Americans are wonderful, energetic people. We work hard, play hard and are typically friendly
and generous. But we have always been a
bit ignorant. Even though we have many
of the world’s best scientists, mathematicians, computer programmers, economists,
doctors and social scientists, and conduct much of the world’s research, on
average we are woefully ignorant when compared to other industrialized nations.
We are proudly illiterate in geography, as so many studies
have revealed. Why learn about the rest
of the world when so few of us will ever travel outside the country? We have little use for foreign languages,
probably for the same reason. Less than
1% of Americans are proficient in a foreign language that they studied in the
classroom. Travel to Sweden and you will
find that even farmers who rarely venture from their towns and villages can
speak flawless English and perhaps French as well.
What about history?
Well, it seems that Americans know almost nothing about world history,
and damn little about our own American history.
Even college students demonstrate depressingly little knowledge of
history or any of the other social sciences, probably because they are
primarily focused on football games, frat parties and an occasional business
course (forgive me for a little spiteful hyperbole . . . . )
When it comes to math and science, the ignorance goes into
warp drive! Most Americans cannot do
basic percentage arithmetic (calculating profit margins, discounts, etc.). Most haven’t the faintest clue how all of the
technology at their disposal works and are more or less helpless when it goes
awry.
Almost half of our citizens believe that God created the
earth and human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago, a
belief that flies in the face of two centuries of acquired knowledge in
multiple scientific disciplines – geology, climatology, biology, genetics, etc. This is compared to other industrialized
nations, where generally less than 20% have a similar belief.
Why are Americans so ignorant? One would think that with our wealth and
freedom and energy and ingenuity that we would be the most knowledgeable
country on earth! But almost the
opposite is true – we are indeed one of the least knowledgeable, and seemingly
proudly so!
One might argue that for much of our history our ignorance
was reasonably well-suited to the task at hand – we focused our energy and
intellect on taming the land and building a formidable commercial engine to
stimulate business progress and lifestyle improvements. We disdained the
elitism and classism of our European forbearers, perhaps with the attitude that
spending much time in intellectual pursuits was a waste of time and a
distraction from the pursuit of material gain and being productive. Ignorance was, for the time, bliss.
But over the last 100 years or so, as our nation has found
its fate interwoven with that of the rest of the world’s in an ever more
complex economic, political and scientific web, that ignorance has become a
rather large liability. Many of our
citizens were easy prey for demagogues such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin,
Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace. Need
I say that there is one more to add to this list?
When the Internet emerged as the great intellectual
equalizer, there was hope that our citizens would tear themselves away from NFL
football and reality TV shows just long enough to acquire a new awareness of
the world around them. But alas, in a
sad but beautifully ironic twist, the Internet is doing just the opposite – it is
serving up steaming piles of pseudo-knowledge that catalyze our citizens’ deepest
fears and insecurities.
