The Pursuit Of Knowing: Thoughts On American "Ignorance" (Part 1)

[I imagine this series will have limited interest to most readers. My interest is to explore what strikes me as a condescending attitude about the causes of "American ignorance."]

A few weeks ago I commented, rather hastily, on the thoughts of Susan Jacoby regarding the state of "knowledge" in the United States. To properly understand what follows, readers should read my "Is Knowledge Midwife To Ignorance?"; they should also read Contratimes friend Randall Sherman's related commentary, "What Are You Going To Do With That? Teach?"

In the early 1990s, while I was pursuing an advanced degree in education (personal difficulties interrupted my studies), I conducted a series of sit-down interviews for a major project in a philosophy of education course. My intent was to divine in part why people believe a high school diploma is desirable; but I also wanted to know what people thought was the most important reason to learn anything at all.

My interest in the question of why we should bother to learn was born a few years earlier when I taught in an alternative education program for troubled high school freshmen. Beside run-ins with the law and various behavioral problems, these children were cursed with something seemingly psychological: they had no motivation to learn. In fact, they scoffed at the idea. Learning was, well, stupid.

When I would try to motivate my students, using every dangled carrot I could imagine, I discovered that their resistance was nearly always rooted in monetary facts. Some students would point to Eddie Van Halen or Slash, two hot guitar slingers, and simply state that they too were going to hit the big payday with their respective rock bands. Van Halen and Slash didn't need high school English or American History to succeed, or so I heard. They just needed an agent and a deal. In fact, there was not a student who did not appeal to some seemingly rebellious role model who had, apparently, stopped learning anything from promotion from sixth grade to induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (or success on an NBA basketball court).

Moreover, nearly every student reminded me that they could just do what their "old man" did. I heard how workers at the paper mill or welders in "where my old man works" made $35 to $40 per hour, plus benefits. One day I recall the entire class laughing at me because I was making under $10 an hour: "Ain't no way we're going to college so we can earn 10 bucks an hour teaching in some dopey high school. We ain't listenin' to no college boy. Ahhhaah!"

I have to say, my students had a point. They could (and would) let me babysit them until they were 16, the legal age for dropping out of high school; they could get jobs down at the paper mill or the steel fabrication plant for fairly big bucks per hour without a diploma. And Slash did make more in a month than I would probably make in a lifetime -- and he wasn't making cash by reading lots of books.

In short, when confronted by true resistance to learning, I discovered that I did not REALLY have an answer to that resistance. My students were savvy, savvy enough to know that I could not come up with a decent reason for learning when so much of the culture in which I lived was all too often rewarding -- rather handsomely -- those who did not apparently need to know what I knew in order to succeed. And if I did manage to find a reason, it was usually rooted in some ideal that transcended the secular values of the classroom: I probably would have to make an appeal that approached the religious. Even if I appealed to the pursuit of happiness, my students rendered happiness in terms of money; knowing, as they did, that the rich were not necessarily happy, these students would reply that a welding job would keep them in their Ford F-250s and Friday night beers indefinitely -- which was all they wanted.

MY INTERVIEWS

For my project, I interviewed 12 or 14 people. One was a master chess player who had written a successful spy novel before becoming a defense attorney (he was not an attorney at the time). One was a child of two world-renowned intellectuals who in her own right had become world-renowned, sitting as she did in a very well-endowed chair at a major university. Another was a lawyer who made a very viable run at the state governor's seat; another person had already succeeded as New Hampshire's governor. Two were ministers: one, an Episcopal priest with degrees from Yale and BU; the other, a successful pastor of the area's largest evangelical church. Another was a trained biologist who had chosen to manage a main street grocery. There was a cabinet-maker in the mix, and a stay-at-home mother, a medical doctor, a high school dropout, and a high school valedictorian (before graduation).

I asked each person two essential questions: What is the single most important reason to earn a high school diploma? and, What is the single most important reason to learn anything at all?

All but one answered that the reason a person should seek the highest level of education was to increase his or her earning potential. In other words, the vast majority of people I interviewed, all from various walks of life, connected learning with earning. Only one person, the high school valedictorian, said that the reason he was learning was so he could help ease the suffering of his fellowman (he was hoping to study bio-engineering so he could create better prostheses for amputees).

Even the two members of the clergy reduced learning to financial terms: Knowledge was simply utilitarian. A person learned in order to transform knowledge into cash.

Now, I did not inform my subjects beforehand what I was exploring; I did not want them to think too long about things. I did this to reflect what is quite common, namely, that the reasons for learning are really hardly ever discussed or reflected upon. If I were to ask readers now to explore why they believed learning was important, and then engaged each reader in debate, I guarantee that we would all discover that most of our thoughts are rife with presumptions, with things we never considered.

In the end, my project focused on the fact that American educators have ably formulated a philosophy of education -- a theory of pedagogy and a list of academic standards -- but have failed to even consider a philosophy of learning (why learn). Granted, most students unquestioningly accept the goals of education. But those who don't may indeed be our schools' most honest and astute pupils, refusing to learn for purposes of increasing their earning potential or for some other purely utilitarian end.

And if Americans just think about it for a moment, there are indeed dozens of very dopey people who yearly acquire incredible wealth, fame and status. "Learning" in any traditional sense, especially as it may be defined by Susan Jacoby, does not necessarily translate into success, happiness, power, or financial stability. Unfortunately, too many folks accept the economic, pragmatic idols of the American cult, rendering many of our most noble inspirations mute and unattractive.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Is Knowledge Midwife To Ignorance?

How Can It Be?

In Patricia Cohen's interesting New York Times article, "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?", writer Susan Jacoby ponders America's apparent penchant for anti-intellectualism or, perhaps more accurately, its antipathy toward knowledge. When dealing with such a topic as this, where hard-as-nails knowledge is concerned, we can expect to find some mention of Christian fundamentalism, and our expectations are indeed met. But how Christian fundamentalists have succeeded in convincing "nearly two-thirds" of the country to give equal weight to creationism is not something we can expect to explore in this sort of discussion. That omission is, sadly, something most of us could have also predicted.

Besides Ms. Jacoby's probably accurate but overstated charge against fundamentalism, she avers that the "failing educational system" is to blame (one wonders if Ms. Jacoby connects that deterioration with the largely liberal, largely Democratic teachers' unions), as are various progressive political goals in the restructuring of university academic policies in the post-civil rights era.

Though I admit that Ms. Jacoby may enlarge upon her thesis in her book, The Age of American Unreason, one suspects she ignores the utilitarian ethos that permeates the American dream. Utilitarianism is, in part, the personal pursuit of happiness as defined by each American; knowledge is useful insofar as it advances any person's particular pursuit. That "American Idol" finalist and successful country music singer Kellie Pickler deserves to be chided (by Ms. Cohen) for not knowing of the existence of Hungary, may indeed signify something, but surely it is not a sign that Ms. Pickler has been debilitated by her ignorance of European geography. Ms. Pickler's seemingly doing quite fine, and while she is not prone to writing books, she is no doubt au courant in those knowledge schemes that give her expertise in her field. To the frustration of many an intellectual, pragmatism often trumps idealism.

What seems to be lacking in Ms. Cohen's article is any query as to why knowledge -- however it is defined -- should matter. How DOES knowing of the existence of Hungary help anyone who will never travel to that fair land? What purpose does knowledge serve? Surely Ms. Pickler is an expert in her field; she might even be a country music genius. Does she really need to score well in a Trivial Pursuit match against her financially less-successful peers? What is the purpose of learning? Do we learn for knowledge's own sake -- or for our own edification -- or is learning tied to praxis, to what we will DO with our lives?

I bet Ms. Cohen and Ms. Jacoby both have some compelling reasons why knowledge matters, but we are not permitted access to those reasons here. Perhaps they believe knowledge prevents one from being deceived; perhaps knowledge is a great defensive weapon against the zeitgeist. Perhaps.

What is also lacking in this discussion is any apparent exploration of the elevation of expertise -- call it the apotheosis of expert witnesses, if you will -- that pervades intellectual life in America. One repercussion of this pervasive habit is the signal it sends: I don't need to know "it" -- some bit of knowledge -- because someone else does. Nary a day goes by, I am sure, when debates on a loading dock, or around a coffee kiosk, or on a sports bus, do not include some assertion made by an eager interlocutor who substantiates a bold claim by referring to "they say" or "everybody knows" or "I read somewhere," or some similar appeal to an external locus of control. Implicit in these statements is not just the self-interest in appearing right; what is also implied is that some other thing is all-knowing, authoritative, binding ... and right. Sadly, this other thing takes many a modern form: a panel or commission, an encyclopedia or news agency, a think-tank or the Internet, or a poll or survey or "peer-reviewed study." Why is this sad, you may ask? Because it reveals the deep disconnect modernity and prosperity have created: there is a divide between memory and knowledge stored. Once memory and knowledge were practically synonymous. But now, knowledge can be stored elsewhere, like in the brain of an expert, the opinions of a panel, or the servers of a search engine. One need not apply oneself as vigorously as in years past, since so much can be recalled with a few typed words.

One could say, then, that America's ignorance, if it is indeed so ignorant, is not the result of ignorance; America's ignorance is the result of its knowledge. After all, it is knowledge that has given us the edge over nature; it is the learned person who has given us all sorts of ways to live without needing to know how we do what we do. How many people understand the keyboard beneath their fingers, the screen before their eyes? Why memorize poetry when poetry can be this morning's digital wallpaper? All such things are given us by knowledge; it is the advances of the age that have allowed us to live unfettered by the annoying need to know. Finally, ignorance is bliss -- given to us by what we know. (It's all a twist on T.S. Eliot's line from "Choruses from 'The Rock'": All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance...)

Lastly, we forget that the appeal to expertise -- which is what journalists and pundits and researchers and politicians do all the time -- is also the fallacy of appealing to authority. Surely not a few Americans are cynical and hip enough to know this fallacy intimately; surely too, the American pedagogical ideal of "questioning authority," an ideal that might even be foundational to postmodern liberalism, has unwittingly led to the broader disinterest in knowledge (and left children confused as schools parade authorities through every corridor). In other words, those allegedly declining schools to which Ms. Jacoby refers have given Americans -- especially young ones -- permission to be their own authorities ... on everything. (See Raphael Demos' quote here.) How we who are products of American pedagogy choose to exercise that authority is by definition personal and private, for it is all about our utilitarian pursuit of happiness.

Who's to say dumb is not happy?

Peace.

BG


©Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.