“Essential questions” guide instruction. They help students discover the big ideas at the core of a topic. Let's apply this methodology to education itself. What is an essential question we can ask? How about this? How many Americans are actually educable?
Education as PanaceaSpecial educators have long made a distinction between being “educable” and “trainable?” We will use that distinction. An educable person must be “capable of being improved in ways that depend on reason and understanding.” A "trainable" person is incapable of that kind of improvement.
It must be widely believed that the majority of Americans are educable, because schooling is widely regarded as the answer for a multitude of problems. For instance, schools are expected to do major work in: culturally integrating immigrants, increasing national competitiveness, eliminating racial injustice and controlling sexually transmitted diseases and preparing solid citizens, to name a few.
Lack of Education or Lack of Educability?
A great deal of trouble could be avoided if people thought more deeply and effectively. But is the common failure to do so a consequence of poor schooling? Perhaps the real culprit is a widespread lack of capacity and/or inclination. Both defects are equally damaging. After all, in order for schooling to be a cure, much less a cure-all, the majority of humans must be capable of sufficient reason and understanding to be improved by that means. And, they also must also be willing.
Suppose this is not the case? Suppose a great many, maybe even a majority, are uneducable in any deep and abiding sense. Is such thinking excessively pessimistic? Perhaps it is. But consider the long-standing popularity of P.T. Barnum’s observation that “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Ponder also the durability of H.L. Mencken’s dictum that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Perhaps these and many similar observations remain current because they are deeply rooted in reality. Remember, 50% of Americans are, by definition, below average in intelligence. And a sizable number have little or no inclination to think deeply and effectively. If you doubt that, just look at their behavior.
Too Dumb, Too Scared, Or What?
This line of reasoning must seem heretical in view of the optimism commonly associated with schooling. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence to support such a pessimistic view. For instance, consider how many humans willingly trot off to slaughter every time the folks in power decide to give a war. Moreover, instead of learning from the multitude of previous slaughters, we humans continue to divide ourselves into pseudo-species, carefully nurture distrust and hatred toward one another. Then, sooner or later, join in still another horrific mutual slaughter.
For instance, fifteen million people were killed and twenty two million wounded in World War I. Yet a mere nineteen years later homo sapiens (man the thinker) got himself into WW II — a far worse slaughter. This particularly ghastly tribute to human folly cost 60 million lives and loosed hellish suffering on many more. Does any of this sound like the behavior of a species that is educable, i.e. “capable of being improved in ways that depend on reason and understanding?”
Of course, the average person could do little to change the course of these events. Plus, most knew only what they were told. But wars are hardly the only human folly that could have been averted if more deep and effective thinking were involved. Listing all of those is a task well beyond this modest effort. So I leave additional examples of human folly to the reader's imagination and experience.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
The fact is Homo Sapiens displays a peculiar reluctance, or inability, to employ reason and understanding even when the truth is readily accessible. The Harris Poll reported for instance, that despite repeated official reports that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Yet the belief that Iraq possessed such weapons increased substantially even after the war was over. And this pertained despite the fact that contradictory evidence was overwhelming.
That’s right, despite massive and widely publicized evidence to the contrary, the number of Americans who thought that Iraq possessed such weapons prior to Operation “Enduring Freedom” actually went up despite evidence to the contrary becoming widely known. As a matter of fact, in February of 2005 only 36% thought Iraq was so armed; but in July of 2006 fully 50% believed they were. Does that sound like a conviction that grew out of widespread capacity for reason and understanding?
To be fair, those who changed their mind about those weapons of mass destruction might have done so out of an unconscious desire to rationalize their own original enthusiasm for the war and/or to justify the tremendous costs it generated. In short, what seems to be evidence of public credulity might just be people being human, all to human. But that still leaves us wondering why the species is so very eager to cling to the mindless tribalism, hatred and the organized murder we call warfare? Is that evidence of Homo sapiens' educability?
And what about our destruction of the very environment that sustains us? With happy oblivion we are rapidly destroying the basis of our species very existence. In this case, it might well turn out that homo sapiens, “man the thinker,” will ultimately prove too dumb to live.
Campaign Appeals
On a less global scale one can also profitably consider the success of political campaign strategies that are based on the principle that many people are fools. In Pennsylvania, for example Senator Rick Santorum cut down challenger Bob Casey’s very substantial lead by means of a $3.5 million TV ad blitz that repeatedly referred to Casey as “Bobby” in order to make him seem juvenile and inconsequential. Casey countered with an equally unsophisticated attack ad. The plain truth of the matter is that ads like this work and work well. Does that suggest there is a great deal of deep thought going on out there?
Of course, political propagandists know how to play on emotions such as fear of the unknown, the alien and the complex. Moreover, the simplicity they offer is beguilingly attractive to a public that has to reach conclusions based on imperfect information and deliberate disinformation. Maybe that, rather than widespread intellectual ineffectiveness, is why the general public remains so exploitable and so oblivious to many urgently important issues. Let’s hope so. But, personally, I doubt it.
The Media
Evidence of a widespread lack of educability is not confined to the repetitive insanity of war, assaults on the environment, or crass political chicanery. Consider, the quality of the media. More specifically, let’s consider infomercials or “paid programming.” Multiplied millions of dollars are spent buying TV time to peddle bogus nostrums, physical or spiritual, and many, many more millions in profits are realized in consequence. Psychic hotlines generate fortunes for their bogus operators even though they have nothing but hot air to sell. Omega 3 fish oil is successfully huckstered as a cure for an impossible range of maladies, especially cognitive decline. And tens of thousands of viewers have been convinced that purging their bowels will have the same beneficial effects on their body that emptying a full sweeper bag accomplished for a clogged Electrolux.
Also consider how dozens of film flam televangelists of dubious background and baser motives, repeatedly and successfully con the public by means of such obvious scams as selling them tiny packets of “miracle spring water” that cures all maladies, physical or spiritual. Or “prosperity prayer cloths” that allegedly convey magical money raising powers. “Pastor, right after I got that prayer cloth a thousand dollars mysteriously appeared in my bank account. Praise God!”
The fact is there is a small army of "prosperity pastors” convincing tens of thousands of financially desperate people that giving generously of what little they have — to the pastor, of course— will not only eliminate their financial woes, but prompt a ten-fold return on their “offering.” One oily, but particularly persuasive, televangelists who lives in a multi-million dollar California beach front mansion and flies to world-renown resorts in his private jet, recently wheedled still more millions of dollars out of the faithful so he could buy an even bigger jet! Let’s pump this sacerdotal bunko artist full of truth serum then ask him about the educability of the average American. Can you guess what he would say? "There's one born every minute."
Ponder also the generally appalling quality of media programming in general. TV, for instance, is still the same cultural wilderness it was way back in 1961 when FCC Chairman Newton Minnow invited us to:
“…sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
Newton was right on target until he got to that very last sentence. Since TV bored him, he concluded that the broad masses must also be bored. But Minnow failed to consider that these "boring" shows remain on the air by virtue of their ratings. TV content is a function of the public tuning in or tuning out. Hence the generally mindless quality of TV programming is an indirect index of widespread public preference for drivel. Network executives long ago learned that they pan the most gold by designing a preponderance of their shows for people of limited capacity and less sophistication — i.e. the general public.
Radio programming is similar. For instance, what kind of music do the masses tune to? Well here in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, home to almost 6 million people, it sure isn't classical music. Years ago the one commercial station that played it switched to soft rock. Philadelphians can listen to hip-hop, dance, country, soft rock, hard rock, pop/rock, stupidly one-sided right wing “talk” shows and endless gassing about sports, but the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn are out so far as commercial radio is concerned. Why? Because the broad masses weren’t tuning in. Evidently they prefer drivel like rap, with its melody and harmony free, but basely vulgar, doggerel verse. Even greater desolation exists in the hinterlands where semi-literate pastors read God’s mind for the masses while country music grinds on endlessly in cacophonous concert. That is nearly all there is in the heartland.
To be fair, no one knows for sure how many people are deeply disgusted with this media garbage. But American schooling helps little here. It is woefully inadequate when it comes to the arts and the discernment they can develop. And it shies completely away from anything that might help kids see through bogus divines. As a matter of fact, by the time budget cuts slash “frills” from the curriculum, high stakes testing takes far more than its share off time, and the self-appointed censors finish off anything that might trigger thought, the curriculum is a cultural wasteland par excellence. Perhaps, then, we should beware of blaming the victim. Some Americans are clearly educable. But our schools shy away from trying to develop it. It's politically dangerous.
There is no need to extend these considerations. The evidence is self-evident. Suffice it to say that there is abundant evidence of widespread vulnerability, gullibility, wishful thinking and willful ignorance among America's broad masses. What shall we make of this? Is it evidence of a deeper, fundamental immunity to any and all improvements that depend on reason and understanding? Or is it the inevitable consequence of a society where avarice trumps all and schooling is generally so narrow and unimaginative that it is unworthy of the name?
You decide.