This is a reaction to book writte in response to Susan Jacoby’s book: Age of American Unreason
(This entry was inspired by her appearance on the Colbert Report last night and this article in the NY Times)
Come on, guys. Western Education always has been a colonially structured institution who’s very organization marginalizes and pigeonholes our youth by spending too much time trying to control and restrict them rather than offer them the intellectual tools they will need to (quote)succeed(unquote). Jacoby does not even begin to properly de-construct what might be causing the American “unreason” — no. Her argument only scratches the superficial surface, labeling “semiliterate blogs [and media] of all political persuasions [and] institutions of so-called higher education that offer courses in “fat studies” and horror films but do not require students to obtain a thorough grounding in American and world history, science, and literature” as breeding this “mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy” — alright, so now that institutions have recognized fields of study beyond the ones she names as “elite” and “basic” — they are a threat to democracy?
First and foremost, I am put off by her tone. Her actual words contradict themselves, while her tone is condemning and authoritative. For a moment, I thought that the limit on free intellectual development was what we were fighting against, but nope, thanks to Sue, I now realize that freedom is the true threat to democracy, and we need to keep standardizing what we think kids should know in order to keep “democracy” alive. Good one. The kids I teach at my job do not have the luxury of learning anything useful because their teachers obsess over preparing them for standardized tests and low-income jobs.
Second, I am put off by her values. Her characterization of “fat studies” as an example of the path higher education has taken only continues to spew contradiction. Higher education realistically reflects our economic system. Fields of study are recognized by institutions because there exists a market for training people to work in those industries. NYU just launched their Environmental Studies program, which was created by the demand for the Department within the actual school. Before this year, the NYU corporates did not note it as a profitable possibility, however, the NYU Film program is one of the best in the country and millions of dollars are poured into it each year. This is all due to the types of job markets available in and around the city. I took both Sociology 101 and Anthropology 101 in college. Even though both classes spent the entire semester presenting me with limits of their respective fields, I realized that they are both exactly the same — the only difference is the approach. Though for some strange reason, there is enough of an intellectual market for both fields to coexist in the same institution. Either way, it’s the market that legitimizes fields of high education. I feel that people like Susan Jacoby cling to these age-old imperatives of “basic knowledge” that actually disqualify higher thinking and perpetuate the historical misconceptions these newer fields are trying to break through.
This argument also goes for anyone in support of cutting art and music curricula in public schools — but something tells me, Jacoby would object to these educational cut-backs. Suddenly, her argument loses its definition. What gives these scholars the right to condemn “dumbing down” even? Over the course of my life as an intellectual being, I have found that it is not my ability to score high on IQ tests or locate the significant plot point in European History that has brought me the happiness I had craved — it has been the little, simple things in life that anyone could appreciate no matter what sort of background in “standardized facts” they maintain. For example, I really like the sound of birds chirping in the morning. That makes me very happy and it will continue to do so. Because it makes me so happy, I took the time to find out what kinds of birds frequented my area and research the mechanics of their behavior (migration, mating, chirping, nesting, etc). I now know a lot about birds — why? Because of the information on “semi-literate” blogs and media resources all over the internet have brought me towards a greater appreciation for these birds without the back-breaking effort of paying for a degree in ornithology, a field that perhaps Susan might approve of. Though even if I never auto-educated myself on local birds, their chirps would still make me as happy and their consistency in the summer would condition me into learning a few things about them rather passively. If I want to know something, I will learn it. I think we put too much emphasis on achieving arbitrary degrees rather than foster the population’s thirst for knowledge. Hey, I have an idea! People learn only what they want to learn. So here we get into an argument of values — the NYTimes article, “Clueless America” further perpetuates these misguided standards and values in how we evaluate American intellectualism:
“An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life“
—> so here we have Mr. Herbert imposing economic values onto intellectual development. He implicitly makes clear that youngsters who do not follow the guidelines towards falling within a “comfortable class” as “clueless” –> bullshit, hadn’t you ever heard of STREET SMARTS?
He further imposes those same-old factual values by highlighting that “a recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.“
—> Alright, taken with what I quoted above, how would Adolf Hitler, the Bill of Rights and knowing the dates of the civil war help me maintain a middle-class life??? If I can recall that working as, let’s sayyy, a web-designer might put you into the upper-middle class bracket. How do any of those “facts” help your vocation? Does a memorization of American history offer you a much sought-after upward social mobility? No.
So, yes, Americans need to brush up a bit on their “facts” but in no way is it because they’re dumb or unintellectual. These writers are concentrating on irrelevant standardized information to draw these conclusions.
So before I ride my bike into Manhattan to go swimming today, I’d like to throw this question out for anyone interested in creating a discourse:
Would you rather be smart or healthy?
PS – Yesterday’s Earth Day festivities in Bushwick were fun, easy and educational. Mmm, mmm, mmm – what an awesome combo.
