Yes, there is shame in not knowing

[kpete]

By Charles Taylor DECEMBER 19, 2016

There’s no shame in not knowing; there’s shame in not wanting to know. For years I’ve said this to my college students as a way of telling them that learning should never stop. But I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that, at a certain point, there should be shame in not knowing. What brought me to this point? Too many students unaware of anything before they were born: creative-writing students who have never heard of Edith Wharton or Ralph Ellison; journalism students who can’t identify the attorney general; students who don’t know what the NAACP or the Geneva Convention are. A teacher’s job is to teach, not shame. But how do you teach when, even when they reach college, students are not expected to have basic knowledge of our history, our culture, our government?

I raise this because in the weeks since the presidential election, in the guise of tolerance and understanding and that most useless of bromides, “having a dialogue,” we are being told that there should be no shame in not knowing. The emerging narrative of this election is that Donald Trump was elected by people who are sick of being looked down on by liberal elites. The question the people pushing this narrative have not asked is this: Were the elites, based on the facts, demonstrably right?


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Time was when battered women were told by police or by their priests that they must try not to antagonize their abusive husbands. That is exactly how Americans of color, gay Americans, undocumented immigrants, and women are now being addressed: They’re being told they must respect people who believe they have the right to jail, deport, or beat — if not yet kill — anyone who makes them uncomfortable. Because, of course, unlike the black or brown or queer people on the coasts, those Trump voters are the real America.

The apologists for Donald Trump voters have given their imprimatur to a culture that equates knowledge and expertise with elitism, a culture ignorant of the history of the country it professes to love and contemptuous of the content of its founding documents. Trump said his campaign would prove the experts wrong. He was right. The Trump supporters who in the last few weeks have contributed to the sudden surge in hate crimes, often invoking the name of their candidate, have shown, much more than the experts, they understand exactly what his candidacy was about.

MORE:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/12/19/yes-there-shame-not-knowing/FgRfohT2d17oKRle9LbiSM/story.html?event=event25

[Girard442]

1. Voters have a moral obligation to do due diligence. NT

[RobinA]

2. These Days,

knowing is likely to earn one the title of "coastal elite." Apparently only people on the coasts can read or question what is presented to them. I'm not sure that's true, but it seems to be the current mentality that includes "unknowing is smart."

I wouldn't teach today for all the money in the world. I'd have to kill myself.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. It really does seem, at times, that being well read and well informed is considered detrimental.

Some appear to be convinced that ignorance is something to be proud of.

[2naSalit]

4. They seem to see themselves as "untainted".....nt

[Mc Mike]

7. Untainted by a single scintilla

of reality based knowledge.

[2naSalit]

8. Precisely.

It's like they want to go back to that great mythological time before Eve fed the proverbial apple to Adam.

[Mc Mike]

10. Similar to Dorfman's critique of Mickey Mouse, combining influence and ingenuousness.

Terry Gilliam riffed on that in The Fisher King, juxtaposing Pinocchio and the Fisher King.

[Lonestarblue]

5. Blame the Politicians Ruining Our Schools

I've spent my entire career in the education field, and the more politicians meddle with curriculum rules, the less students learn. Think about the Kansas attempt to teach creationism as fact and evolution as theory. Or the former Texas Education Agency requiring social studies "standards" that bore no relationship to historical fact. One result was a textbook that avoided using the word "slave" by describing slaves as immigrants from Africa! For years the conservative states have demanded watered-down curriculum, and students are asked to develop critical thinking skills only around accepted conservative "facts." I helped develop challenging curriculum for language arts students, and some parents demanded changes because the curriculum was two liberal--meaning that students were required to research differing opinions and draw their own conclusions based on facts rather than dogma. Most schools using the program saw improvements in their students' cognitive skills, but politicians and parents alike demanded that the program be dropped. We need to start electing progressives to school boards and to local and state positions if we want to influence the education of the masses and ensure that people are able to tell the difference between truth and lies.

[Mc Mike]

6. Welcome, Lonestar. My wife's AFT.

There's a great educator who posted here named MadFloridian. Look her journal entries up with the google search box.

I'm not telling you that to say you need to learn something. I see you know a lot about the issues, I'm just suggesting Mad's journal so you can see you're not alone here, and give you something interesting to read.

[iluvtennis]

9. very well said....i totally agree nt

[byronius]

11. Good teachers are the most important and powerful force possible.

Mrs. Klimko showed us slides of black men that had been chained to trees and burned; she spurred me to learn more and expunged my familial racism from me forever.

A college professor whose name escapes me made us all read Abbie Hoffman's 'Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture', an act for which she would probably be canned today, but which set me on my current journey. (Witness my avatar.)

I agree wholly with your post, but I am reminded of a screenplay agent who told me that it was not surprising that bad movies get made, but that any good movies get made at all. Behavior that was condoned and universal when I was a child is now scorned by a majority -- I could not have imagined any of this in 1972, when n-word jokes and extreme misogyny were absolutely everywhere around me, even among the people who wore the clothes and listened to the music of rebellion.

It's too slow. But it's too late for these people to rebuild from the ashes the bullcrap of prior centuries. They were in full panic of being extinguished; now they get a moment in the sun, but it will pass, and they will all be villains in history books.

Maybe sometimes the threat needs to be made real so that knowledge becomes critical for survival? God I hate saying that. I can only hope it works out like that.

[hunter]

12. I had a physics professor who wrote brutal exams that were impossible to pass...

...if you didn't know what he was teaching.

Memorizing a bunch of facts, being able to do the math by rote, that wouldn't get you through his class. You had to feel the subject in your gut.

Kids who had been straight-A students in high school because they could memorize great piles of crap and regurgitate the "right" answers on standardized tests would break down in tears.

This professor was the nicest guy in the world, always accessible and friendly, his teaching assistants were never cruel, but it was impossible to pass his class if you didn't know some physics.

As a nation we have failed any student who graduates from high school without critical thinking skills, without curiosity, without the desire to seek greater knowledge just for the sake of learning it.

I look at Presidents like Reagan, George W. Bush, and now Donald Trump, and I see venal, incurious, and ultimately empty people.

Sadly, a large number of U.S. Americans don't have the critical thinking skills to recognize their abusers. The Republican sabotage of our public schools is deliberate. The devils behind the curtain know exactly what they are doing.

[radical noodle]

13. My husband taught high school in a rural area

Ignorance has been popular in some rural areas since the 90s when Dumb & Dumber and Beavis & Butthead were all the rage. Kids fell all over themselves to get the worst possible grades. After he retired he taught at a small university for a time and the ignorance had filtered up to them.

This has not always been the case. Rural people were once as eager as anyone to do well, to get a good education and to succeed.