How anti-intellectualism and narrow ideologies are destroying the education system in America.

Courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education:

 Anti-intellectualism and ideological dogmatism in the guise of parental involvement is a significant concern in education today, and parents and other noneducators have lately stepped way out of line in their pursuit of more control over the education systems in this country. The most recent obvious example of the phenomenon is the debacle in North Carolina in September, when a Randolph County school board voted to ban Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel Invisible Man following a 12-page diatribe against the book by Kimiyutta Parson, the mother of an 11th grader (who referred to high-school students as “young children” in her letter). 

Parson objected to, among other things, the sexual content of the novel, which I find amusing considering that in recent years the teen birth rate in Randolph County, N.C., was almost twice the national average, with teen pregnancy accounting for 60 to 80 per 1,000 births. Something tells me that the teenagers in that county have more than a passing familiarity with sexual themes, and don’t need to read Invisible Man for tips. 

What I do not find amusing, however, is that a single parent and unqualified board members felt that they could pass judgment on literature without any significant experience in literary criticism, curriculum development, or, even, apparently, basic critical thinking. For example, one board member, Gary Mason, said that he could not find any “literary value” in the text. I have scoured the journals and the Internet, but I can find no record of Gary Mason’s credentials as a literary critic. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, but should uninformed opinion be the basis of public-education policy? Absolutely not—unless you think it’s OK for someone who has opinions on medical care but no education or training in it to conduct delicate brain surgery. 

Such interference in elementary and secondary education is a crucial issue for college instructors because we rely on a successful and well-managed public-education system to prepare students for higher education. I need my students to have a certain background—to be exposed to such challenging material as Invisible Man, for example—before they reach college, so that I can actually teach at the college level. 

But when students are not allowed to read, explore, and engage with different kinds of course content due to the ideological, anti-intellectual practices of many parents and school districts, they arrive unprepared for and unable to succeed in college courses. We should not wonder why so many students struggle in college. They are simply not intellectually prepared. 

Certainly anti-intellectualism is nothing new in American life. Richard Hofstadter noted this as far back as 1963 in his Pulitzer Prize-winning study Anti-intellectualism in American Life. Susan Jacoby’s more recent examination, The Age of American Unreason (2008), asserted that the nation’s current “strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism” is damaging our democratic process and cultural development. In its review of Jacoby’s work, The New York Times noted that “conservatives have turned the term ‘intellectual,’ like the term ‘liberal,’ into a dirty word in politics.” 

Sadly, this anti-intellectualism has made our culture abandon the respect it once had for educators. It has also created a generation of college students who shrink from real intellectual engagement, who are so influenced by our current partisan culture that any significant opportunities for rigorous and honest classroom debate are rapidly disappearing. In fact, it’s not uncommon for today’s college students to mirror their parents’ disdain for college professors; for example, after failing an examination, a student once told me, “Just because you have a Ph.D. doesn’t mean you know more about American history than I do.” 

I was sad for that student because he was missing out on the opportunity to learn more, and more different things, to add to his own knowledge. This is the most heartbreaking result of the current influence of social and cultural anti-intellectualism in education: It is creating missed opportunities for students.

Personally I think all of this is purposeful, and part of an organized effort by religious conservatives to protect their interests and keep the youth of America dumbed down enough to continue buying into their bullshit.

After all how better to keep church attendance up, and hang onto Republican voters than to keep Americans ignorant, frightened, and easily manipulated?

And they could not care less what kind of damage is done to the country in the process.