In Pursuit of Intellectualism
While I'm no longer a teacher, I still hear from some of my former students from time-to-time informing me about their studies, asking questions, or with words of gratitude. This one in particular hit my inbox with an intriguing question today.
Would love to hear YOUR opinions on the topic, too!
STUDENT'S QUESTION: Do you think America is more anti or pro intellectual today ?
"Short answer: Yes. America is INCREASINGLY anti-intellectual.
Long answer: Kind of. There are a lot of nuances that don't allow the matter to be so easily defined. Like most issues (racial, social, sexuality, etc) there are things that are better and things that are worse when it comes to intellectualism.
On the side, our country is increasingly MORE educated as post-secondary education is kind of a requirement for most job fields but education isn’t necessarily intellectualism. While college used to be all about intellectualism it has now devolved into glorified job training. University used to be about pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge, gaining a broad understanding of a wide array of specialized concepts, and a free-discussion of differences in opinion; that is simply not the case in the modern day. Most students are forced to go there by parents, have a fear of future debt (and therefore don't want to spend extra time there), and face a VERY polarized world which doesn't truly value critical discussion.
We also have the wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips and searchable within a few keystrokes, but fewer use this in an intellectual way than use it purely for self-gratifying entertainment. While there is nothing wrong with people choosing to use their time in the way they see fit, echo chambers, social media bubbles, and disinformation make the average person ill-equipped to advance their own intellectualism unless they have been trained to do so which education/society are not great at possible because a pacified populace is easier to rule than a thinking one.
Education is NOT interested in intellectualism in the modern day. While individual teachers take up this mantle and do the best they can, the system wants docile test-takers who think in a formulaic fashion so that their thoughts are equally formulaic which, unfortunately, turns those interested in furthering intellectualism off. In my 12 years in education, I witnessed the degradation of the public education system at the expense of quality education, meaningful discourse, and student growth. There are a million reasons for this (most political, sadly) but at the end of the day, education is a business that employs many people and is focused on public image and metrics rather than actually promotion intellectualism and therefore will be maintained no matter the cost to society.
Finally, it’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of any body that seeks to tell people “truths” about “myth” in order to control their behaviors and thought. And while religious ideas (“God”, order to the universe, rules of decency) are a wonderful concept, the pushing of them at global and governmental levels is damaging in my opinion. Organized religion is, at its root, anti-intellectual (believe the text, what the “teacher” of it says, or bad things will happen) and since we indoctrinate youth regularly to it (against their will) it is one of the leading factors of our anti-intellectual society. If you are taught that every answer goes back to “because God” that IS anti-intellectual.
So, yes. A LOT has changed since the 80s, some good, some not-so-much. But isn’t that human history? We tend to think of the world as a steady progression from “dark ages” to enlightenment but I look at it as more of a dense fog that becomes a little less thick over time yet never fully lifts. While old problems have improved, new ones have stepped in to replace them and none of them ebb or flow at consistent rates."
