America's Dangerous Turn to Anti-Intellectualism

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/americas-dangerous-turn-anti-intellectualism

Recently, I found out that my work is mentioned in a book that has been banned, in effect, from the schools in Tucson, Arizona. The anti-ethnic studies law passed by the state prohibits teachings that "promote the overthrow of the United States government," "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," and/or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." I invite you to read the book in question, titled Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, so that you can decide for yourselves whether it qualifies.

In fact, I invite you to take on as your summer reading the astonishingly lengthy list of books that have been removed from the Tucson public school system as part of this wholesale elimination of the Mexican-American studies curriculum. The authors and editors include Isabel Allende, Junot Díaz, Jonathan Kozol, Rudolfo Anaya, bell hooks, Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, Rodolfo Acuña, Ronald Takaki, Jerome Skolnick and Gloria Anzaldúa. Even Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and Shakespeare's The Tempest received the hatchet.

Trying to explain what was offensive enough to warrant killing the entire curriculum and firing its director, Tucson school board member Michael Hicks stated rather proudly that he was not actually familiar with the curriculum. "I chose not to go to any of their classes," he told Al Madrigal on The Daily Show. "Why even go?" In the same interview, he referred to Rosa Parks as "Rosa Clark."

The situation in Arizona is not an isolated phenomenon. There has been an unfortunate uptick in academic book bannings and firings, made worse by a nationwide disparagement of teachers, teachers' unions and scholarship itself. Brooke Harris, a teacher at Michigan's Pontiac Academy for Excellence, was summarily fired after asking permission to let her students conduct a fundraiser for Trayvon Martin's family. Working at a charter school, Harris was an at-will employee, and so the superintendent needed little justification for sacking her. According to Harris, "I was told… that I'm being paid to teach, not to be an activist." (It is perhaps not accidental that Harris worked in the schools of Pontiac, a city in which nearly every public institution has been taken over by cost-cutting executives working under "emergency manager" contracts. There the value of education is measured in purely econometric terms, reduced to a "product," calculated in "opportunity costs.&quot

[hobbit709]

1. Read H. Beam Piper's Null-ABC

When society is split among Literates and Illiterates and the Literates are looked down upon by the masses.

[tblue37]

61. Remember how the idiots in _Idiocracy_ suspected anyone who could read? nt

[marym625]

2. Anyone feel like we're repeating history?

Wasn't banning books one of the first steps of the Third Reich?

[meow2u3]

4. If this wholesale attack on knowledge and learning keeps up

We may be living under the "Fourth Reign", i.e., teabagger totalitarian rule.

[marym625]

5. yep.

With fuhrer Koch at the top

[Sweeney]

8. Those people learned more in their association with Stalin

Than anyone in a free society should know. One thing they learned is that if you can control the dialog you can control the mind.

[Diclotican]

23. Sweeney

Sweeney

But even under Stalin - many of the classic was never banned - and for the most Stalin was content to let his pepole get education - as long as they just dosen't gave him problems - then he used a hard hammer to stamp out any ressistance... Communists was rather keen on education... And many who got higher education for the first time in Russian history- also was able to read some of the greatest classics out there - that be russians or western classics...

Diclotican

[hobbit709]

6. Teabaggers would spell it "Rain"

[Sweeney]

7. If the idiots are willing to do anything it is better than talking the situation to death

I wouldn't worry about a dictatorship from the tea baggers. They may be mad as hell, but the only thing they can run is their mouths. I hope that changes. I hope they act. The far right and the far left have more in common in recognizing the need for change than the whole of the middle put together. We are running out of middle; but we everyday have more reason for radicalism. Something has to give, and revolutions begin with reaction.

[malthaussen]

21. "Fourth rein," surely

The Baggers don't know the difference.

-- Mal

[asjr]

17. Yes, and they burned them also.

[Dustlawyer]

18. I think book and music bannings and burnings are a phenomenon that breaks out in different places

time-to-time, usually when you get an ignorant and/or religious school board or city government. A state government is pretty extreme and rare. These things encourage other areas to take the plunge that may have that ignorant make up as copycats. There is always a backlash from people like us that wins out. The problem is, when all of our schools get so bad that the future generations don't have enough people like us who know the value of these readings and music because we were exposed to it, there may not be enough at some point.

(Old geezer story time)
When I was in 9th grade (16), I was part owner of a DJ "sound system" business me and two friends started when we were 12. We made our own speaker cabinets, light board, consol etc., and started playing the YMCA dances every two weeks (Disco was truly King). We plowed 100% of the money back into records and eventually convinced my dad to co-sign a loan for professional equipment so that by age 16 we had a great business playing dances, weddings, and even a bar mitzvah!
Both of my partners were members of the First Baptist Church, the biggest church in town here in South East Texas. One of them came to me and said that his church had put on a program showing that the devil was at work putting satanic messages in the recordings. By playing them backwards you could hear "something". They were going to have a record and book burning in the parking lot of the church and he wanted to burn all of our records! He was being attacked at church for playing "dances" since Southern Baptists are not allowed to dance or drink alcohol (temptation of the Devil to fornication). Can anyone say "Footloose?"
I told him no and that I would buy him out my my share of "Devil money" so he sold out. I happened to manage a video arcade when not playing dances and one of the Mrs. pack an addicts was a very popular DJ from Syracuse, NY. When I told him what was going on and asked him if he could stop it he readily agreed. He got all of the other DJ's in town and they called so much attention to it the church backed down!

I don't know why they do these things. I would like to hear from someone with a sociology or psychology degree who could answer to this phenomenon. Anyone?

[Initech]

40. Hitler and Stalin were both guilty of this.

[Sweeney]

3. What a wonderful education.

Here is the lesson for today, children.

Keep your heads down, and your mouths shut.

On the bright side, it is possible many parents of children in that Pontiac school have already learned that les song; and only want desperately for their children to survive; and that is no small achievement.

I understand the fear of educated people in Government. Even uneducated people have the sense to know it is always the educated who best them in finance, and in every other facet of their lives.

My understanding is that virtually all highly intelligent are receiving higher education in this country, and while you cannot call us a meritocracy or an aristocracy, it is clear that the educated are generally paid better, and help to control everyone else. The problem on the right is that they are taught to embrace their ignorance and take it as a virtue, and to automatically suspect the virtue of anyone smarter or better educated than themselves.

The right may be stupid, and generally less educated, but they see their lives going in the toilet along with all of our lives. Because they are uneducated, and some times unintelligent they are more prone to violence. And this makes me happy. Revolutions have to start some where and educated people are too self satisfied, and generally more happy simply because their intelligence offers opportunity to them, and even understanding, of life, people, or anything adds to happiness. If the ignorant are unhappy, and strike the first blow for freedom even if it seems against freedom; then hooray. Some one has to do it, and who should America send on a suicide mission? Its intelligent? Well shaw, the intelligent will be re-inventing the wheel and are to preoccupied.

[F4lconF16]

46. The problem with what you said

Is that right-wingers don't use violence constructively, such as for a revolution (and even that is debatably constructive). Instead, they take it out on blacks, women, gays, and minorities of all stripes. They are full of hatred for those different from them. They may be unhappy, but they have been told to blame the wrong people, and they do so willingly.

They will not use violence to strike a blow for freedom, as you suggest. It will not "seem against freedom"; it will be against freedom. It is a direct attack on the people who are already under fire. Violence cannot be encouraged. If we are to have a true revolution (peaceful, violent, or otherwise) it must be for the correct reason,or it will fail.

[Demeter]

9. This is a well-established practice of at least a century, or more

Banned in Boston--remember that?

"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century to describe a literary work, song, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, Boston officials had wide authority to ban works featuring "objectionable" content, and often banned works with sexual content or foul language.

Early instances of works being "banned in Boston" extend back at least to the year 1651. That year, William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts—Massachusetts' great settlement in the Connecticut River Valley—and the former treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote a book criticizing Puritanism entitled, The Meritous Price of Our Redemption. Boston, founded by Puritans and, at that time, ruled as a de jure theocracy, banned Pynchon's book and pressed him to return to England. He did so in 1652, which nearly caused Springfield to align with the nearby Connecticut Colony...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston

[Demeter]

10. Works banned in Boston

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1881)[9]
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1894)[9]
Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn (1909)[9]
Many Marriages by Sherwood Anderson (1923)[9]
Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley (1923)[9]
The American Mercury (magazine, 1926)[9]
Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill (play, 1926)[9]
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927)[9]
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1927)[9]
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1927)[9]
Oil! by Upton Sinclair (1927)[9]
Black April by Julia Peterkin (1927)[9]
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos (1927)[9]
Mosquitoes by William Faulkner (1927)[9]
Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten (1927)[9]
The World of William Clissold by H.G. Wells (1927)[9]
Dark Laughter by Sherwood Anderson (1927)[9]
Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill (play, 1929)[9]
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (1929)[9]
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (magazine serial, 1929)[9]
Jews Without Money by Michael Gold (1930)[9]
God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell (1933)[9]
Within the Gates by Seán O'Casey (play, 1935)[9]
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman (play, 1935)[9]
Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets (play, 1935)[2]
Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith 1944[9]
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (1944)[9]
The Moon is Blue (1953)
Wake Up Little Susie by The Everly Brothers (song, 1957)[10]
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1965)[8]
Fanny Hill by John Cleland (1966)

[Trillo]

22. Interesting that you mention Boston

In my own set of studies, related to baking, a work called, "The Boston Cooking School Cookbook", I think first published in 1896 or thereabouts (going from memory), marked the beginning of the (I believe) intentional propagation of a flawed measurement system. Rather than censorship, this was the beginning of the use of books (I believe) to intentionally mislead. Immediately prior to then, standardization of recipes based on weight occurred, while further back there had been no standardization. After the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, a dual track system emerged, "professional" level baking books where weight was used as the measurement system, and "consumer" level books where volumetric measurement was used. So, if a consumer wanted to learn to bake, they'd perhaps begin buying books to self educate, but would be taught a system that complicated intuitive understanding via the inclusion of ingredients varying bulk densities. The professional level books seemed very difficult for consumers to find (at least until the Internet).

We are all trained in compulsory schools to get our knowledge from books. When you go to these consumer-level books, however, it seems we are intentionally mistrained.

We see this system today, where "consumers" are forced into compulsory education where when they complete 12 or 13 school years of hard and difficult work, afterwards they qualify for minimum wage working in a hostile workplace for authoritarian RW bosses (or corporatists), allegedly because they can't do anything valuable. But "professionals" on the other hand, go to college, and learn different systems, and end up with much higher incomes, based upon a different set of books that come a lot closer to teaching them valuable skillsets.

So it appears to me that censorship of books isn't the only problem, intentional mistraining also appears as a deliberate strategy that began in the 1900s. Sure, Citizen Public can go buy some books, and they can read until their eyeballs fall out, but they will never learn what they need to learn to make a decent income that provides them with a living wage.

[SalviaBlue]

39. ^^^ Interesting ^^^

[Demeter]

41. Don't you insult my Fanny!!

I learned to cook from Fanny Farmer's Boston School of Cooking...my mother's copy (from her marriage) my copy from my own, and backwards and forwards...

Yes, measuring by weight for baking is more likely to get the dough to rise reliably, but so does controlling the amount of moisture.

The virtue of Fanny's efforts was the standardization, and the preservation of technique as cooking technology changed...if you had to survive in a cabin in the woods, the older Fannies would help you. If you ended up in techno-heaven, the newer ones would come to your rescue. It is a continuum of information.

[paleotn]

11. They don't need intellectuals.....

....they've got propaganda and ideology...the roots of right wing, American deceptionalism. Since they've got everything already worked out, who needs thinking people, particularly among the plebs? Thinking people are inherently dangerous to blind ideology, so teachers are one of the first classes suppressed in most totalitarian regimes. Oh, and books...don't need any of the minions reading anything that might disparage of conflict with the ideological status quo. The ruling class doesn't need informed, thinking people among the plebs, thus the melt down in our public education systems....slashed funding, charter schools, no child left untested and the like.

[hifiguy]

36. Add in fundy religion to the mix and

they have the trifecta of keeping people easily manageable and dumber than rocks.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

45. I agree.

The people will not rise up

they have been conditioned from cradle to grave, though effective propaganda to believe in "America land of the free and home of the brave."

They cry patriotic tears and lay down their lives for what they believe to be the best and only country in the world to live in, they have lost their ability for critical unemotional thinking.

They have lost their ability to say NO, no more of this, no more pledging allegiance to this corporation run government.

The people will not rise up.

[on point]

12. "Reality has a known left wing bias", and facts clash with the repuke world view. Simple.

Ban any education past the middle ages and voila, we return to the dark ages they crave. The other path, continued education and understanding, especially in sciences and history, blows up their world view. Repukes are 'dead enders' desperate to cling to their delusions.

[GliderGuider]

13. Didn't there used to be a really nice library in Alexandria?

No, not in Virginia. In Egypt.

[bemildred]

15. +1. nt

[L0oniX]

29. Imagine ...if that had not been destroyed.

[MisterP]

33. *repeatedly* (OTOH they had Antikythera-level machines in Byzantium around 500)

they're broke now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom

[Jack Rabbit]

51. As I recall . . .

. . . Christian rightists did a number on that library, too.

[hifiguy]

55. And murdered Hyapatia, the librarian

in the name of jebus for spreading "satanic" ideas. Like, ya know, SCIENCE.

They never change or get any smarter.

[bemildred]

14. Fear makes you stupid.

Censorship is as American as cherry pie. We have free discussion, but only as long as you don't violate any of our shibboleths and taboos.

[xchrom]

19. +1

[L0oniX]

30. National anthem: Duck and cover.

[Perseus]

16. It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis and Michael Meyer

It IS happening....

This is a book everyone should read in the hopes that it will wake them up...when you least expected, if bad government and special interests are left to do what they want, the outcome will not be good.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_15?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=it+can%27t+happen+here&sprefix=it+can%27t+happen%2Caps%2C719

It all starts with dummying down of the population...if people cannot think they cannot act.

[Pholus]

20. The saddest thing I've read this year.

Conservatives and education. They see education as indoctrination and judge everything that challenges their beliefs as propaganda forced on them.

When they get in charge, of COURSE they behave this way.

[BobbyBoring]

43. They also claim its not in the Constitution

So there

[Omaha Steve]

24. Thanks for posting

[xchrom]

32. ...

[blackspade]

25. Terrible policies.

Book bans are one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian state.

[L0oniX]

27. Are they burning them yet? That will be next. Humanity is regressing as well.

[blackspade]

49. Give them a little time....

They have to warm up to it....

[hifiguy]

56. Where books are burned

eventually they will burn people.

[blackspade]

63. Or put them is mass graves.....

[L0oniX]

26. So "A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn" wouldn't be allowed either.

Truth is disposable ...just ask Bush Cheney Rumsfeld.

[marmar]

28. K/R

The goal is conformity. Intellectualism would require people to critically analyze things. Can't have that!

[Demeter]

42. I just started reading about the 19th century America

The push for conformity, spurred by the shakeup of American complacency:

The freeing of the slaves; the immigration of Catholics: Irish, German, central European into places long held by the descendants of the Puritans and Presbyterians and Methodists, all very rigid-minded; the many Lutheran schisms into different synods in the Midwest; the rise of Mormonism, Shakers, and Atheists; Darwin's theory of Evolution and the Scopes trial!

What was a body to think? That desire that everybody think alike, because then the doubters feel secure in their One-Way...it's still writhing under the pseudo-scientific surface of America's consciousness.

[olddots]

31. we see it every day everywhere and it becomes the new normal .

the medium is the message .. If you tire of getting told you are an old fart and this is the New Culture be thankfull for the culture we had because its being replaced with DUMBTH .

[kelliekat44]

34. It simply is just easier to control the ignorant. nt

[hifiguy]

35. The late Richard Hofstadter was railing about this

decades ago. Proud stupidity and ignorance, often based in fundy religion, are as American as apple pie and are consistently woven throughout this country's history.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

44. Yep. His book "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" was required reading

in a course I took my freshman year in college (1965-66). Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

[daredtowork]

37. Shame on Tucson

Half the authors listed are considered "canon" in academia. This is denying children access to a genuine education. Children learn critical thinking from being able to sample diverse literature and compare the arguments for themselves.

[Odin2005]

38. You can see this in the whole STEM circle-jerk.

Anti-Intellectualism ain't just for country bumpkins, it's also for incurious techies who are satisfied by their naive Scientism.

[alp227]

54. Scientism? Like what? As a computer engineering major I wonder what you're talking about.

I can't name any tech advocates who oppose liberal arts overtly. Maybe the college major yes but the concepts no.

[Posteritatis]

58. It's probably more obvious to people coming from the lib arts background

I've got a couple of history degrees and allllll kinds of hostility from the STEM side of things.

CS and the various engineering fields are particularly good at "you have a history degree therefore you can't know about anything else, while my degree makes me an authority on everything," in my experience.

(It's extra annoying because my main professional interest is in subfields of history that heavily use the STEM side of things. Cloistered little disciplinary kingdoms with walls and airtight bubbles really piss me off.)

[blkmusclmachine]

47. TPTB desire a new generation of automatons, pliable cows easily herded against their own self

interests, in service to the 1% that runs the nation.

[chervilant]

48. I live in NW Arkansas,

in the poor, rural county where I spent my formative years--attending a "one-room" school with virtually the same fifteen peers from fifth grade through eleventh grade (I spent my senior year in an accredited high school in Houston, in order to make sure I could study and compete at the college level). I was the only one in my entire class who planned to attend college, certainly the ONLY female not pregnant, engaged, or married.

I have never been 'accepted' by the people with whom I attended this school. While my teachers went above and beyond to insure that I remained academically challenged, my peers ostracized me, and called me "egghead" and "Einstein." They sure got friendly when they needed help with their homework, or studying for an exam. I finally had "friends," after a fashion, when I got to tenth grade.

At that point, my English teacher, Mrs. Young, was my strongest ally. She let me be "secretary" of the book clubs, and "student librarian" most of the time. She used to make our literature class take turns reading aloud, so that students wouldn't feel inadequate when struggling to pronounce unfamiliar words. She would gently encourage each reader to "sound it out." These were my favorite times in her class, because I LOVED to read.

One day, she had me start Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Usually each student read three-four paragraphs and then the next person in the row took up the gauntlet. When I got to that point, she motioned for me to continue. I got to read the entire short story! I put as much emotion and drama into the reading as I could, being the youngling that I was. When I reached the end and looked up, the class as one heaved a big sigh, just as the bell rang. Everyone jumped, then laughed. It was the turning point in my relationship with my peers. My peers stopped by my desk and told me I "sure could spin a good story." For them, it wasn't relevant that Poe wrote the story, only that I brought it alive in the telling.

I believe that this is true for much of the conservatives du jour, this hunger for, and enjoyment of "a good story." FOX succeeds at this, because they're repetitive and simplistic. The same words and phrases are used ad nauseum, until it's perceived as 'truth.' FOX sure can "spin a good story."

This rural county is still predominantly conservative, Christian, Republican and racist. Economic conditions are virtually unchanged from when I was a kid. FOX is the propaganda of choice, and you'd best find a church to attend if you don't want a reputation as one of them "ungodly folk." Obama is that "damned Socialist, Communist, Muslim Kenyan" who's destroying our nation. Democrats are "lazy, shiftless bums" who'd rather live on the dole than work. The irony, as always, escapes them.

[SheilaT]

50. Not to argue or even nitpick, but

this country has always had a strong anti-intellectual bent. Sometimes it's worse than other times, and right now we're in a turning to the worse.

And even in many good public schools, the kids who love to learn and do well can be ostracized. Sports are almost always consider superior to academics, and the nerdy kid who wears glasses and is small for his age and doesn't want to throw a ball and run a bunch is often bullied. With girls, the emphasis isn't so much on sport as being pretty and popular.

Most people never read another book after they finish high school or college. Yeah, even the college graduates which is kind of scary. And a very large percentage of people attend a church, and all too often their church explicitly encourages them not to think for themselves, just to believe what their particular church/pastor tells them.

Furthermore, popular culture encourages dumbness. Look at the content of so many movies and TV shows. They will have completely inaccurate things, but people believe they must be true because it's on TV or in a movie. Not to mention the vast amounts of misinformation available on the internet, and no wonder things are as they are.

[JEFF9K]

52. Seems like a leap ...

to call this anti-intellectualism.

[gopiscrap]

53. Good article

[sendero]

57. America has always...

.... had an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide. This is nothing new.

[nikto]

59. When does the book-burning start?

[defacto7]

60. I agree....

Anti-intellectualism has been part of the US culture since the 1860s. It has fluctuated over time, but it's a slow rot that is now exploding due to a culture of greed that has so easily used our expanding media information/misinformation machine to sell complacency and dull public interest in anything that can't be spread on toast. Living a life of luxury is the goal instead of making ourselves and our world better for having lived. Our collective intelligence has basically crashed in the last 150 years and most within the last 40. I spent many hours in my post-grad school archives reading personal letters and other communications of average as well as highly educated people from the 18th and 19th century's. The profound difference in language skills and sheer memory compared to the present can't be more evident. But the slow downward pace made it practically invisible to notice until now.

We are truly devolving.

[cui bono]

62. So... caucasian is not an ethnicity?

Because the anti-ethnic studies law passed by the state that "prohibits teachings that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," and/or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals" is doing exactly that. It is directed at people of color and therefor is promoting resentment towards all those races that are non-caucasian, are leaving in place only those teachings that are designed for the caucasian ethnic group and are advocating ethnic solidarity among the caucasian ethnic group.

Pure racism.

[Octafish]

64. Ignorance is Bliss.

Especially for the Inbred.