“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked,
“What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a
harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
A far better look at this ironically appears in "Lisa and American Anti-intellectualism," an essay from the surprisingly academic "The Simpsons and Philosophy." You can read most of the essay here or ask to borrow the book. The idea reaches back to the image of Americans as being enterprising with their hands and their common sense. Men like Henry Ford are praised not for genius, but for gumption and their down-to-earth sensibility.
We don't really need books to lament this. We don't even need to point to it. What are we going to do, draw more attention to an education regime that we all know is lacking? Instead, let's stop telling people there is something wrong and excite them about the prospect of being better. Inspiration (leadership when manifest in a person) is a disruptive solution -- more importantly, it doesn't contest our anti-intellectualist culture. Depending on how you look at it, it either steps right past it or it emphasizes the "can-do" aspect of our self-perception. Yes, this is starting to look like a political post. I'll acknowledge that, but I don't apologize.
1 comment:
I agree that we don't need books to lament anti-intellectualism.
I do think that we have more to fear from faux-intellectualism rather than anti-intellectualism - the former is far more insidious and displaces legitimate intellectual inquiry.
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