The Battle Against Smart<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We seem to be in a battle; against history, against science, against education: our society seems to be in a battle against \u201csmart.\u201d There is a \u201cmeme\u201d floating around Facebook; a cartoon showing a street sweeper working, and a woman commenting to her child \u201cif you don\u2019t go to college, you\u2019ll end up like him.\u201d In the second panel, a woman beside her states to her child, \u201cthat man has a job with full union benefits, and makes more money than that b***h with her liberal arts degree.\u201d Is this a part of \u201cTrumpism,\u201d or, like many aspects of America today, is the Trump phenomenon just another symptom? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cliberal arts\u201d 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 \u201cb***h.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sherrod Brown, US Senator from Ohio, has made the touchstone of his career representing \u201cworking people.\u201d Brown calls it the \u201cdignity of work,\u201d 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\u2019t what\u2019s important. His line is, \u201c\u2026it doesn\u2019t matter whether you take a shower before work, or after\u2026\u201d It\u2019s the fact that you contribute; everyone doesn\u2019t need a college degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But many Americans today seem to want to relate \u201cliberal arts\u201d with \u201cliberal\u201d Democrats.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They obviously weren\u2019t at Denison University when I was there:\u00a0\u00a0most of the faculty may have voted Democrat during the 1970\u2019s, but most of the students were Republicans.\u00a0\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The campaign today against \u201cscience and knowledge\u201d 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\u2019t get your child vaccinated. Do the factual statements of the media conflict with your world view: call it \u201cfake news\u201d and keep the television on Fox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t like abortion? Write a law requiring ectopic pregnancies to be re-implanted into the womb, a procedure that doesn\u2019t exist, but was still considered by the State Legislature for an Ohio law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. \u2013 Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We called for more mathematicians and engineers in the 1950\u2019s, and we got them in the 1960\u2019s and 1970\u2019s. 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But today, in our era of unlimited information without shield or check, folks can choose their facts like they choose their socks.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Don\u2019t like the consequences of global warming:\u00a0\u00a0there\u2019s a series on the internet that will explain how 98% of scientists are wrong.\u00a0 Don\u2019t want to be corrected about what you think; then don\u2019t \u201cfact-check\u201d it, or don\u2019t believe the results if you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1900\u2019s education was often a matter of literacy:\u00a0\u00a0if you couldn\u2019t read, the world wasn\u2019t accessible.\u00a0\u00a0But if you had that skill, then getting books, the \u201ckeys to the kingdom,\u201d opened the world of knowledge.\u00a0\u00a0The 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.\u00a0\u00a0And 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:\u00a0\u00a0books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today that kind of information is as available as your laptop, or the phone in your pocket.\u00a0\u00a0Anything you might want to know, from building atomic bombs to the Karma Sutra, is a \u201cGoogle Search\u201d away.\u00a0\u00a0The trickle of knowledge available to Lincoln is now a fire hose of \u201cfacts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFacts\u201d: 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\u2019s now about \u201cvetting,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But to generations not equipped with those skills, it is easy to slip into the habit of finding only the \u201cfacts\u201d that fit their political views and to denigrate those who stand up for the \u201creal\u201d truth.\u00a0\u00a0What could be more comforting than denying those with “degrees” who bring inconvenient truths, and using the internet to provide the \u201cfacts\u201d to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is dignity in all work.\u00a0\u00a0The guy who drives the Waste Management garbage truck is important to our society.\u00a0\u00a0So is the guy sweeping up the street.\u00a0\u00a0But so is the professor who walks into class to discuss philosophy, and the students who participates in that discussion.\u00a0\u00a0Education is not a threat to Democracy; like that introductory course in college, it is a prerequisite.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"