How We Killed Expertise (And why we need it back.)

[yallerdawg]

Source: Politico Magazine, by Tom Nichols

In the far less grand homes of ordinary American families, knowledge of every kind is also under attack. Parents argue with their child’s doctor over the safety of vaccines. Famous athletes speculate that the world might actually be flat. College administrators ponder dropping algebra from the curriculum because students keep failing it. This is all immensely dangerous, not only to the well-being of individual citizens, but to the survival of the United States as a republic.

As a result, the implicit social contract between educated elites and laypeople—in which professionals were rewarded for their expertise and, in turn, were expected to spread the benefits of their knowledge—is fraying. Americans live increasingly separate lives based on education and wealth, part of a decades-long “big sort.” What is qualitatively different today is that ordinary citizens seem increasingly confident in their views, but no more competent than they were 30 or 40 years ago. A significant number of laypeople now believe, for no reason but self-affirmation, that they know better than experts in almost every field. They have come to this conclusion after being coddled in classrooms from kindergarten through college, continually assured by infotainment personalities in increasingly segmented media that popular views, no matter how nutty, are virtuous and right, and mesmerized by an internet that tells them exactly what they want to hear, no matter how ridiculous the question.

No country, and especially not a republic based on delegated powers, can maintain the values and practices that sustain democracy when voters remain ignorant about their own system of government. When most Americans think a quarter of the U.S. federal budget is devoted to foreign aid, when more than 70 percent of them cannot name all three branches of government—and nearly a third can’t name even one—the basic structures of American democracy cannot survive.

The Founding Fathers believed that civic virtue was built on education and knowledge. In a republic, citizens need not be experts, but they must learn enough to cast an informed vote. Or, in the words of James Madison: “A people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” If Americans do not rediscover this foundational truth about their own system of government, they not only court disasters from pandemics to wars; they risk ceding their government either to the corruption of a mindless mob—or, in the wake of a disaster, to a new class of technocrats who will never again risk asking for their vote.

Read it all at: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/how-we-killed-expertise-215531?utm_source=Fareed%27s+Global+Briefing&utm_campaign=d01abb5e07-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6f2e93382a-d01abb5e07-83261917

[SwissTony]

1. I thoroughly recommend Nichols' book. n/t