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

[heron61.livejournal.com]

But our school system remains a mystery to me. We've poured trillions into our country's education, and it continues to decline. I don't know what the cause is, though I've read dozens of theories to explain it. Maybe it has to do with some of these ideas I've put forth, or maybe, somehow, we're just growing stupider for no reason.

I've seen two factors at work. As someone educated in a public school in the 1970s that was in a school district where most parents were both wealthy and powerful, I noticed a significant difference in my education and the education of most other people my own age, and especially with younger people.

The education I received was very clearly designed to make the students think critically. Even among people my own age, I've found that sort of education to be shockingly rare, and it's become even less common since that time. Also, since the early 1980s, education funding has declined, at least in useful ways, and in many places, in all ways. There's usually plenty of money for anti-drug programs, anti-violence & gang programs, abstinence-only sex education and similar authoritarian nonsense, but not all that much for actual education.

Teacher's salaries are utterly wretched and class sizes have grown in many (perhaps most) school districts, so in many schools the teachers are split between the ones who are heavily overworked but dedicated, and the ones who couldn't find a better job. Throw in the need to appease fundys by teaching nonsense and removing actual science from textbooks and the result is far from good.