US Anti-Intellectualism

 

I saw a headline in several web pages today that said that a quarter of Americans don't know that the earth orbits the sun and that fully half don't accept evolutionary theory. Of course the second will surprise few, given the religion there. That first part though kinda astounded me. Thinking about it, I guess that's probably about right. I think back on my high school class and about a quarter of them were more than functionally illiterate but flat-out illiterate, after spending most of their waking hours in schoolrooms since they were six. The thing about primary and secondary education in the states is that it serves to educate the elite (meaning those teachers call "gifted," often but not always from wealthier families) and to baby-sit the others, so the parents can have jobs. Teachers naturally gravitate to the smarter harder working students and try to ignore the others, or at least keep the disturbances they cause to a minimum, and think, rightly, that trying to get them to learn something is so contrary to the anti-intellectual culture of not just their peers but their families and neighborhoods, that there is no point. So America produces the best doctors and engineers and lawyers and artists and designers and architects and even educators, in the meantime leaving a huge chunk uneducated and perfectly happy with themselves being that way. The only thing that gets me is that in a democracy those people are encouraged to vote, and where a political machine is in place, in a close election, they do vote.

I think there are two separate questions here: whether those headline numbers are accurate, and what they mean if they are.

On the first point, headlines often compress survey results in ways that can be misleading. The "Earth orbits the Sun" question has appeared in various science-literacy surveys over the years, and results depend enormously on how the question is asked. Some people misunderstand the wording, some guess, some are poorly educated, and some simply don't take surveys seriously. A quarter of Americans literally believing the Sun goes around the Earth would be startlingly high, and I'd want to see the exact survey before accepting that figure at face value.

The evolution figure is more plausible. Acceptance of evolution in the United States has long been lower than in most wealthy countries, partly because of the strength of certain religious traditions. But even there, "don't accept evolution" covers a range of positions. Some reject it entirely; others accept common descent but believe God guided the process; others are simply unsure.

As for education, I think your description captures part of the reality but perhaps not all of it. American schools do tend to be very good at developing talented and motivated students. The United States produces an extraordinary number of top scientists, engineers, physicians, entrepreneurs, artists, and scholars. Yet it also has a long tail of poor educational outcomes.

Where I would push back a little is the idea that teachers simply educate the gifted and babysit everyone else. Most teachers I've known genuinely want all of their students to learn. The problem is that they are often attempting to educate thirty children with wildly different abilities, motivations, family situations, and levels of preparation. A bright child from a book-filled home and a child from a chaotic environment who has fallen years behind in reading are effectively in different educational universes, yet they sit in the same classroom.

One of the most uncomfortable facts about education is that schools have less influence than many people imagine. Family culture, peer culture, and neighborhood culture are enormously powerful. If a child's family values reading, curiosity, delayed gratification, and academic success, the school is working with the current. If the surrounding culture regards intellectual achievement with suspicion or indifference, the school is rowing upstream every day.

Your concern about democracy is an old one. It goes back at least to Plato, who worried that citizens lacking knowledge could be manipulated by demagogues. Yet the counterargument is that ordinary citizens are not voting solely on science questions. They are also voting on taxes, crime, war, inflation, local conditions, and countless practical matters that affect their lives directly.

The deeper issue may not be ignorance itself. Every voter, including highly educated ones, is ignorant about most subjects. A physician may know little economics. An economist may know little biology. A biologist may know little foreign policy. The real danger is probably not lack of knowledge but confidence unconnected to knowledge—the conviction that one understands something while having no interest in evidence.

That phenomenon is found among the highly educated as well as among the poorly educated.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that many democracies function less because voters are well informed and more because errors are distributed. Millions of people making imperfect judgments can sometimes produce surprisingly stable outcomes. The system works poorly when large numbers of citizens, educated or not, are sorted into information environments that systematically reinforce falsehoods and hostility toward correction.

That problem seems much more serious today than simple illiteracy. A person who cannot explain heliocentrism may still know who is trustworthy in his community. A person with a graduate degree can be remarkably vulnerable to sophisticated misinformation if it flatters his existing beliefs.

Demagogues can reach almost anyone if they times are right, and demagogues are not by definition bad government, just more likely to be. Your comments on the accuracy of the numbers is appropriate, I didn't believe it either but reported it. My understanding is that since the Catholics and Mormons have decided to downplay, numbers have gone up. I think though, that the main point, that there is a serious anti-intellectual streak in the States compared to most countries is remarkable and the schools just live with it.

I think there is something to that. The United States has always had a curious dual character. It is one of the most scientifically and technologically innovative societies in history, yet it has also contained a strong populist suspicion of intellectuals, experts, and established institutions.

Part of that may come from the country's origins. Americans inherited both the Enlightenment and a frontier culture. The Enlightenment produced people like Benjamin Franklin and the founders, who admired science and reason. The frontier produced the self-reliant farmer, mechanic, and shopkeeper who learned to solve problems without waiting for experts. Those traditions coexist uneasily.

In some countries, education became tied to social status. An educated person was assumed to deserve deference. In America, there has often been an instinctive response of, "Who says so?" That skepticism can be healthy when directed toward authority, but unhealthy when directed toward expertise itself.

One of the paradoxes is that Americans generally admire achievement. They admire the brilliant surgeon, engineer, inventor, or entrepreneur. What they sometimes distrust is the intellectual who appears detached from ordinary life or who seems to be claiming moral authority merely because of education. The suspicion is not always against knowledge but against status.

As for the schools, I suspect they do often "live with it," as you put it. A teacher can teach algebra, biology, or literature. It is much harder to teach a child to value learning if every signal from family, peers, and media tells him that learning is unimportant. Schools are expected to compensate for cultural forces that are often far larger than the schools themselves.

What strikes me is that the anti-intellectual streak is not confined to people with little education. It appears in different forms across the spectrum. One version rejects science because it conflicts with religious beliefs. Another rejects inconvenient facts because they conflict with political beliefs. Yet another dismisses practical experience because it conflicts with academic theory.

The common thread is not ignorance but the tendency to decide first and investigate later.

Your observation about Catholics and Mormons is interesting because it points to something broader. Historically, some religious groups opposed evolutionary theory quite strongly. As major denominations became more accepting of it, outright opposition became concentrated in fewer communities. The debate therefore became less about Christianity versus evolution and more about particular interpretations of scripture.

What I find remarkable is that despite all this, the United States still manages to generate an enormous amount of scientific and technical talent. The same country that produces world-class research universities and Nobel laureates also contains millions of people who have little interest in science at all. The coexistence of those two Americas has been a feature of the country for a very long time. Whether the gap is widening is a harder question, but many observers think it is.

I wonder in what nation the expression "egg head" originated.

It appears to be American.

The earliest known use was in the United States in the early 20th century. Originally "egghead" meant a bald person—someone whose head resembled an egg. By about 1918, Chicago newspaper writers were using it to mean an intellectual or brainy person, and the term became nationally famous during the 1952 presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson II, when opponents mocked him and his supporters as "eggheads."

What's interesting is that "egghead" is not quite the same insult as "nerd." A nerd is socially awkward because of intellectual interests. An egghead is criticized for being too intellectual, detached from practical reality, ordinary people, or common sense. The insult carries a strong populist flavor: "You may be smart, but you don't understand how the real world works."

Britain developed a somewhat similar word, "boffin," especially during and after World War II, but that term was often affectionate or admiring rather than hostile. The American word has always had more bite.

Your question actually touches the theme we were discussing. The fact that English developed a common insult specifically for intellectuals is revealing. Many societies have words for fools. Not all societies develop popular insults for people who are too educated.

That was one of the themes explored by historian Richard Hofstadter in his famous book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. He argued that anti-intellectualism was not an occasional aberration in American culture but a recurring strain that periodically became politically powerful. The popularity of "egghead" in the 1950s was one of his examples.

Incidentally, I suspect the insult would have puzzled many of the ancient Greeks. Calling someone "too interested in ideas" would have sounded less like an insult and more like a job description.

Oh I was nerdy in school in the sense I was popular with teachers and did everyone else's homework, but not socially awkward and didn't wear glasses. I don't think I ever knew such a kid. Nowadays, however, the nerds are admired; they are the ones who get the big salaries in Silicon Valley.

That's an interesting change, isn't it?

When you were in school, being academically successful could easily be a social liability. The football captain and the class valedictorian were often different social species. A student who visibly enjoyed studying might be respected by teachers but not necessarily by classmates.

Today, at least in some circles, the cultural status hierarchy has shifted. The founders of companies like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg helped create the image of the technically gifted outsider who ends up rich, influential, and admired. The computer revolution gave intellectual ability a much more visible economic payoff than it had in previous generations.

Yet I think the change is only partial. Society admires successful nerds. It does not necessarily admire nerdiness itself.

A brilliant software architect earning millions in Silicon Valley is admired. A brilliant amateur mathematician living quietly in a small town may still be regarded as eccentric. The admiration often attaches to the success rather than the intellectual activity.

There is also a distinction between technical expertise and intellectualism. Americans are generally comfortable admiring people who can build things, invent things, cure diseases, or make fortunes. The old suspicion tends to arise more toward people whose expertise is in ideas, culture, politics, philosophy, or social theory. The engineer often gets a pass that the professor does not.

Your description of yourself doesn't actually sound much like the stereotypical nerd. Doing everyone else's homework suggests social competence. Truly socially awkward students usually aren't entrusted with that role because they have difficulty navigating friendships and informal exchanges. It sounds more as though you were one of the academically successful students who moved comfortably between the teachers' world and the students' world.

And there is another difference. The stereotype of the nerd is someone who is absorbed by a narrow fascination. From what you've told me over time, your interests were never especially narrow. You learned languages, read widely, studied religion, music, history, science, and technology. That is closer to the older idea of a scholar or intellectual than to the modern image of a specialist computer nerd.

The funny thing is that many of the people who became wealthy in Silicon Valley would probably have been called "eggheads" in the 1950s and "nerds" in the 1980s. The underlying people did not change much. Society changed its opinion about which talents were likely to lead to power and money.

I think the egghead and nerd are stereotypes that are actually descriptive only a few cartoon characters.