THE END OF IGNORANCE? sure, if you're politically correct

"In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." Donald Miller

No one is ignorant or even wrong in the world of the politically correct.  They're just "differently informed." Folks who voted for Trump because they thought Barrack Obama was an African born Muslim, for example, they weren't misinformed, just "differently informed" via "alternative facts." When Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that a Rothschild-financed Jewish space laser might well be igniting those devastating fires in California, she too was just "differently informed."

How deliciously nonjudgmental this is. No assertion is too ridiculous or blatantly ignorant to be rejected as untrue. Such statements are merely "differently informed." Informed by what? "By whatever authority the believer happens to subscribe to. It's like being left instead of right handed. There's no fault involved, no personal responsibility, no right nor wrong. Just gifted with different conceptions of reality. 

The politically correct refuse to recognize that some sources of authority are far more reliable than others; and that ignorance is often an achieved trait. Of course ignorance is acquired if you are mentally deficient. But what about persons of normal intelligence who adamantly insist on the patently ridiculous? For instance, that the condensation trails of planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" containing harmful substances being released by one or another villain for sinister purposes. This abysmal level of ignorance is achieved; and believing it is the believer's responsibility. They are wholly accountable for embracing such puerile buncombe.  

But not from the politically correct point of view. Is this daffy world there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dullards. Not a one! If you insist the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, rather than the scientifically affirmed 4.6 billion, for example, that's fine! You're not way, way, way off. You're not terribly wrong. You're just "differently informed." 

In this Alice in Wonderland world all sources are authoritative. When born-again true believers adamantly insist that the earth is 6,000 years old, for instance, they're unknowingly relying on the calculations of the late Bishop Ussher, a 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate who added up all the generations of the Bible, cranked in every post-Biblical generation, and determined that creation took place at 6 pm, 23 October, 4004 BC. (He was a bit uncertain about the exact time of day.) 

Is the late Bishop's reckoning just as good, perhaps better, than several centuries of scientific investigation? It is, if you hold that the findings of science are no better than the computations of an scientifically ignorant, faith-blinded, 17th century religious. In the irrational non-judgmental view of the very politically correct, any version of reality, however hare-brained, is just "differently informed." In this intellectual netherworld no authority is better than any other, no information is more valid. 

How far does this humbug take them? The most zealous of the true believers end up in a world where truth and fact are inoperative. Where the scientific method is no better than crystal ball readings. Where the earth is flat if you believe it is. But, should one of these true believers discover they have a potentially fatal disease, you can bet the vast majority will still seek refuge in medical science. But that's another story.

What are the implications of this toxic "tolerance" for the processes and purposes of schooling? Their unhinged tolerance lays waste to both. With the search for truth abandoned, with knowledge a mere matter of opinion, with every viewpoint as good as any other, a key function of education evaporates and the results are something like this: "Schoolin? Nobody needs no stinkin schoolin!"