and evaluating. In contrast, idealist intellectuals who KNOW they have it all figured out tend to stop listening and start debating at the first opportunity, never stopping to think that there might be serious considerations that hadn't crossed their minds.

In the end factors such as the rise of global communication, the web-nets, the 24/7 media presence, etc. perhaps more frequently irritate and remind us of this sentiment, regardless of which aspect affects us directly.

To the specific point raised about our schools, it seems to be the biggest issue lies in the home. If kids were being raised with proper values, learning self-control, celebrating individual expression and creativity, etc. then they wouldn't need a self-esteem incubator in the public school system. They fire a teacher for adding to the sexual education curriculum beyond approved state standards. But they demonize the same faculty if their precious snowflakes are spreading STD's because they weren't taught to wrap that willy...

Okay... I'm heading back to my rocker to take a nap. :P

-asa

[heron61.livejournal.com]

On the overall topic, the dumber-ing of Americans, I have to say this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Anti-intellectualism was one of the forces that helped Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson in back-to-back elections.

I was going to post something very similar. A distrust of knowledge and intelligence has been common in the US since at least the mid 19th century. I don't understand the origins of it all, but I do know that this anti-intellectualism is quite pervasive. I first noticed it in the mid 1970s, when I visited the UK as a young teen and listened to ordinary middle class non-academics speaking in ways that I only typically saw among academics in the US, and it's clearly been around significantly longer than that.

I'm fairly certain that at least some of it came from the process of the US distinguishing itself from Europe, which has been long-characterized in the US as a continent of people who are lazy, over-educated, and possibly effeminate, traits that were contrasted with US traits like being "hard-headed", "realistic", and placing much value in "self-determination".