Are Americans hostile toward knowledge?

Both seem like exaggerations, especially the second. I'm an educated man, and while I'm afraid I can't speak intelligently about the Texas/Oklahoma elementary teaching curriculum of the 1930s, I'm confident that it wasn't literary theory or quantum physics. Sounds like Mr. Nautilus was trying to justify some of his own insecurities.

 

Just recognize that a man that believes that evolution is false and that people were riding dinosaurs is still running for president and receiving massive amounts of votes.

I figure that spells it all out.

 

It's an interesting point about the canon, Zeke. It's something I think a lot about when we talk about Klosterman, and his deconstruction of pop culture. To you and I and people our age, there is merit in exercise of breaking down something like The Real World because, disposable as it is, it's a reflection of modern culture. But to many (including those on this board) much of it seems like mental masturbation and Klosterman is faux intellectual. It's one thing to have very little grasp of world geography -- especially with our nation-wide shortage of maps so we can know about The Iraq, South America, and such as -- but I wonder sometimes if more kids are just focusing on different things to tell them about their world. A lot of young people still adore Catcher in the Rye, but for others, it isn't going to resonate quite as much as Buffy The Vampire Slayer might.

And, it's probably worth pointing out that there were certainly a lot of people who didn't know that Budapest was the capitol of Hungary in the 1930s, but they were working in the fields or raising children in a dusty shack in Oklahoma instead of going on American Idol or Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader. There are certainly dumb people now, and they also have 1,000 different ways to make their lack of knowledge seen and heard by others.

 

Right. It's the same argument I've had with folks who are up in arms about young people "getting" their news from The Daily Show or the Colbert Report. The step people skip is that "enjoying" those shows requires a pretty deep base of knowledge and an appreciation of the deconstruction of political events on a metatextual level.

The show is satire. You have to be reasonably well informed to find it funny. And people forget that a lot of the kids who can't find Budapest on a map can find any street in America on their iphone. A lot of knowledge that needed to be memorized in the past is easily available in a few keystrokes, leading younger people to put much less premium on it.

There are good and bad things about that, but they don't necessarily point to any kind of lowering of a base of knowledge so much as a shift in where knowledge is applied.

All that said, I think a prejudice against intellectualism is very real in this country and a very big problem.

 

Gore was mocked by a lot of people not because he was smart but because he a. felt the need to brag to the world how smart he was, and b. made a common mistake among liberals: his intelligence was often a smug sense that he knew what was best for everyone else.

 

Isn't the complain more that they're getting their news first from TDS/CR in the way that there's conservatives that get their news from Rush?

 

My girlfriend has a quote whenever the topic of instant recall of knowledge comes up (obviously, I'm the type of person who can do that sort of thing, especially with baseball, as some of you know ):

She says: "I may not know as much as you do off the top of my head, but I know where I can look it up."

And she's right. Even though she's smarter than the average bear to begin with, she's got all the tools to find any information she needs at the drop of a hat. And that's equally important, in this day and age, as knowing it by memory.

 

I think in general people are stupid, not just Americans. Canadians too.
I'd be a rich man if I had a loonie for every time the morning newspaper sat untouched by our house guests, even though I place it right in front of them in the morning. I'll say something like "the paper's there, if you're interested" as I pour my first coffee, only to have them look over at it like it's a pile of dog shit. It's easier, I guess, to remain ignorant.
My brother in law, by the way, may be the most stupid person I've met. He once wrote a note to my wife (a newspaper person like me) in which he mentioned something about the Tasma Hall in India. We'll laugh about it always. He always starts dinner conversation with the lazy-ass 'So, what's happening in the world today?" Buddy if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you.
That might be a good thread. Who is your most stupid relative?
But I digress

 

Two kinds of people annoy me: those who are stupid and those who think they're much smarter than they are.

And intelligence is a relative thing. I know people who struggle with certain skills most of us would consider indicative of "intelligence," such as spelling. Yet they are very successful in their chosen fields. And while I can beat most people I've ever come across in Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, if something around my house breaks and I need to fix it, I'm pretty much screwed.

It's obvious to me that a large portion of society doesn't want to learn anything beyond knowing the name of Britney's latest boyfriend, but I also think most people remain intellectually curious and will gravitate toward learning what interests them. There are people who don't know shit about where certain states are but can refinish a basement. To me, those people are pretty damn intelligent.

 

While I respect your point ... I consider those type of people "skillful".
Not necessarily "intelligent", per se, although certainly the capacity for knowledge is there. So they don't lack intelligence. They just aren't very intellectually curious.

 

But they ARE intellectually curious. To the point that they put in the time and effort to hone skills I'm envious of. And you're defining "intelligence" on your terms, Buck. It's kinda arrogant to so narrowly define it, IMO.

 

It takes a certain amount of intelligence to hone a skill. This does not mean that they are intellectually curious. To be intellectually curious one would desire to learn things outside of that which they see and deal with regularly.

An example of this would be the desire to learn about the different sects of Islam battling each other in Iraq. Another would be the plumber learning about the computer on a different basis than just opening a web page.