Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

I bookmarked this timely article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?em&ex=1203397200&en=38525b1af4915364&ei=5087%0A) a couple days ago and forgot about it until now. To me, far too many Americans ARE hostile to knowledge, particularly the ultra-conservatives and Christianists who require an ignorant citizenry to successfully peddle their toxic policies and religious views. Not surprisingly, there is an inverse correlation between levels of education and adherence to fundamentalist Christian views – the higher the education level, the fewer fundamentalists. I believe it is one reason that Christian fundamentalism has had a resurgence in the USA. Similarly, the regime of the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney has benefited from less educated, knee jerk conservatives, particularly among conservative Christians. A lack of an accurate knowledge of geography and history has also allowed these people to try to re-write the true history of this country and push the “Christian Nation” myth among other disinformation campaigns. Here are highlights from the article:

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?” Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said.

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture. Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters. She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said. Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.