
Anti-intellectualism in American Life - hhs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_Life
======
mushufasa
I truly believe this is a substantial part of the reason why there's such a
shortage of top talent domestically in the USA.
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-s-companies-continue-to-
look...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-s-companies-continue-to-look-
overseas-for-tech-talent/) . There could be much more talent unlocked if
mainstream culture promoted intellectual pursuits.

~~~
deogeo
I'm not so sure. I heard (second-hand anecdote, sources welcome) that primary
education in the US is of poor quality - that seems like a more likely cause.
Unless we blame anti-intellectualism for that poor quality.

Edit: dlp211 inspired me to find a source, and it confirms his suspicions - US
education seems reasonably good:
[https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-
education-rankings-maths-science-reading)

Even so, a few doubts remain. Could the US have good students on average, but
fail to fully utilize its more talented students?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
"Math class is tough" Barbie is a byproduct of this attitude. It directly
feeds into under-performance in academics. The education system itself isn't
broken so much as expectations are low to let the less studious scrape by.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Talk_Barbie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Talk_Barbie)

~~~
souprock
If you want to get elected, you don't propose to expel the students who are
performing below average. They have parents who vote and/or cry on the TV
news.

It was funny and sad to see standards getting set, then reduced. We know what
is required. Various states set graduation requirements at that, with a test
to be passed, and then backed off when they realized that many would not
graduate. Since it isn't politically acceptable to deny graduation to anybody,
we have no standards.

~~~
darkmighty
I think that might not be approaching it form the best angle? Perhaps the best
question is: how to motivate students to excel academically, and give them
opportunity to study to match their motivation? (instead of having poorly
performing students be punished)

If you look at it that way, I think the solutions are much more akin to better
motivating students, creating better environments (if they don't have them at
home).

Motivation is both from showing better job opportunities to be had (higher
salaries, employability), the practical value of intellectual and scientific
education (to daily life decisions, participating well in democracy -- which
cannot work without well educated citizens), and finally an intrinsic value of
education -- showing how beautiful intellectual fields are, from a fun
approach to mathematics education, to literature, etc.

Environments is making sure the school and classmate interactions are
positive, possibly making available study spaces outside regular class time,
elective extracurricular activities (programming classes, etc), etc.

Both of those probably go through investing heavily in teacher salaries and
adequate teacher education. It's a societal commitment, really.

------
codesushi42
Honest question: which societies are considered "pro intellectual"?

~~~
52-6F-62
I’m seeing a range of answers that seem to betray individual value systems
more than anything.

I’ll play along. I’d say Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany, France,
Sweden, Japan. Societies of continuing celebration of poetic, philosophical,
artistic, and scientific achievement.

(That’s a short list, and a fast-thought out one that is shorter than it
should be. Don’t crucify me for it. There are entire ranges of the planet I’ve
skipped)

~~~
oarabbus_
You said all the other answers simply betray personal value systems, and not
to crucify your list, but your list is essentially one of (Northern) Euro
nations, plus Japan. Then you cite poetic, philosophical, artistic, and
scientific achievement as your criteria, but leave out countries like India,
Russia, and China.

Could you explain your rationale here?

~~~
wtallis
Do you think India, Russia and China have been notable for achievement in
those categories on any kind of _per capita_ basis rather than through sheer
scale?

~~~
maire
I agree. If you have a billion people you should have 3 times the intellectual
achievement as the US.

~~~
oarabbus_
Yes, and if you are 3x older than your coworker you should make 3x their
salary.

------
newnewpdro
"there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated" \- NOFX

------
ykevinator
Fox news

------
mindcrime
Shades of Tocqueville[1] who wrote about the dangers of anti-intellectualism
in America even earlier.

 _For instance, Kaledin says, to an extent greater than is usually emphasized,
Tocqueville thought “populism would gradually lead to an anti-intellectual
culture and to mediocrity in political leadership.”_

I don't think you could come up with a better summary than "mediocrity in
political leadership" to describe the current climate.

[1]:
[http://news.mit.edu/2011/tocqueville-1129](http://news.mit.edu/2011/tocqueville-1129)

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
mindcrime
Your comment is irrelevant, since I did nothing of the sort.

~~~
dang
This sentence seemed like an obvious partisan shot:

> _I don 't think you could come up with a better summary than "mediocrity in
> political leadership" to describe the current climate._

But when I re-read it, it seems more likely to have been a "pox on all their
houses" sort of comment. If that's what you meant, I'm sorry for misreading
you.

~~~
mindcrime
No worries. I really do mean that, in general, our political climate seems
dysfunctional in a way that I personally think reflects exactly what
Tocqueville was talking about. I wasn't calling out any specific person or
party or anything.

That said, "a pox on all their houses" does come pretty close to reflecting my
views on many political issues. :-)

------
dnprock
I find that different cultures and countries draw different lines between
intellects and beliefs. I came from Vietnam. It has a communist leadership.
The subject of evolution is widely taught and agreed. People in school show
off their scientific intellect. There's an emphasis on the study of science
subjects. You'll hear a lot about science competition, local scientists.
Religious doctrines are suppressed. You rarely hear about them except through
some friends who are associated with religions. Even those friends rarely talk
about their religions in public.

In America, there's a somewhat different divide. Academia teaches evolution
and almost never mentions religion. Churches and mosques are the places you
would learn about religions. Government seems neutral. But if you dig around,
you can find a lot of religious materials. You can meet people who openly
expresses their religious beliefs. In some ways, science feels suppressed and
has to compete with religions.

But this anti-intellectualism may make science better. Rather than agreeing
with science, we constantly question it.

~~~
bllguo
The idea of questioning science and informed skepticism is valuable, but I
don't think it stems from anti-intellectualism. How can people who distrust
science to that degree come up with meaningful criticism? I don't see what
value climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers are bringing to science, for
example.

~~~
nostrademons
It's not that climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers are themselves improving
science, it's that _their existence forces scientists to up their game_. If
you know that someone is going to question your findings, you tend to work
harder to ensure that you're actually saying something true and there are no
holes in your reasoning. This holds _even if those people never actually
question your findings_ \- even if you never interact with them at all. The
benefit is all because of your own self-criticism.

It's like how competition tends to make companies provide better service, even
if the competition never actually steals a single customer away. The fact that
it _could_ changes the incentives in a way that makes you do your job more
rigorously.

~~~
davidcuddeback
That would make sense if science was a monoculture and could only be
challenged from the outside, but scientists question each others' findings all
the time. You can't have a scientific process without scrutiny.

~~~
quibono
Why couldn't it be both? Internal scruitny is necessary but I'd say that how
well communicated research is influences how much funding and attention it
gets which obviously matters a lot in shaping the scientific community.

------
roenxi
The interesting question that may well be addressed in the book but not in the
wiki; is it a mistake? The communist regimes were quite pro-intellectual [0];
and the modern communist party is relatively technocratic compared to the US.

The problem is although technical excellence is a benefit, intellectuals form
their own class and have slightly abstract demands. As a body their first
priority is not the material betterment of ordinary people, although
individually there are intellectuals who punch well above their weight in that
regard.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union)

~~~
shmerl
That's very moot. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

There is a well known story, when Stalin met with Vavilov¹ to hear his
concerns about issues related to genetics, and was ridiculing his ideas,
making fun of him, saying that all he does is "playing with pestles and
stamens". Vavilov died of starvation in prison. I don't call such regimes
intellectual.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
You shouldn’t extrapolate from Stalin’s regime to the whole Soviet era. Stalin
is infamous for making the USSR backward in genetics, history, archaeology,
and linguistics. Yet as soon as he died, those fields recovered and
significant progress on even a global level was made. My own academic
background is in the latter three subjects, and I cite work by Soviet scholars
in any publication I write.

Most academic libraries in the West keep Soviet academic publications from the
Stalinist era in the closed stacks, because no one ever asks for them. There
is a reason for that: the level of scholarship is poor, and the author feels
compelled to praise the “Great Leader” (вождь) even if he was writing on
something so removed from the modern Soviet Union and Communist ideology as
e.g. 3rd-century CE grave finds. However, from the Khrushchev era on, Soviet
scholarship in many fields was as strong as in the West and, as I said, some
of those works are standard references for the field regardless of where on
earth you live and work.

I would consider the late Soviet Union a fairly “intellectual” culture,
because even as in the West the attraction of many such academic careers
declined in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e. the belief that such degrees were
useless and there was no way to make a living from them), in the USSR it was
still very respectable to enter such fields. Naturally, however, that was only
possible under an overall planned economy that turned out to be deeply flawed
and inhuman, and as I mentioned elsewhere here Russia’s intellectual culture
declined after the fall of Communism, but still.

~~~
shmerl
It did change in the later period, but again, scientists were moving progress
rather despite the regime, than thanks to it. Stalin was just one of the most
egregious examples of that sort.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> scientists were moving progress rather despite the regime, than thanks to
> it.

No, it is more nuanced than that. Those scientists only had their positions
because the state chose to allocate resources to keep them employed. With the
fall of Communism, when academia was exposed to market forces, those
departments were often gutted.

Also, certain fields gained considerable state support precisely because the
regime felt they served its own foreign policy goals. For example, the USSR
was a powerhouse for the study of the Iranian language family. This was not
only because a number of Iranian languages were spoken within the USSR, but
also because the USSR wanted good Central Asian areal studies so that it could
better extend its influence over Iran and Afghanistan. The same is true of
many of the Third World nations where the USA and USSR were fighting for
influence: name a language in Africa or Asia, and there is often a very well-
written Soviet-era grammar or lexicon that linguists everywhere still cite
today.

~~~
shmerl
That's exactly my point. Regime didn't care about science, it cared about
using it to further its goals. That's why for example medicine was so abysmal
there. Its own population was very low priority.

