Published Monday | February 18, 2008
Has U.S. grown hostile to knowledge?
THE NEW YORK TIMES

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from "American Idol," appearing on the Fox game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" during celebrity week.

The $25,000 question, selected from a third-grade curriculum, asked: "Budapest is the capital of what European country?"

Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard, perplexed. "I thought Europe was a country," she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth-graders: Hungary.

"Hungry?" she said, eyes widening in disbelief. "That's a country? I've heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I've never heard of it."

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason," up a wall. She is one of several writers with new books out bemoaning the state of American culture.

Jacoby doesn't zero in on one technology or emotion, but rather on what she calls a generalized hostility to knowledge.

Yes, she says, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked throughout American history.

But now, she argues, something different is happening: Anti-intellectualism (the attitude that "too much learning can be a dangerous thing") and anti-rationalism ("the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion") have fused in an insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she says, but they also don't think it matters.

Jacoby said the idea for her book struck her in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused by the day's terrorist attacks, she stopped at a bar. As she sat, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits.

"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of them said.

"What is Pearl Harbor?" asked the other.

"That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied.

At that moment, Jacoby said, "I decided to write this book."

She doesn't expect to revolutionize the educational system or stir millions of Americans to switch off "American Idol" and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why America seems vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism.

After all, "the empire of infotainment doesn't stop at the American border," she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform U.S. students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.

She lays some blame on the educational system. She also blames religious fundamentalism for an antipathy toward science.

She doesn't omit liberals from her analysis, either, noting the New Left's attacks on universities in the 1960s and decisions to consign black and women's studies to an "academic ghetto" instead of integrating them into the core curriculum.

To be fair, Jacoby says, she recognizes how hard it is to tune out the 24/7 entertainment culture. A few years ago, she participated in the annual campaign to turn off the TV for a week.

"I was stunned at how difficult it was for me," she said.

That made her realize, she said, just how pervasive the culture of distraction is.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1 ... d=10261353

I thought this was an interesting enough article to share with fellow ALIPAC members. It always puzzles me that only a few of we 300 million US citizens are even interested in what is happening to our nation due to illegal aliens and immigration in general. Only a fraction of us vote and most of the time, a vote is cast from the result of a 10 second sound bite! Even if we could get the news out to the general public more, I'm afaid that most just aren't interested! Any views from someone else? - FedUpInNebraska