American Unreason and Anti-Intellectualism
When I was an undergraduate, I thought it would be a good idea to get high school teaching certification as a backup. I had an amazing teacher – I hated him at the time – who asked everyone in the room why they wanted to teach. Most of the undergrads said things like “I want to help people.” Sheesh.
When he got to me, I said that I was an intellectual, and that curiosity, analysis and debate were essential for every American. He said something dismissive, and my previously-timid self stopped going to the class.
To save my grade, I finally went in to talk to him. We came to an agreement. I had to read Richard Hofstadter’s classic book “Anti-intellectualism in America,” write a report, and discuss it with him. The book provided a clear clear picture of what I would be facing in this country – pretty much for the rest of my life. Nothing else has been so accurate. I thank my professor with all my heart for forcing me to read it. The first effect it had was that I decided that I would never teach at a high school.
Now there’s a book that continues Hofstader’s insights into the contemporary situation, and I am looking forward to reading it.
Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason
Dismayed by the average U.S. citizen’s political and social apathy and the overall crisis of memory and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think, Jacoby passionately argues that the nation’s current cult of unreason has deadly and destructive consequences (the war in Iraq, for one) and traces the seeds of current anti-intellectualism (and its partner in crime, antirationalism) back to post-WWII society. Unafraid of pointing fingers, she singles out mass media and the resurgence of fundamentalist religion as the primary vectors of anti-intellectualism, while also having harsh words for pseudoscientists. Through historical research, Jacoby breaks down popular beliefs that the 1950s were a cultural wasteland and the 1960s were solely a breeding ground for liberals. Though sometimes partial to inflated prose (America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism), Jacoby has assembled an erudite mix of personal anecdotes, cultural history and social commentary to decry America’s retreat into junk thought. – from the Publisher’s Weekly Review
Laura Miller’s review at Salon is a good read in itself.
Although Jacoby scolds culture warriors like Allan Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American Mind,” for both misunderstanding and misrepresenting the upheavals on American campuses during the 1960s and ’70s, she also deplores many of the leftist remedies for those conflicts. Women’s and African-American studies departments, she argues, only “ghettoize” the subject matter they champion, and further Balkanize and provinicalize university students. Not coincidentally, the creation of those departments generated more faculty jobs without pressuring traditional professors to reassess their curricula: “Too many white professors today could not care less whether most white students are exposed to black American writers, and some of the multicultural empire builders are equally willing to sign off on a curriculum for African-American studies majors that does not expose them to Henry James and Edith Wharton.”
There are some quibbles – and it looks like I might agree with them – but this is a definite add to my Amazon wishlist!
“Jacoby has written a brilliant, sad story of the anti-intellectualism and lack of reasonable thought that has put this country in one of the sorriest states in its history.” – Helen Thomas