Social Democracy and Education

The American atheist Susan Jakoby has a new book entitled "The Age of American Unreason." Because of the outrageous prices of new books by little-known authors in this day and age, I probably won't read it unless I find it at the library. The best one can do is get to know new books through reviews, I suppose.

Here is what the book is about based on a "New York Times" review: Americans are anti-intellectual and ignorant because of 1) the internet, 2) the GOP and 3) religious fundamentalism. This anti-intellectualism has made it so that they can't name the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) and can't name one of the nine supreme court justices (Thomas, Ginsberg, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Seuter, Breyer, Stevens; I don't know the first names of all of them.) I am not sure how she manages to tie all of these together, but the connectivity of these claims seems to me to be very, very fragile.

Jakoby's main gripe with fundamentalists, from what I can make out, is that they do not want Darwinism to be taught in public schools and want to control the information that their children learn in school. Again, I haven't read the book, but given her rhetoric ("this means in the most backward parts of the country, education in controlled by the most backward people") that she objects to homeschooling and non-state-approved religious institutions of learning as well. According the to the review--which is more or less favorable--she lambasts fundamentalists for treating the right to local curriculum as though it is a constitutional right.

To this I would say that if it is not a right, then it should be. The founders intended all citizens to have consciences uninhibited by the state, but state education runs in the opposite direction. What has more influence over the conscience than education? A further weakness of Jakoby's argument is the contrastive she draws between the United States and Europe. She writes that in Europe, education is superior because it is dolled out by people who are experts in the field, whereas, in America, education is controlled by local philistines. The latter situation, she claims, is very dangerous to American democracy.

I disagree. Maybe my only reason is because in France candidates like le Pen can be viable and in Great Britain parties like the British National Party have names that more than a dozen people recognize. Maybe it is because American students in private schools, or kids who are taught at home, far outscore their publicly educated peers on math tests. Maybe it is because when you drive down the street in Paris, you can see a dozen American movies in every theater whereas, in America, only the award winning French films are released. But, in any case, despite all this, European children appear to do okay on their SATs. When they are capable of doing well on anything else, please, feel free to let me know.

I realize that this essay is not particularly organized; it wasn't really intended to be. But, in closing, I want to note that it is actually Ms. Jakoby who is the real danger to American democracy. Her idealized educational community, presided over by a benign national board of "intellectuals," may seem reasonable on the surface, but the fact of the matter is that, throughout history, even those claiming intellectual authority have been wrong. This is why it is so important that we work to preserve the rights of everyone to be educated in his/her own way. Anything less, and the gas-chambers are on their way.