Why is being smart/educated always belittled in the U.S.?

I'm just wondering why it's useful to political campaigns to paint educated people as "eggheads" or
"elitist". :wtf:

Why isn't the support of the educated a good sign for which candidate is best?

Aren't there more and more college-educated folks every generation? Are we putting down a group that will only grow bigger and stronger over time?

Please explain this to me.

the presence of smart people. There is nothing idiots will fight harder for than their right and ability to be as stupid as humanly possible, for as long as humanly possible.

And then they bitch about engineering jobs being given to dark skinned immigrants.

:shrug:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment

As for the popularity, that's just the Brave New World phenomenon: "I'm so glad I'm a delta. It must just be beastly to be one of those betas."

Jealousy, spite...even BITTERNESS? Sigh.

... But I'm not gonna give an entire lecture on The Genealogy of Morals here and now.

I heartily recommend it tho!

I wonder how much of this also has to do with the ideas behind external/internal loci of control as well. It all seems interconnected...

It's a fascinating story, best summarized by Rorty.

Gawd I'm loving the irony of giving an egghead explanation of why stupid people hate me! :rofl:

I'm a Psych major and have one ethics class under my belt. lol

But the topics you bring up fascinate me nonetheless. I will research this further. Thank you!

... Phenomenology will make you try to shoot yourself when you wake up. Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature will make you glad you missed with the gun.

you just keep on laughing with your fancy words, like irony and such Mr.Smartypants... where's the confounded loser smiley when you need it!

Ressentiment!


Thanks, BlooInBloo. I can't believe I've gone my whole life not knowing this word.

So stay tuned!

:P

you want to get a large number of people on your side (without worrying about their intellectual depth), the easiest thing to do is blame 'Them'. That's how professional conspiracy theorists make money. If you registered 'UFOtruthnow.com' and put up 20 pages showing how 'They' were 'hiding the truth from the american people', you'd have 10,000 loyal readers in a week.

Smart people only get one vote, same as the dumb people.

ONLY WANT CONSUMER ZOMBIES

resent people who are educated. Clinton has based her campaign on it.

Creationists/Intelligent Design folks are extremely proud when any "qualified" scientist agrees with them.

Global warming deniers claim they have the "truth" because they have a handful of scientists who agree with them.

And the "smart/educated" person is so valuable that if 10,000 of them support an idea that 10 oppose, those 10 are "just as smart" and "are probably right."

It's the new math for the 21st century.

Nothing is perfect.

After all, it's said light has properties of both energy AND matter. Makes it hard to properly categorize it...

raising the question, how do you know something.

Or because, as the IQ goes up, so does that pesky concept called "elitism"?

I do not know.

use this tactic.

schools and became lawyers?

Anti-intellectualism has a long history in the US, but in our era we can blame Nixon.

From the NYT Book Review of Rick Perlsteins new book "Nixonland":

"Arriving at Whittier College, Nixon, “a serial collector of resentments,” found that the clique of cool students was called Franklins, so he helped organize the Orthogonians for people such as himself — strivers who would try to ascend by grit rather than grace.
Perlstein explains Nixon’s behavior as arising from an Orthogonian resentment of Franklins. Nixon “co-opted the liberals’ populism, channeling it into a white middle-class rage at the sophisticates, the well-born, the ‘best circles.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Will-t.html

The question arises, how do we neutralize this bogus division?
It's already clear that this Nixon strategy will be employed again, for the tenth election in a row, against "elitist" Obama.
Obama has surely studied the "divide and conquer" Republican strategy and (hopefully) has worked out a new counterattack.
It's a counterattack we've needed since 1968.

(It's especially disturbing to see the Clinton's using Nixon's strategy against Obama.)

If you tell them what they want to hear, they'll be happy to ignore the fact that you have always acted as if you believe otherwise. All humans are like this, stupid people are just more susceptible to it. That's why they're stupid.

Look, I assume from your handle that you're a nurse. So you know better than I do that nurses work hard for low pay and health administrators are always looking for way to limit nurses' pay. But none of them are ever going to say 'we don't think nurses are valuable' - when ever they address issues affecting nurses, they start with a speech about how great nurses are and how important the work of nurses is.

Then the fifth paragraph begins 'Unfortunately...'. Even if the fancy speech doesn't convince nurses, it sounds good when it's repeated to voters, right before the same politician defines nurses as a 'special interest' group that are trying to torpedo the budget (or whatever).

who had wielded their corrupt influence like a club for decades, the son who had attended Yale based solely on his family's background, was just a downhome guy choppin' wood on his ranch.

So, you marginalize thinking and thinkers.

And this is why we give lip-service to education in this country, while making it harder and harder to get one. The last thing the powers-that-be want is a populace of informed, thinking people.

Black or white, male or female....used to be if you were educated, your chances for "success" (whatever "success" means, but that's another subject for another time) were better.

Of course, in general educated minorities and women STILL have to work twice as hard to get the recognition and rewards. But you're closer to accomplishing this if you're educated.

is a tool for gaining power.

"Divide and conquer"

There are many kinds of 'smart'-

:hi:

peace~

Maybe they are smart enough to get out of hard work? Is that the theory?
Seems like a lot of intelligent people work very hard to me...

of sleep every night of the week and pretty much worked seven days. :shrug:

... the most I've gotten in a long time. I could have gotten more, but I had the exigent desire to make this: :D

:applause:

:P

Not that education necessarily leads to reason but if you can belittle all aspects of rationale thought it seems to be a good thing - at least for the current administration

"Anti-Intellectualism In American Life"

from Wikipedia:

In many ways, Anti-intellectualism in American Life was a commentary on the increasing influence of Protestant evangelicalism, political egalitarianism, and the rising cult of practicality as the new criteria for assessing the private and public worlds. Hofstadter accused religion, politics, and the public schools of fostering in common people a resentment and suspicion of intellect, of the life of the mind, and of those who devote their lives to it. He charged that local evangelical preachers and small town lawyers and businessmen masked their bias against intellect with the rhetoric of morality, democracy, utility, and practicality. Thus, as the twentieth century chipped away at village culture, it was regrettable though not surprising that common folk, made suspicious of urbanity and learning by community leaders, reacted with a "righteous" vengeance to change and those who celebrated it.

AGAINST their own interests while the educated vote for the interests of the downtrodden a lot
of the time. Maybe they see that as patronizing?

As a math teacher, I "graded on the curve" (sorta) ... so when the "eggheads" got the 'A's the lesser lights got 'C's and 'D's.

In their simian minds, their lesser grade wasn't THEIR 'fault' ... it was the eggheads' fault. The punishment they'd get from parents whose 'nurturing' style was all stick and no carrot was the eggheads' 'fault.'

You'd think I'd learn from my own school experiences. When I slam-dunked a test or quiz in Junior High or High School - and then get ambushed by the greasers on the way home from school - it was a 'lesson.' They'd even tell me that they were 'teaching me a lesson.' It sure took me a long time to learn.

:eyes:

FWIW ... the only time I recall this nation actually holding 'nerds' in high esteem was the 60s. The Kennedy adminstration launched the 60s aiming to the moon. Literally. Sicentists, engineers, and astronauts were the "best and brightest" ... and celebrated. Anti-intellectualism was quick to reassert itself, however, in no small part due to 'Bubba' being offended that those snot-nosed college kids were avoiding the draft and out making trouble ... while he was working his ass off to keep a job. (At least that's how they saw it.)

in a democracy. However, authoritarian cultures and governments
love to keep the classes fighting each other to maintain control
thus it is necessary to marginalize and demean intellectuals in order
to continue the control.


The dumbification of the US by TV, consumerism and no child left behind tests has been
pretty successful.

at those who aren't educated. I have to admit that I have seen it first hand on both sides. Educated people who make more $$ looking down at those who work in say a fast food restaurant and then people who sweep the floors in an office saying that the people who work in the office were stuck up. There was probably truth in it.

Of course it's good to have the educated as a big block of supporters. It's also good to be a working person's candidate. Our candidate just needs to find that balance.

He hadn't found it yet 8 years ago, during his 2000 camapign against former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Rush's Congressional seat, which apparently is when the comments about him being elitist started, and the criticism was coming from blacks. I posted about this in a topic about Obama having had trouble in the past getting support from working-class blacks (so this isn't a new problem), quoting articles that mentioned his behavior in 2000 and the reaction to it then, and now I'm being accused of being "racist" for having brought it up. There were suggestions that anyone who saw anything elitist in his own references to his education might have a bias against education, too.

(Editing to delete a paragraph that I just realized sounded like, "Many of my best friends are academics." They are, but it's ridiculous to be pointing that out.)

My concern is with an impression Obama conveys that I think is turning off some working-class voters. He's apparently more aware of it now, and a Salon article I linked to and quoted mentioned how hard he'd worked to change that image. But there are still traces of it there, and there's no point in pretending it isn't causing some problems for him, or that people who notice it are biased against people who are educated and smart. Bill Clinton was possibly our brightest president ever, a Rhodes scholar, very well educated, but he didn't strike people as elitist. Obama does, at times, and I'm glad he's worked on that problem in the past, but he hasn't completely overcome it.

It has been brought up several times within the past month or so and his campaign does seem to finally be addressing it. I hope that people can see it and realise that he is for the working man/woman too.

America.

Did you ever see him talk about going to school or reading a book? No, because they're not "manly."

or speak well, or demonstrate thoughtfulness or manners or taste. Those are all campaign killers.

It's all pretense. I'm sure Dubya doesn't talk about clearing brush when he's not on TV.
He didn't used to speak like a Texan either - when you watch old footage of him.

And now Hillary is a working class heroine? :wtf:

Bizarro world.

And most of what is in books is a collection of what regular people figured out and passed down over decades and centuries. Local people know what they need to know to prosper in their local area, it doesn't make them stupid that they didn't learn technical terminology or the sociological patterns of a tribe half way around the world. A local fishing guide is good enough for the egghead to pay for the guide's expertise in catching a fish, but is too stupid to have an opinion on saving that fish's environment?? If you have met someone you can't learn from, then you are the fool.

circumstances, and the desire to pursue an education that advances some aspect of science, art, government, law, economics--which in turn advances humanity--aren't at odds with each other. Both types of education are necessary in this world--one isn't any better than the other.

because formal education compresses a lot of experience into a short period of time. Of course, there are things you can't learn from books or teachers or even, from classmates. But formal ed is an efficient way to to move through a lot of knowledge in a very short time.

fundamental skills and gain certain knowledge to survive and flourish in our particular circumstances, before we can even THINK about Shakespeare, or quantum physics, or whatever--whether it's seal-hunting, or a local bartering system, or fishing, or "street smarts", or heading down to the factory to make widgets or McDonald's to make burgers, whatever it takes to basically sustain yourself wherever you are in life. Many people either don't have the means, the mental capacity, or the desire to go beyond that. Some cultures don't see the value in moving beyond that. But the ability to feed, clothe, and shelter your family is a type of universally necessary "education", and I don't devalue it, in and of itself. What annoys me is the attitude that people who want to move BEYOND basic survival (via higher education and a career) are somehow "elitist", or that they lack "common sense" or are just "book smart" or "eggheads" who merely memorize facts for tests, or are motivated by greed. I will never understand those who mock higher education. I hate the endless celebration of, and pandering to, Joe Sixpack--because it's really all about trying to PLACATE Joe Sixpack and make him proud of himself and his circumstances so that he doesn't figure out how the REAL "elites" are fucking him over economically.

the other is available to anyone willing to use whatever resources are present in the environment at no cost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoWEk8d7gg

And this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3gINo6pWSw&feature=related

and i'm sure that they look down on me.

i could care less. if somebody wants to pander to the uneducated, or make stupid jabs at me, go for it.

i came from nothing, and i'm proud as hell to be a thinking person, a person of science, and a person of logic. if you are none of these things, i will think less of you. sorry, but i judge people, just as sure as they will call me an elite or whatever.

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son!" - Animal House

remember that movie. we all cheered for the idiot. it's human nature. but in some areas, like politics, i've found that the idiots tend to be wrong quite a high percentage of the time.

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neither is being stupid

neither is being uneducated

the celebration of the fools is something i do not partake in, sorry.

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it is considered fair game to trash people with degrees

it is not acceptable to trash people who are ignorant

sure there are plenty of folk without degrees who are smart. but most of the truly ignorant people in this country lack an education.

education is tied to every single indicator of well being in this country.

people with lower educations: are more obese, live a shorter life, are more religious, have less economic opportunity, are being bypassed by globalization, etc etc.

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Especially in a country that unlike some, doesn't provide college educations for all its citizens. I had a Regents scholarship so I didn't have to worry about that, but there's never enough scholarship money to go around, and ALL our schools need a lot more funding and attention.

Snobbery about your education runs counter to Democratic values.

There's a difference between valuing education and boasting about it.

You're boasting. And the fact someone with an education would be so foolish devalues that education.

reading tabliods and watching entertainment tonight while i am reading and thinking, you are not going to gain my respect. i study hard, think hard, and work hard. if you cannot put together a strong argument to support your case, i will not respect you.

i read the new york times. i think it's a good paper. the right wing will trash me because it somehow makes me elite, or "out of touch". i personally think it's far better than being some ignorant buffoon who gets their political news by reading people magazine.

i watch what i eat and get regular exercise. if you think that eating a bowl full of pig lard somehow makes you a champion of the people, that's your fucking problem, not mine. if you are 100 pounds overweight and paint me as a homosexual, that's your problem not mine.

if joe six pack wants to bomb the middle east into the ground and makes fun of me for being effete because i like to think, that's his fucking problem. he's the idiot, not me.

the ignorant people in this country have had their way for eight years. i personally will not take it any more. if you don't have a degree, that's fine. if you are ignorant, or a fool, that's not.

runs this country. Hopefully this election year will prove different.

and some of the smartest people I know, including myself, don't.

And I don't think for a second that the level of college education a candidate has means a rat's ass thing as to how good they would be as president. College education has never impressed me an iota, since anyone can memorize shit from a book and repeat it like a parrot on an exam. What matters is resiliency, life experience, and one's capability of intelligence and application of it. It's one's ability for accurate critical thinking, for objectivity, for reasoning and for trouble shooting, that makes one smart (among other things). Level of college education has nothing to do with it.

Could've fooled me.

Narcissistic might be a better word. Ignorant, too, considering what you just wrote.

Hell, my 4 yr old could probably fool you.

:rofl:

Isn't that an important factor in being stupid? Given the choice, I'd certainly rather be smart than stupid any day.

And welcome to DU; enjoy your brief visit. I'd also note that smart people tend to be better at things like grammar and the correct use of capitalization and punctuation when they write.

"The Renaissance of Anti-Intellectualism"
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i15/15b00701.htm

Hard to pick out just a few paragraphs, but here are some that stand out. The first gives historical perspective and the others speak of more current examples.


Probing for historical roots of a mood that was sweeping (if somewhat exaggerated by intellectuals), Hofstadter found that "our anti-intellectualism is, in fact, older than our national identity." He cited, among others, the Puritan John Cotton, who wrote in 1642, "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee"; and Baynard R. Hall, who wrote in 1843 of frontier Indiana: "We always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."


Television reporting and punditry are the tributes that entertainment pays to the democratic ideal of discourse. The political talk does not, in the main, evaluate or research: It "covers." When CNN's Washington bureau chief can say casually, "The Texas governor hammered home some of his major themes, including Social Security," this is shorthand, but not only shorthand -- it is a surrogate for reasoning. Positions are signaled -- candidates "position themselves" -- rather than defended; no defending is demanded of them. A topic is a "theme" is a "position" is an "issue" is news.

All the more so does punditry diffuse a debased version of intellectual life, cornering intellect in the name of chat, operating by a sort of Gresham's law of discourse. Punditry is concerned with reviewing performances, rating "presidentiality," itemizing themes, relaying and interpreting spin, not thoughtfully assessing politicians' claims, evaluating their evidence, judging their reasoning. To assess the quality of what politicians say would require intellectual work for which the pundits do not demonstrate competency. Pundits are hired, rather, for the facility and pungency of their presentations and the ferocity and acceptability of their opinions.





In my family, "She may be booksmart, but she's got no common sense" is a common pointed remark which generally gets a lot of nods in agreement when spoken. It was aimed at me a bit when I was young and it wounded then, but wasn't enough to keep me from continuing to be a reader. A big divider in this area is curiosity and the willingness, even eagerness, to want to explore, to travel, to understand other's ideas, cultures, philosophies, etc. I find those in my family who say the above also scorn travel outside the United States, usually expressing something about how many places there are to see in the US itself.

what a long way we've come since our first Presidents. Now we expect them to be "regular Joes" instead of cream of the crop. It is mindblowing to me too, considering the power of the office. I think it's some sort of inferiority complex. People want to think they could be President too, and are intimidated by intelligence.

Demonizing educated people has always been a theme of fascist propaganda.

intellectuals and academics are always targeted for abuse by developing fascist states

remember Nixon coining the political epithet of "egghead" against Adlai Stevenson?

it's as old as I am, and I'm DAMN old.

It allows power to be consolidated within a small group. An uninformed population tends not to question its appointed leaders.

by being jerks.

(Please excuse my use of the term under-class--I hope you understand what I mean.)

Look at the other popular conservative meme: Colleges are bastions of political correctness, where kids are indoctrinated, not educated. (Underlying message: don't send your kid to college.)

but apparently, if they actually acheive that, it makes them bad people.

My working class, blue collar parents always stressed the importance of education when I was growing up. Education was the way a working class person, or a working class person's children, could expand their opportunities in society. Education was always seen as very good and very desirable. I am glad my parents valued education for their children, because this enabled their children to avoid the economic catastrophe that resulted from all the mill closings in Western PA in the early 80s.

:crazy:

The stupider the population is the easier it is to control them. History shows us that when totalitarian governments take over the first people to be eliminated is the intellectuals.
No Child Left Behind shows us Bush's goal of dumbing down the American people. Instead of teaching Critical Thinking skills our children are learning how to take a standardized test.
In my pre-college days I have fond memories of being called the the curve breaker. I had the strange ability to be loved be my classmates for my achievements on the football field and hated at the same time for doing well in class.

Either it comes from the repugs themselves or from the most conservative Dem in the race.

because dividing people is a way to gain power.

If we refused to allow ourselves to BE manipulated by those who seek ways to cause us to focus on each other with suspicion, and looked instead at how much each one of us is bound together, we'd have less reason to be suspicious of others.

Those who seek to dominate the masses, need to divide the mass. In unity there is strength-

People who are intellectually gifted have no more or less value than people who are gifted in other ways- (musically/creatively/physically/intra-personally etc) Every single person on earth has value- and is equal to anyone. When we realize that, we will finally be truly "smart".
(IMO)


peace~
blu

The uneducated person is often smart and creative when it comes to his area of expertise. Though he may be lacking in domain specific knowledge, he is nonetheless a problem solver and independent thinker and thusly should not be looked down upon. She likes to learn and develop but may not be the type to read for pleasure per se. On the other hand the willfully ignorant individual is someone who should be feared. They resent intellectuals and their objectives while proudly wallowing in familiar foolishness. They become agitated when others try to share knowledge with them and they tend to abhor concepts that they are not comfortable with. These people are fools.

value on "education". Bush has a degree from an ivy league college, he would qualify as being "well educated"- His degree and powerful connections offered him opportunities denied to lesseducated but far more capable, effective individuals- There ]i]are many people who aren't able to navigate the maze of our world's "institutes of higher education". For a variety of reasons including: learning styles, time, cost, outside responsibilities, not simply lack of motivation, or 'willfull ignorance'.

A person may be highly educated and willfully ignorant. A person may also be poorly educated but very smart/wise/knowledgeable.
Your statement about those who become agitated by others trying to 'share knowledge with them' bothers me. Don't dismiss the distinct possibility that the person who is being subjected to having someone "share knowledge with them" is not responding with agitation out of discomfort- but rather because the methods being used to impart the knowledge are ineffective or impossible for the 'learner' to decipher.

I wouldn't call people unable to paint with the skill of Michaelangelo "willfully" un-artistic- (though a few may have the inherent ability without the drive or desire) Nor would I claim that anyone should be able to play golf with the likes of Tiger Woods or Jack Nicholas by being 'educated' in the manner Tiger and Jack were taught.

Albert Einstein was told he would never amount to much by one of his teachers- He didn't "do" school well, but he was clearly no 'fool' or lazy intellectual. "Smart" comes in many forms. There are dangerous "intellectuals" and dangerous "ignorant" people. IMO/experience.

peace~

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein

the m$$$$fm wants is a United States to figure out they are the enemy.

Secondly, there is the tradition of the shyster - the seemingly smart person who talks you out of your cow for some fake magic beans.

The perception is, as Charlie Daniels sang "some folks get them college degrees and then they open up an office and they charge big fees." while all of us dummies are loading sixteen tons while they look down their noses as the canaille who supposedly deserve their slavery. The motto seems to be "you work hard, but I eat well." Education is disparaged by some people and hard work is seemingly disparaged by educated people. If you look down your nose at somebody because they are "stupid" while ignoring that they may be honest, compassionate, and hard-working.

because of it is why we end up with barely literate morAns like Chimp "leading" this nation. :silly:

Once you get yourself some book-learnin', yer too uppity to believe the conned-servative view.

That's why they HATE education on the right -- God wants us to be stupid and believe any shit BushCo puts our way, so they can rob us "for our own good" and have the dumbass conned-servatives applaud them while they're doing it.

Ignorance is a RWer's best friend!

to feel better about themselves. Whatever happened to the best and the brightest? Seems that is not an

ideal anymore.

The nature of animals is to normalize the tribe/herd, which means getting rid of, or devaluing, the outliers. Both noticeably smart, and noticeably stupid, ends of the bell curve are insulted, while the big center peak is seen as "desirable".

--the sound of my family reunions.

that say, or are flat-out recognized by peer, industry, alumni groups and such for being 'smarty pants' though continue to act as though they have none. Look at the American auto makers in Detroit. What's up with that? Sky scrapers filled top to bottom with folks that have popped out of some university, or college somewhere, after the paper chase with impressive degrees in hand and poof! There goes Detroit regardless. Maybe so much for higher education.

I do think it keys upon what America considers a field of study. We have scads of poli sci folks here. Writers, can't always say just why they write what they do; but they they are writing. French Romance & Lit folks, you know? Real practical stuff and all that...teachers, etc, again, what they teach/taught or why is their business. Political junkies with credentials & what-have-you, web designers...

There are more college educated folks every cycle. Steady increases in tuitions would seem to be cashing in on that to a certain extent. While some of even them, maybe more than some; come from other countries to study here. Were that not to be the case, we wouldn't be manipulating the visa process to accommodate what would appear a shortage in tech sectors as a for instance,

'“I am optimistic about the potential for technology to help us find new ways to improve people’s lives and tackle important challenges. I am less optimistic, however, that the United States will continue to remain a global leader in technology innovation,” Gates said. “While America’s innovation heritage is unparalleled, the evidence is mounting that we are failing to make the investments in our young people, our workers, our scientific research infrastructure, and our economy that will enable us to retain our global innovation leadership.”' http://www.edn.com/article/CA6540389.html

Gates, harumph...oh well, what can you do :shrug:


I'll tell you what I will not do. I will not suggest that multi-million dollar collegiate sports programs drafting from high schools across the nation, keyed on product placement, and smiled upon by American Corporate Sports Franchise' be assessed to factor in such short falls. Nope, not me...

The server at DU would explode into raining sheets precious/semi precious metals, and stinky burnt plastics :):( :nuke: