Nerds and North American Anti-Intellectualism

[tealin]

I just heard a really fascinating discussion on the radio about Americans' mistrust of book-smarts, how this is apparent in the culture as a whole and affecting academic performance vs. the rest of the world. It was gratifying to hear confirmation of some of my own observations about the matter and doubly exciting to hear further conclusions and comparisons to other cultures from an actual anthropologist. Luckily the show is available as a podcast, so I don't have to rely on my shoddy memory! Right-click and download! I highly recommend listening to it; it's not too long (only the first segment of the show) and is really, really fascinating.

Unfortunately it adds another issue to the ever-growing list of Things Which Massive Injections of Cash Will Not Fix But Can Only Be Solved by a Massive Societal Overhaul, so it's unlikely ever to change.

Comments

[aurorawest.livejournal.com]

Haven't listened to it yet, but I will say that while I don't like to disregard such things immediately, it's not hard to spot a trend of anti-Americanism and...I guess I'll call it Europe-worship from both American scholars and ordinary Americans. I've wondered if it's an attempt to seem "cultured," and then I wonder what kind of country America is becoming if so many people think the only way to be that way is to dislike your homeland...don't know if that's it, though. Idle speculation on my part.

If it's true that Americans really do have a distrust of intellectualism, then I would definitely point out that they're not the only group of people to feel that way (and who are we talking about here, Americans as a whole? Southerners? Midwesterners? New Yorkers? People who live in rural areas? People of a certain income level? These sorts of things are usually more complicated than just "Americans," or "the English," or pick your nationality).