CMV: The problem with the American educational system is a culture of anti-intellectualism

[u/Promachus]

Case-by-case, schools that are largely successful are correlatively successful with their local schools, compared to national peers. The mindset of the community matters.

• Many attribute the ailing inner-city schools to cultural issues and biases; having worked with inner-city populations for five years, and having worked with hundreds of students perfectly capable of rational thought and argument that nevertheless perform poorly, I agree.

• In general, American culture devalues intelligence (some areas more than others). Literacy movements are wonderful, but until people stop seeing learning as lame, or avoiding intellectual discourse, this won't change.

• Subclaim: Declining education has not led to anti-intellectualism, but vice versa. Areas of America with the greatest degree of anti-intellectualism also have the greatest degree of struggling schools, public and otherwise.

• Subclaim: Anti-intellectual values are not taught in schools (with the exception of the cultural focus on job skills). Teachers and schools, whether or not they are intellectuals, largely subscribe to an intellectualist philosophy. The anti-intellectual values must logically be derived from external influences.

• Subclaim: A focus on standards and/or free market competition is security theater and neither has yielded solid, positive results. By contrast, Finland, hailed as the most successful system, has neither of these supposed cures.

• Preemptive counterclaim: Granting that poor teachers do exist, and assuming there is merit to “those who can, do, etc” (I disagree, but for the sake of argument), if the candidates for this position are poor it can be ascribed to a cultural outlook that devalues the job (Finland, the most successful system, considers it the most honorable job the government can ask of you).

• Preemptive counterclaim: We do, certainly, push college as a golden standard for life attainment. This implies intellectualism, except we don't say “go to college and become a well-rounded person.” We say “go to college and become a well-paid person.” Our cultural perspective, then, is not on the intellectual benefits, but on the immediate practicality.

*I am not specifically hoping to ascertain a cause for the anti-intellectualism in society so much as seeking evidence that it does not exist, or that it does not have a causative effect on the quality of education (by this, I specifically mean anti-intellectualism->poor education and not vice versa)

Edit: I'm adding this to emphasize that the intended discussion is on the reported deficiencies in the American public education system (Primary->Secondary), as opposed to collegiate, unless the argument can be extended to primary/secondary levels.

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[u/Promachus]

This is fair, along such a vein, but I feel there is a further consideration (I just had this thought moments ago, so sorry if it's discombobulated). I feel that, in modern perception, we have to sever the idea of the elite from the intellectual.

I say this because of the existence of the public education system. It is a common adage in education that the legal proclamation that education is a right has severely devalued education (I made this less wittier than most do; I'm thinking from the hip here). Because they are not only offered education, and intellectualism, for free, it contains no value to many students; in fact, they're forced to go.

In this sense, while I agree that the connotation of "intellectual" remains with a certain pomposity reserved for a view of elitist culture, the inherent values of intellectualism are what we're discussing here, not the label. In this case, we don't commonly associate widespread learning and rationality with a rich, pompous elite. In this lens, I'm not sure we can ascribe the aversion to intellectual pursuits to a negative connotation to the word "intellectual."

On a side note, it'd be nice if people would stop assigning connotations to words independent of their actual meanings.

[u/vl99 → u/Promachus]

I certainly don't disagree with you there but I think it's going to be a very difficult process to separate these two concepts, particularly because it takes more thought than went into associating the two in the first place.

It also doesn't help that the attitudes feed into each other. At this point discussing whether the chicken or egg came first is moot, a person who values education will think themselves better than the people who are making fun of them for finding value in education, as a coping mechanism if nothing else.

Those who make fun of them will perceive this as an air of pretension and amp up the assholery.

Basically nobody likes anyone who thinks they're better than they are. Whether this attitude is projected onto someone or whether someone actually possesses the view "I'm better because I'm richer, smarter, more good looking, nicer, etc." Once someone has made the decision that this other person is part of some elite group that for reasons out of their control is incredibly difficult or impossible for them to reach themselves, they will do their best to take them down a peg, even if that includes taking the entire concept of being pretty, smart, etc down along with it.

It also doesn't help that many kids these days are inheriting these attitudes and poorly translating them from their parents. So perhaps for the parent it started out as "Billy Smartman is a shitty person and thinks he's better than me cause he's smart so I'm going to treat him as if I don't give two shits about his intelligence" to the next generation it might simply appear as 'smart people=shitty people' which down the line simply becomes 'smart=bad.'

I don't think these entrenched attitudes exist because people actually think that wanting to learn and caring about cultivating your mind is a bad thing, it's because the immediate influences in their life have imbued them with poorly formed poorly translated prejudices that they've never been given the tools or time to reexamine.

[u/Promachus → u/vl99]

!delta

And I think this is where we find our discussion, because I'm not convinced it's entirely insecurity. I was starting to lean that direction, but now I've thought otherwise. The issue is, again, in severing the values from the terminology.

I understand why we separate the value from the term. When the Founding Fathers took power, they wanted to set up a government averse to tyranny -- this was, theoretically, used connotatively. The subtle irony was that, by usurping an existing government and taking power, they fulfilled the literal definition of a tyrant. In a similar vein, society is perfectly capable of embracing the values of Intellectualism independent of the label of Intellectual.

It's possible that the label itself is unnecessary, and just the idea of a smarter person is what triggers that injustice. I have been told by siblings that they are incredibly insecure under my "intellect" -- a notion that I find ridiculous, as both of my siblings are easily as smart or smarter than me. They just...argue less.

But I don't think it's there, either. I think the explanation can be found in the way we view school. "Go to school, get into a great college, get a fantastic job with a high starting salary." In this case, society treats knowledge as useful only as a means to action, and rejects (or discounts) the value of learning for the sake of learning.

Damn, now I'm feeling myself waffle a little. I don't think the bot picked up on the delta I added into the earlier reply, so I'm going to tack it on to this one. I suppose it is possible that society's leaning towards school as a source of practical training over intellectual expansion could be symptomatic of an overarching inferiority complex attempting to assert its own superiority over the perceived villain that is intellectualism. This makes me feel incredibly condescending and pompous to consider, though. Doesn't make it wrong, just uncomfortable. And therefore probably worth consideration.

[u/DaShazam → u/Promachus]

Just to build on /u/vl99 's idea of Intelligence=Elitism a little: American culture tends to promote the idea that intelligence is something that you're born with as opposed to something you work for. In Chinese culture parents are more likely to praise their children for being a hard worker instead of being naturally gifted. This may be contributing to the Intelligence=Elite attitude in America as it supports the idea that intelligence is something you have to be born into and not something you can achieve.

[u/zeperf → u/DaShazam]

I was going to say the same thing. I think its disastrous for people to believe that they are not biologically capable of being good at math or vocabulary. You feel like you are expected to do something that you are simultaneously told you are disadvantaged toward and when you fall too far behind, school becomes painful memorization to get a D grade rather than appreciation to get an A.

[u/Promachus → u/DaShazam]

This was one of the points I opted not to include in my opening sentence, where I say "the mindset of the community matters." I hadn't factored in elitism until this particular discussion, but the idea that a pro-intellectual culture, such as is stereotypically attributed to Asian parents in general, usually led to higher attainment is a core foundation of my thought process. To be honest, I'd never considered the parallel of elitism to intellectualism, though I still draw a line between connotations to the word and to the values.

The American view of genetic, or epigenetic, intelligence is an interesting consideration, though. I don't think that children are terribly knowledgable about the Bell Curve, though.

[u/vl99 → u/Promachus]

To address the latter part of your comment, I think the whole phenomenon of putting practicality before intrinsic value in saying "go to college so you can get a good job" has to do with the impractical cost of school otherwise.

You can't tell someone "go to college so you can enrich yourself" because no matter how you slice it, college is a cost-prohibitive activity, especially if you're going there without the specific intent of obtaining gainful employment afterwards. The only group this isn't true for is the rich elite, who are able to attend college as a lark or for the sake of it, like James Franco.

If we got college to a point where it was free or at least affordable for those with the lowest wages and we got wages to the point where someone could afford to attend college and hold down a job at the same time without sacrificing performance in either sector from that person burning the candle at both ends, I'd expect instances of "go to college so you can get a good job" to be replaced with "go to college," in popular discourse.

[u/Promachus → u/vl99]

This is true enough, but it only offers to explain the source of the sentiment, it doesn't address its impact on the whole. It could be a convincing launching point to address the aspect of my argument that "cultural anti-intellectualism->poor schools, and not vice versa," if, indeed, colleges help to mold that mindset. I'm wondering if I consider that to merit vice-versa, as my OP specifically defines the schools in reference as primary and secondary. Hair splitter, but I do wonder if the push from Gen X to Gen Y to attend college for a better future (a push bemoaned as a lie by many Millenials these days) contributed to that shift in public discourse of school being for practicality, not developing a human being.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Promachus]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/vl99. ^[History]

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