March 30, 2012 5:38 AM

Amerika: Stupid ain't the liability it used to be...and edumication is WAY overrated

Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit…. It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught.

From time to time, I bemoan the reality that America is coming to resemble the set from Idiocracy. While I’m not going to poke fun at individual Americans, collectively we seem to have devolved into an aggregation of anti-intellectual, easily propagandized sheep. One could argue that my perspective may be a generational one- the equivalent of the “We’re going to Hell in a handbasket” argument. I suppose there’s at least an element of truth in that, but the America I see around me is a land where intellectual rigor is…well, how many Americans could even spell “intellectual” or “rigor?”

As evidenced even by one Presidential candidate (Rick Santorum), intellectuals and those willing to think critically are worthy only of denigration as snobs. Santorum referred to President Obama as a “snob” for wanting everyone to go to college- which isn’t even what the President said. Even if the President HAD said that, though, what’s wrong with wanting everyone to reach their educational potential? What’s wrong with wanting people to have the tools to achieve their dreams? Since when is having an active, curious intellect a bad thing? And how is it that a man with three degrees can, with no trace of irony, belittle the importance of edumication?

Despite what Santorum (and he’s not the only Conservative in this camp) may say, education still matters. Those with an education aren’t just propeller heads who look down their effete, over-educated noses at REAL Americans. No, those with an education are those who discover new medicines and treatments and invent technologies that help to make our world a smaller and more connected place. How do people create and invent things that move America forward and allow us to continue holding our own in an increasingly competitive global marketplace? Not surprisingly, it involves education.

If this lack of knowledge is the result of the years of dumbing down of high school curriculum and of families that don’t talk to their children about the past, there’s another more pernicious kind of ignorance we confront today. It is the product of years of ideological and political polarization and the deliberate effort by the most fanatical and intolerant parties in that conflict to manufacture more ignorance by lying about many aspects of our history and even our recent past. I recall being stunned some years back when I read that a majority of Americans told pollsters that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 terrorist attacks. It struck me as a propaganda feat unsurpassed by the worst authoritarian regimes of the past—many of which had to resort to labor camps and firing squads to force their people to believe some untruth, without comparable success.

We live in an impatient world where people demand simple answers to complex questions and are unwilling to accept that some questions can’t be answered immediately and simply.

The Jeff Foxworthy-hosted Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? is American entertainment at it’s most basic, but it also serves as allegory for the state of our collective intellectual life. We’ve become a society steeped in the reality show ethos, in which the lowest common denominator appeals to the baser instincts of the lowest common denominator. The Internet and cable television allows for the dissemination of corporate disinformation and propaganda so pervasive that far too many Americans are unable to discern truth from propaganda.

Where else on earth would a president who rescued big banks from bankruptcy with taxpayers’ money and allowed the rest of us to lose $12 trillion in investment, retirement, and home values be called a socialist?

Once upon a time, someone speaking nonsense was roundly ignored. Now the ignorant and ill-informed are celebrated by Conservative ideologues as “patriots” and “real Americans”, people unwilling to accept the “lies” of the “Liberal media elite.” Sober discussion has been replaced by shouting, personal insults, and character assassination. “Smart” has become the new “dumb”. In-depth knowledge and the ability to think critically has fallen behind emotion and visceral reaction in importance. Given the variety of silliness that millions of Americans now accept as Gospel, it’s hard not to fear for the future of our country.

  • Christians are persecuted in this country.
  • The government is coming to get your guns.
  • Obama is a Muslim.
  • Global Warming is a hoax.
  • The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
  • Schools push a left-wing agenda.
  • Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
  • Obama hates white people.
  • The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
  • The safety net contributes to poverty.
  • The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

I think our national aversion to intellectual rigor and critical thinking can be summed up in one sentence:

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

That’s right; we collectively disrespect the one group of people charged with educating our children and preparing them to compete in an increasingly global marketplace. School budgets are cut year by year, to the point where our public schools our less institutions of learning than publicly-funded day care. If Johnny can’t read or do basic arithmetic when he graduates from high school, how can he be expected to compete with kids from China, India, and South Korea, countries that take education seriously and revere teachers?

“Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect. That’s why they love politicians who rail against teachers indoctrinating children against their parents’ values and resent the ones who show ability to think seriously and independently. Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest.

When American Exceptionalism becomes but a memory, we won’t be able to blame outside forces…not that Americans will accept responsibility for their own demise, of course. No, we’ll continue to be so convinced of our moral superiority that we’ll blame other countries and default to the one thing we’ll no doubt continue to excel at- invading, killing, and destroying. Conquering is no substitute for market share, but it may be all we’ll have left before long.

I’ve worried for years that America is on the path to resembling the the set from Idiocracy. Honestly, I think we’re already there.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 30, 2012 5:38 AM.

Digging our graves with our teeth, #371 was the previous entry in this blog.

Because it's Friday, here's a drunk Canadian singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the back of a police car is the next entry in this blog.

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