George Monbiot , writing for The Guardian of the UK, asks the question "How did the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance?" He is referring to, of course, the Sarah Palins, Dan Quayles, and Ronald Reagans of our recent political generations, and wonders why it seems (or did seem) that "learning is a grave political disadvantage [in the States]."
Monbiot lends a foreign point of view on our political paradox by positing religion as key to the recently debunked notion that having an education meant you couldn't represent the American people. I mention recently debunked considering the recent election of a well educated man with academics for parents.
As Monbiot points out "it wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic...were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?" Firstly, Monbiot pushes the obvious, "Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people." He then goes on to give some interesting 'facts' about the US in general:
1) one in five adults believes the sun revolves round the earth
2) only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection
3) two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map
4) two-thirds of the US voters cannot name the three branches of government
5) the math skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD
Monbiot juxtaposes these woeful details with, "the US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine." After identifying this inconsistency he refers to a book written by Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, which argues in America's defense...sort of. Jacoby, as described by Monbiot, justifies America's anti-rationalism, with the example of the rejection of The Origin of Species within the first few decades of its publication. Jacoby explains how Darwin's theory was misconstrued by the likes of Herbert Spencer, who sought to promote a doctrine of social Darwinism. Spencer, with aid from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, asserted "millionaires stood at the top of the scala natura established by evolution," and that government was weakening the nation by disallowing natural selection to weed out the unfit. "Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics." Christian-Americans, as most would, reacted disdainfully. Moreover, a general disgust consumed the pious American's relationship with natural sciences. Monbiot is quick to point to William Jennings Bryan, who now is central to the economic thinking of the Christian right, and WJB's proposition of "rejecting the science of Darwinian evolution and accept[ing] the pseudoscience of social Darwinism."
Jacoby goes on to describe a "intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists" in the US, especially in the southern states where "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order." SJ expains how the largest denomination in the US, the Southern Baptist Convention, "was to slavery what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid." Indeed, refuting Jacoby becomes quite difficult considering that , "a survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on the earth at the same time."
Mobiot ends unsurprisingly on the negative note that, "Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance."
As Americans, we can now look our European liberal democratic siblings in the eye with confidence, and possibly discredit Monbiot's acerbic over generalizations and speculations about the consequences of being the only Western Democracy "in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing." Hopefully "the age of American unreason" has come to an end with the elections and with the realization that, "One theme [which is] both familiar and clear: religion--in particular fundamentalist religion--makes you stupid"
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7 comments:
To call all fundamentalist Christians brain children would be a stretch, but to write them all off as stupid would perhaps be a blunder only one afflicted with the same problem could make. Our society's (and Europe's) obsession with science as the be all and end all of knowledge has reached unbelievable heights and the thoughtlessness on display here only serves to prove that point. It is astonishing that somehow religion could be blamed for creating a stupid populous despite the fact that religion has been systematically removed from public schools, the very instutution that has achieved all time academic lows. It seems that one would be hard pressed to find a church that taught the branches of government, rules of astronomy, goegraphy, or mathematics, yet somehow we reach the conclusion that religion, not the public institutions created for education, has created a stupid society. Homeschooled children, many of them part of the fundamentalist traidition, continue to outscore their publically educated counterparts on standardized tests. All this should be taken with a grain of salt, apparently, because many of them also believe that Darwain may have gotten it wrong. By rejecting this theory, however, many fundamentalist Christians are written off as ignorant. If ignorance hinges on one subject than ignorance truly is bliss. Religious belief will never be popular with those who wander with eyes closed, and if American Christians must endure the label of ignorance than it is a label connected to an eternal reward.
Additionally, it seems ironic that we are to find our societies salvation from "the age of American unreason" in a man who made a constant effort throughout his campaign to assure us of the validity of his religious beliefs. If religion makes you stupid, Obama has convinced us that he is really, really stupid.
Jonny C--
Mobiot addresses your comment on home schooled children and the public school system with these passages:
"A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time."
Although religion "has been systematically removed from public schools" it has not/can not/should not be removed from the teachers according to US religious freedoms.
"This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion."
Considering the removal of religion from the school but not from the teachers, and also considering Monboit's comments on home-schooled children's inability to coup with 'infotainment' because of their limited experience with diverse concepts, what say you jonny c??
Basically, Monbiot is pointing to a correlation, not necessarily a causality, of fundamentalism and ignorance, which might have validity in Islam as well as Christianity. I will admit that calling people stupid because they are religious is an ad hominem fallacy, but he is British so allow him such leeway if only for conversation sake.
Oh, one more thing.
Jacoby and Monbiot differ in that Jacoby writes about the "intellectual isolation of fundamentalists," which would explain why children schooled only by their fundamentalism skewed logic, can still score high on tests.
The problem then for Jacoby is not the lack of intellect, i.e. the ability of a fundamentalist to understand, but their limited exposure to diversity that influences how their intellect serves them.
Mobiat, and apparently you as well, continue to connect intelligence to a belief in evolution. "A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time." To Mobiat, this is the argument. If we stupid Christians don't cope with the "reality" of evolution then we'll never truly be intelligent. He still fails to talk to why homeschooled children score higher on tests in a variety of different subjects. Also, who cares if the age of "infotainment" provides new challenges to homeschoolers? This discussion is supposed to be about intelligence, not about how well one fits in with society. Additionally, the assumption that somehow homeschool children will never be able to cope with society is ridiculous. How many homeschoolers did Mobiat meet and interview in his writings? If I was to make assumptions as freely as he does, I'd guess zero.
The Origin of Species was one of many examples that Jacoby uses to posit her correlation of fundamentalism and ignorance. Mobiot's comment about the Texas survey of state teachers does not concern evolution per se, it concerns dinosaurs living on the earth at the same time as humans and is based on scientific evidence; carbon dating...etc. Biology is not the only discourse that holds the age of the dinosaur to precede the homo sapien by a couple thousand years.
And "fitting into society" or socialization, is key to a liberal democracy; we need to understand each other in order to reckon with inevitable conflict (not violence but conflict). This comes from interaction denied to homeschooled children. Hence, his proposition of "recipe for confusion," of homeschooled children. This is empirically based; the more people peacefully interact with each other the more they get along. It's pretty basic, and accepted by most anyone. Isolation is the key to ignorance. Kant once professed something to the effect of experience without analysis is empty but analysis without experience is blind. I don't think we need a quantitative analysis to tell us such.
While I enjoy the humor and shots at each other more than the content, I feel like you both make valid points. I agree that calling all fundamentalist Christians stupid is dangerous and inaccurate. However, an argument using scientific explanation is generally perceived as more "intelligent" than one involving faith. I think one issue we can all agree with is that compared to other countries, our school system sucks. There is no argument that our test scores are anything but embarrassing. I tend to think that our abysmal scores have more to do with lowered expectations for all students in an attempt to get every child to graduate than they do with religious beliefs. I do think it would be troubling if people grew up taking the simplest answer as the only answer (ex. it is true because God said so) but I am not sure that there are many people that actually do that. As far as homeschooling goes, I think the best thing about homeschooling is also the worst. Children who are homeschooled often have better scores because they got more individual attention than any public school student ever would. The problem is that the homeschooled child is usually only exposed to one aspect or perspective.
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