saying no to ignorance

[ulysses]

Americans are largely anti-intellectual. This is evidently a shock to some.

Not to me. When I was a junior in high school, my mom was on the school board of our small town in Oklahoma. This being the Reagan 80s, there was a big push to use scarce school monies to pay to bring drug dogs into the schools. The majority of the folks who attended the meetings around the time of that issue were all for the dogs, at the expense of replacing the junior high social studies books, which were then older than I was. I remember being gently restrained by one of my teachers after some fool stood up to announce that, given a choice between books and drug dogs, he didn't need books.

Yes, Virginia, Americans are anti-intellectual. We've always been anti-intellectual, as a group. We don't like people smarter than we are, much less trust them. That's the sole reason Idiot Son had to position himself as a yeoman Texas brush-clearer. That's the guy people wanted to have a beer with. The mediocre blue-blood from Connecticut? Not so much.

It's also the reason that McCain/Palin hasn't been laughed out of town already, and for those to whom this is a revelation, it seems cause to seek greener pastures abroad (again). For me, it's why I keep getting up at 5 am to get ready for the school day. For every incurious boob I meet (and I meet a lot - we breed them in Georgia), I think of the Amaryllises and Marquises and Henders and Allysons in my class who *do* read, or who can at least be gotten to read with help, and who are still young enough in the fifth grade to jump out of their seats to be the first to solve a math puzzle at the board.

They'll grow out of that eagerness in time, at least for a few years, as the hormones take hold, but now is when we plant the seed. If even one or two of them reads to their own children as they weren't read to as children themselves, we make headway. I'll take what I can get.

Willful ignorance has been a proud part of the American psyche for a very long time, and it isn't going to go away overnight. Be steady, friends.

[Third Doctor]

I agree

unintentional ignorance is one thing but willful stupidity is in another ball park.

[ulysses]

2. it's a point of pride.

Hell, it's a Chevy commercial.

[PDJane]

1. I'm Canadian.

Until I visited Texas, I would not have believed you. I now do. It's absolutely terrifying, frankly, as is the fundamentalism that I see making headway here, too.

I have just finished reading the Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby, which does make some sense of the tendency, but doesn't make it any easier on my nerves, such as they are.

[ulysses]

3. if it's any consolation,

we've always been this way. The fundies have been on the upswing for a while, sure, but we've always had the tendency.

[Elidor]

4. Education really is the key

It amazes me that so many Americans want to replace learning with faith. But the more mainstream the fundies become, the bigger the inevitable backlash, I think. The number of people who actually embrace militant idiocy is surprisingly small. They're just the loudest and most obnoxious. I hope that an Obama administration will re-fund education and overturn NCLB. Our democracy is only as strong as the minds casting the votes.

And Sarah Palin is the stuff of nightmares.

[ulysses]

5. we can hope for the overturn of NCLB

but I don't know that it'll happen.