Cool to be Dumb

How Being Stupid is Part of the American Way


NERD!! FAGGOT!!

John Frakes is a high school student in class. He answers a difficult question and a round of guffaws and whispered names follows. He gets pushed around in the hall afterwards and called a “faggot.”

Nine out of ten American high school students experience prejudice on a daily basis. Violent crimes in school are on the rise. A study by the US Department of Education revealed 45% of middle school and 35% of high school students regularly experience daily violence in their schools.

In the meantime, teachers are losing control. A Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper investigated local schools and found several classrooms where teachers, afraid of being hurt by crazed students, gave in. One said, “do whatever you want to do!” as she threw up her hands.

At the root of bullying is an anti-intellectualism that equates to anti-gay attitudes and American “patriotism.” It’s cool to be stupid. Or at least not to act too smart. The top tier “cool students” in schools (according to a University of Virginia study) are pretty girls and athletic boys. Usually, when they’re on the top of fashion trends, it puts them even higher. At the bottom of the list are “dorks”, which are defined as kids who can neither dress well nor do any good any their classes. Second from the bottom: nerds. Nerds were defined as people who “outwardly showed interest in their studies.”

Why is this the case? Isn’t thinking supposed to be good? Why is it so cool to be dumb? Why do students feel they have to hold back in class lest they be singled out as the nerd? Why does drinking prevail on college campuses while thinking is frowned upon? One professor, recorded in an essay by Paul Trout of Montana State University, said, “most students nowadays are reluctant to learn and to think and resent being awakened from their stupor. I shudder when I consider the future of this country.”

How does this happen? Answer: it’s ingrained not only in human nature but, perhaps more importantly, in the foundations of our great country. Thinking is taught to be something that’s threatening even though thinking is the only way to solve the problems that get us out of unfortunate situations.

BEN FRANKLIN & HAPPY MEDIOCRITY

“Freedom.” It’s a great idea and one we all believe in, but, despite what we believe, our country is not entirely “free.” It’s built on an assumption – made by the people who created our country – that as they went ahead and ruled our country, they would need to have a mass of people following them who went along with whatever they decided. It was, as one of the conservative thinkers, Reinhold Neibuhr, once said, recognition of “the stupidity of the masses.” That stupidity was meant to be celebrated so that too much criticism wouldn’t happen, which would threaten the power and strength of the country.

Benjamin Rush, one of the Declaration of Independence’s signers, believed that “actual liberty could tear the nation apart” and he advocated the creation of the people into “republican machines” who would willingly and gleefully submit to the rule of the powerful.

In order to keep people in submission, they had to be kept dumb. Intellect was a privilege of the elite. Benjamin Franklin, everybody’s favorite “electricity dude”, advocated creating a “happy mediocrity,” i.e., a country with people – unlike those in England’s rigid class structure – who melted into one big, powerful, (and “mediocre”) middle-class. That middle-class was used to create the powerful America that exists today. Just like armies need soldiers, countries need workers.

America grew by creating middle-class individuals through its landmark “melting pot” concept, which meant immigrants from around the world were told to forsake their cultures and upbringings to subscribe to the “American way” (i.e., the middle-class, patriotic, “happy mediocre” existence). They were taught not to question authority.

At the same time, in America’s frontier, the country expanded. Frontier life was rough and hard. Intellectual pursuits had virtually no place (even though some frontiersman were said to have read entire volumes of Shakespeare’s plays). Frontier life scoffed at “book-learning” as “panty-waist” and “effeminate.” When today’s politicians try to appeal to the “every-man” in their quests for public office, they often bring back the notion of the simple, hardy frontiersman – as though they are somehow exactly like those early American settlers.

Christianity was the spirit running through the new created America, and evangelical Christians participated in another part of the creation of an anti-intellectual myth at the heart of our great country. In order to preach out to the men in the frontier, they had to dumb themselves down. Richard Hofstadter in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life describes a minister, Peter Cartwright, who had to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the frontiersmen in order to get them to listen to him. “The people didn’t respond to intellectual discussions about religion, but they did respond to Hell.” Thus, ingrained in the American conscience was the sense that religion was an emotional response, not intellectual. This idea that somehow emotion overpowers, and is more important than, brain expanded to include Billy Graham – the most successful preacher of our time – who warned against “education that’s too intellectual” and any subsequent thinkers who use similar warnings.

At a time when America, the infant country, was trying to find itself, it enforced “patriotism” to strengthen itself. Too much critical thought was a threat to patriotism. Some people worried that, as immigrants flooded into our boundaries and cultures became increasingly diverse, it would be difficult to maintain “American” integrity. Fortunately, high school provided a simple and cost-effective solution.

HIGH SCHOOL; INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL CONDITIONING.

In his book The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, Thomas Hine writes that high school was seen as “the only hope for preserving American values.” A Stanford professor, Edward A. Ross, in 1901, said, “high school is an economical system of police.”

In order to make students more submissive – i.e., to crank out the “happy mediocre” Americans who would go along with their government and support it at all costs – high schools were used to indoctrinate students with “the American way.” This way included sports and extra-curricular activities to appeal to the emotional sides of students and ‘school spirit’ to develop team attitudes. It was never intended that high school would be solely a place that fostered intellect. In fact, too much in-depth thought was actively avoided by virtue of “America-slanted” textbooks, which revised history and glossed over American mistakes, while glorifying American heroes and presidents to God-like positions and at the same time almost completely ignoring any true recognition of a valid culture outside the boundaries of the 48 contiguous states. Any suggestion of weakness was erased from the possible “history” students would learn about their America. Any suggestion that another culture could possibly be equally valid was totally kept out.

“Ignorance leads to demonization and fear,” says Manuel Valenzuela, essayist and writer at Bella Ciao.com. “Intelligence leads to peace and understanding.” But as an Education Policy Analysis study revealed, “schools have very little interest in cultivating intellect. Education serves to channel intellect into less threatening ends.”

What could be more threatening than free thought? Isn’t that what “freedom” is all about?

The EPA study continues: “The development of exceptional talent is supported in theory and suppressed in practice.” In other words, schools pretend that they’re teaching students intellectual goals and use the categories of “smart” and “gifted” to entice students to keep going, when all the students are really doing is learning how to better take part in a greater “American” society. Anything that steps outside that box – including too much free thought – is actively discouraged.

Teachers play no role, most of which have been through the exact same system themselves. They’re merely cogs in a grander scheme wheel, of which they’re probably unaware. Some educators have actively tried to change it. It’s a long, hard battle.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

Getting by in 21st century America is harder than it ever was. It’s no longer very easy to get a good-paying job without attending college, and even then it’s hard to be guaranteed a good salary when you get out of school. Still, because college is increasingly necessary, 65% of American high school graduates attend a two- or four-year university.

At the same time, in high school, with over-populated classrooms and “standardized” tests, intellectual pursuits like art, music, and philosophy are erased and scorned, if not forgotten.

In college, life is not seen by many students as one of intellect but rather, of a means to an end. College is the drudge you must pass through on your way to a job and a salary that puts food on your table – i.e., to “real life.” Because schools are over-crowded, the market for colleges is increasingly more competitive. As students do poorly, if they threaten to drop out, the college will lose money. So they make classes easier. Or they threaten professors who make their grading scales too tough. Or they create support groups for students “traumatized” by overly difficult classes. All of which leads to professors distancing themselves from the process of learning, from the students, and leaning in the direction of more challenging efforts like publishing. Nobody benefits. In a capitalist society, students increasingly see themselves as consumers in a “bought” college, expecting as much as they can get for as little effort, since they’re paying for it.

Paul Trout is an English professor at Montana State University. In his essay Student Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University, he says that, “faced with growing numbers of high-school graduates who resent and resist the rigors, demands, and pleasures of higher education, colleges and universities have lowered standards to keep students happy and enrollments up.”

There are even extreme examples, such as the University of Chicago who – when given the grade of 300 out of 300 schools rated for best social life on campus – actively campaigned to get students out of the library with t-shirts depicting the library under a red circle-and-slash emblem! It seems to be a never-ending slope, as the population continues to rise and students take more and more power away from the administrations, which cater to their every whim at risk of losing their precious tuition dollars.

Even the highest, most prestigious colleges in America are seeing this increasingly prevalent trend. Trout suggests a solution: raise the problem in the classroom and talk about it with students. He says that, when approached with the topic of anti-intellectualism in schools and explained the ways in which that anti-intellectualism is undermining the students’ ability to get a good and intelligent education, many young people are incensed and want to do something to change it. It’s only when they’re made to realize it, and given the opportunity to speak about it, that they actually feel as though they have the right to make their voices be heard.

WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THINKING ABOUT THINGS, ANYWAY?

If we’re not meant to be thinking too much, according to our founding fathers and the powers that be – why should we even be complaining about “anti-intellectualism” and proposing that something should be done to stop it? Because the alternative is much worse; thinking leads to understanding, leads to awareness, leads to acceptance, leads to innovation, leads to safety, leads to advancements that make humanity thrive. In the opposite direction, ignorance leads to hatred, leads to war, leads to destruction. Already, bad information gets taught in schools, especially risky health information such as these bogus “facts:”

a) Abortion leads to sterility.

b) HIV can be spread though sweat and tears.

c) Half of young gay men have AIDS.

d) Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31% of the time. (actually, it’s 3%).

None of these things are true, but thousands of young Americans are hearing them; prejudice is being taught; people are dying for a war they don’t even understand and 51% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Thinking is your only tool for a free and safe America. And world.

But speaking of the rest of the world, while we were all ignoring them and focusing on how many kegs we could down in one sitting, China and India have now begun to surpass our country in scientific advances. New York Times recently reported those two countries have stopped sending their best students to America’s colleges because our standards of education are so low, we don’t encourage actual learning. In China and India, students don’t have to push through an anti-intellectual barrier in their educational system the way we do. We never seem to learn, here in America, until something totally drastic happens that shocks us into shape: which is exactly what happened 50 years ago.

1950’s America was tumultuous. A presidential candidate named Adlai Stevenson had tons of “book-learnin” and smarts. He ran against the war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower, playing on the American “frontier” ideal again, acted like the typical every-man. He was suspicious of too much knowledge. He told everybody how much he loved reading Western novels. He played right into the country’s fear of “intellect” and Joseph McCarthy, a senator who called people Communist or Gay and got them arrested for it, also fanned the flames against Stevenson as an “out-of-touch egghead” who “threatened America with his intellectual approach.”

Eisenhower may actually not have read Western fiction, just like President George W. Bush isn’t actually a Texan but is really a Yale University grad from one of the richest, most “elite” families in American history, but that hardly matters. It was the fear of “intellect” that got Eisenhower elected, thanks to the crazy warnings of Joseph McCarthy. In response, America plunged into a period of anti-intellectualism the likes of which it hadn’t seen in several decades. Then came Sputnik, Russia’s space rocket, in 1957. America stood back in shock and awe. Maybe, they thought, there was actually something important in thinking, after all.

It’s a similar time, today, as an American election has again been won on a platform of anti-intellectualism. As our country, again, plunges into a period where thinking and progress is discouraged, what will it take to shock us back into place? How bad will the shock be this time?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn says lesbianism is so rampant in Oklahoma that school officials should only allow one girl into the bathroom at a time.

Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior told people: “there’s no need to worry about the environment because Jesus could be coming back any day now.” Bush, with similar-minded people, pulls out of the world’s Kyoto accord on global warming.

We’ve maxed out all of our resources and population continues to rise. It’s critical that we think about better ways to deal without our resources and our world. Ronald Wright, essayist and writer of A Short History of Progress, says, “What’s needed is .. The transition from short-term to long-term thinking.” Is this going to happen?

One possibility is that “queer” ways of looking at the world could be extended to “intellect” and what we think of when we say the words “smart” and “dumb.” It’s simple to say someone’s “smart” and someone’s “dumb,” but that’s not exactly true – nor is it fair. Everybody has “dumb,” sides and “smart” sides and as soon as we start drawing lines between ourselves we separate the community that needs to work together in pursuit of a happier future.

Thinking isn’t bad. But thinking is sometimes threatening. It’s always questioning; and questioning makes people feel uneasy. People need to be made to feel like it’s OK to ask questions. At the root of people’s fear is the belief that “thinking too much” will distance us from foundations of the heart and of morality. A healthy balance, then, of heart and mind, is critical.

In the end, it’s not intelligence that ultimately threatens people, it’s arrogance. Humility is one of the sexiest attributes one can perfect in oneself. If you recognize the inner intelligence in everyone around you, your humility flourishes, and your intellect is allowed to run free. It is in accepting your humanity that a free-thinking individual will get away from violence and ridicule. There will always be people who try to bring you down. Play in everybody’s court and work together to get people thinking again: because the world needs us.