Susan Jacoby on Americans’ ‘Hostility to Knowledge’
Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 02.15.08 | 10:03 AM ET
Photo by Kellie Pickler may be the obvious mascot, but Susan Jacoby says American “hostility to knowledge” is not just confined to adorable blondes who think Europe is a country and “Hung[a]ry” is not. In her new book, The Age of American Unreason, she argues that a poor educational system and religious fundamentalism’s hatred of reason have helped turn many of us into isolationist dummies.
Does she have a point? We’ve been lamented the rotting of our intellect as long as I can remember, and I, too, sometimes feel like we are doomed to irrelevance when a random young American has never heard of Greece or asks if “Thigh-land is part of China.” It sure makes for snarky cocktail conversation! Like Jacoby’s anecdote about overhearing two well-dressed men in suits at a bar the day of the September 11 attacks. One of the men compared 9/11 to Pearl Harbor.
Jacoby told the New York Times:
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
Fair enough. But I’m hoping this young American might prove her wrong:
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Joanna Kakissis 02.15.08 | 3:21 PM ET
PS: Thanks to Marilyn at Intelligent Travel for pointing out that video a few weeks ago. Finally got to include it in a post!
John M. Edwards 02.17.08 | 3:24 PM ET
Hi Joanna:
When I woke up this morning as dehydrated as the Carrot Man from “Lost in Space”—“moisture! moisture!”—I fired up my computer and landed like a horny lightning bug upon your blog.
I agree that your average American has trouble naming the 50 states, let alone even speculate what the CIA World Factbook is about.
One of my favorite American Abroad bloopers, was a vapid broad with breasts like mosquito bites who said of the Netherlands: “I’ve never been to Dutch.”
Anyway, when I sit around chewing the cud at hip bistros here in the cast-iron district of Manhattan, the wildly popular SoHo region, I sometimes listen in to healthily tan women and men, still smelling of sea salt and faraway places, bragging about their summer vacays. I feel as anachronistic as Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson O’Reilly boxed in and completely stumped on “The Hollywood Squares.” Now, I’ve never been to the Hamptons, so what gives?
I guesss I should pay way closer attention. I’ll buy an updated atlas and flip the bird at ignorance and isolation. When I watch a travel program, such as a flim featuring the migration patterns of storks on the Iberian coastline, I say wha? huh? I study the label of my replenishment fluid, feeling as aloof as a Japanese hitman.
C. Ikehara 02.18.08 | 2:07 AM ET
The following recent article asks:
- Has the unbridled spread of commercialism and technology transformed us from small groups of active amateur participants and involved citizens to a large single mass of professional passive spectators and nonstop consumers?
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=16388&categoryCode=162
HS 03.02.08 | 3:19 PM ET
As a lifelong geography fan who has visited over a dozen countries and US states, I heartily agree with the likes of Susan Jacoby. It mystifies me that, in what is called the “information age,” so little is known by so many. Why, when it’s easier than ever to search for information on Google, do the majority of people tune in to sitcoms and Britney’s institutionalization? I have grave worries about the world’s future, given the antipathy toward objective knowledge that I have encountered.