The Battle Against Smart
We seem to be in a battle; against history, against science, against education: our society seems to be in a battle against “smart.” There is a “meme” floating around Facebook; a cartoon showing a street sweeper working, and a woman commenting to her child “if you don’t go to college, you’ll end up like him.” In the second panel, a woman beside her states to her child, “that man has a job with full union benefits, and makes more money than that b***h with her liberal arts degree.” Is this a part of “Trumpism,” or, like many aspects of America today, is the Trump phenomenon just another symptom?
Full disclosure: I have a liberal arts degree, Bachelor of Arts from Denison University in Political Studies, and a Masters Degree in Education from Ashland University; both “liberal arts” institutions. As a career public school teacher, there are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of different jobs that made more money than this “b***h.”
Sherrod Brown, US Senator from Ohio, has made the touchstone of his career representing “working people.” Brown calls it the “dignity of work,” the importance of not only earning a living, but of contributing to society by doing something of value. Brown makes it clear that how you make that contribution isn’t what’s important. His line is, “…it doesn’t matter whether you take a shower before work, or after…” It’s the fact that you contribute; everyone doesn’t need a college degree.
But many Americans today seem to want to relate “liberal arts” with “liberal” Democrats. They obviously weren’t at Denison University when I was there: most of the faculty may have voted Democrat during the 1970’s, but most of the students were Republicans. The faculty served to challenge their views and beliefs, forcing the students to re-think (or think in the first place) why they took a particular stand, but I know that not many political affiliations were changed.
The campaign today against “science and knowledge” seems to tie into the Trump movement. Does the reality of climate change interfere with driving your SUV: deny climate change. Does the gnawing fear of autism make you crazy: don’t get your child vaccinated. Do the factual statements of the media conflict with your world view: call it “fake news” and keep the television on Fox.
Don’t like abortion? Write a law requiring ectopic pregnancies to be re-implanted into the womb, a procedure that doesn’t exist, but was still considered by the State Legislature for an Ohio law.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
We depend on educated voters to make decisions in our nation. We have prided ourselves on the accomplishments of our knowledge; from the vaccines that some now deny, to the journey to the moon (also denied) that we now are trying to replicate. When we were confronted with the dangers of lead in our gas, or chlorofluorocarbons in our spray cans; we made the scientific and engineering discoveries and social changes that solved the problems. All these advances were made through education.
We called for more mathematicians and engineers in the 1950’s, and we got them in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They produced the technology that we take for granted today. Americans need to be educated. Americans need to be able to question, and to reason, and to learn: all products of education.
But today, in our era of unlimited information without shield or check, folks can choose their facts like they choose their socks. Don’t like the consequences of global warming: there’s a series on the internet that will explain how 98% of scientists are wrong. Don’t want to be corrected about what you think; then don’t “fact-check” it, or don’t believe the results if you do.
In the 1900’s education was often a matter of literacy: if you couldn’t read, the world wasn’t accessible. But if you had that skill, then getting books, the “keys to the kingdom,” opened the world of knowledge. The stories of how a young Abraham Lincoln spent his hard earned money on books and used so much time reading under a tree, or with his long legs propped on the desk, or by candlelight at night; those are the stories of how a man educated himself on the frontier. And when the Civil War broke out, Lincoln read everything he could find on the tactics and strategies of war; he knew how to gain knowledge: books.
Today that kind of information is as available as your laptop, or the phone in your pocket. Anything you might want to know, from building atomic bombs to the Karma Sutra, is a “Google Search” away. The trickle of knowledge available to Lincoln is now a fire hose of “facts.”
“Facts”: the new education is not about memorizing dates or knowing names; it is in learning how to handle the volume of information that can be accessed. Information used to be about availability, it’s now about “vetting,” determining what is true or not. That is the skill educators need to impart to their students. Lincoln learned to read, opening the world. The modern student needs to learn how to discern truth from fiction.
But to generations not equipped with those skills, it is easy to slip into the habit of finding only the “facts” that fit their political views and to denigrate those who stand up for the “real” truth. What could be more comforting than denying those with “degrees” who bring inconvenient truths, and using the internet to provide the “facts” to do it.
There is dignity in all work. The guy who drives the Waste Management garbage truck is important to our society. So is the guy sweeping up the street. But so is the professor who walks into class to discuss philosophy, and the students who participates in that discussion. Education is not a threat to Democracy; like that introductory course in college, it is a prerequisite.
