Critical Response to "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life"

By: Art Jannicelli
www.WhatTheHellAmIDoingHere.com

Richard Hofstadter's book, “ Anti-Intellectualism in American Life ” is an excellent book about the dumbing down of American public schools. Paramount to this argument is the work of John Dewey, so I will start by going into some detail about his “new education”. I will then explain the paradigm that preceded Dewey's “the life adjustment movement”. Lastly, I will discuss the method we desperately need to return to for the sake of boosting America's intellectual prowess, “liberal learning”.

Dewey thought the proper end of education was to continue the child's education. He thought it was of tremendous importance to keep every child in school as long as possible. He believed this was necessary, in order to save every child. To this end he also thought school should be like a home or community to each student. The ultimate goal of the new education is to create a perfect kingdom of God.

He intended to do this by encouraging a child to learn socially through action. He believed the liberal education had two grievous faults, which were not in the child's best interest. First, that liberal education separated knowledge from action. He believed that a child learned best through social activities that the child naturally wanted to do. Which leads to his second problem with liberal education; Dewey thought that one of the best ways to improve the social conditions in the democracy was through socializing children in the public schools. To this end, he believed that there could not be progress in social conditions if the child was taught the views of the adult instructors. Since, the instructor would have been corrupted by the experiences of their generation, what they teach may not be the right lesson for the new generation. Therefore, liberal education and even the life adjustment movement were probably not best for our democracy or the child. Dewey held the belief that children were God's perfect creation and their motivations and desires would not be corrupted, since they are perfect creations of God and so they will serve as the best guide for their own education. He thought instructors ought to think of themselves as “a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.” (Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed. pp. 15, 17) As simply put as simply possible, (noting Dewey's severe ambiguity in his writing) it is the job of the teacher to teach the child through the child's natural inclinations, therefore keeping the child interested. In this way, the school will be tailored to the child, not the child to the school, making the child the center of the school ultimately.

I think it is important to briefly describe the life adjustment movement in order to understand the evolution from liberal learning to new education. The life adjustment movement was a knee-jerk reaction to the extreme dropout rate in secondary education, as the age children were required to attend school was raised. It was widely believed at the turn of the century that the reason for the high dropout rate, was that secondary education was too elitist. The compulsory school age requirement was brought about to fight child exploitation in the work place.

The central principle of the life adjustment movement was, that as a government of the people and by the people, it is essential that they be an educated people. To this end, education should not be taught in a liberal way. The focus of secondary public education should be to create virtuous citizens, with a good ethical character, who make worthy use of their leisure time. This paradigm also discouraged intellectualism by encouraging emotion rather then liberal study. It was argued the reason there were so many dropouts was due to liberal educations obsolete curriculum. The life adjustment movement thought there should be more vocational studies and a lot less emphasis college preparation, because college prep should be taught in college. The following quote summarizes this movement best “…that vast number of Americans had the mental age of only fourteen… Elitist might turn their backs on these large numbers, but democratic educators, embracing them as a fond mother who embraces her handicapped child,…”(Hofstadter, 339) So the life adjustment movement viewed 60% of children as handicapped and took great pride and pleasure in focusing all of their efforts on educating these while leaving the truly gifted intellectuals to their own means.

This brings us back to the last paradigm in education that dominated until the 20 th century, liberal education. Liberal education focuses on increasing the intellect of the child through study of the fundamental classics, such as Latin, Greek, English, history, and Mathematics. I believe this to be the most empowering paradigm of the three. If children were taught the classics as suggested by the big ten while still in elementary education, this would give every a child much greater opportunity, because they would be able to choose any path they wanted by the age of 14 without having to continually be taught the basics. The value of teaching classics, is that it enables the children to learn to think for themselves. If you are capable of original independent thought by the age of 14, and can take pleasure from the life of the mind, there should be no limit to what the child wants to do with their lives. This would also address the concern of the other paradigms that education should create good and ethical citizens, because I would argue that an intellectual does not need to be told by servants of God or their school what to believe. Using their own intelligence, they will be able to come to their own conclusions. Therefore, enabling them to better defend and hold onto those beliefs, as opposed to just believing what they are told.

Conversely, if you dumb down education and make the classics only available to the most advanced students in their secondary education you are going to end up with much fewer independent thinkers and creators. If you do not enable a child to learn to think independently, you are doing nothing more then teaching the child how to respond emotionally the way a “virtuous citizen” should. Therefore, your educational system will be equivalent to animal training, since you are teaching the child only to respond to stimulus based on memorized reaction and or emotion.

It is ironic that Dewey liked to think of new education as Darwinian. A true Darwinist educator to me would be one who believed that we should go back to liberal education, since the only reason it was discontinued was because it was “too hard” and let the students pass or fail on their own natural mental capacity. The other problem with Dewey is that children need guidance no child knows what is best for it all the time. Another important point to make is not everyone believes striving for a perfect kingdom of God is intrinsically good. What about Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, etc, I am sure they have a different idea of a perfect kingdom without a Christian God. Lastly, if you remove adult influence in the way Dewey describes, you also remove the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. Humanity has grown and prospered thanks to the work of our forefathers, ignoring their work is not the answer, or we are doomed to make the same mistakes perpetually.

I also find it ironic that both new education and the life adjustment movement sought to empower the proletariat through education. When all they really accomplished was to lower standards to a degree where most people receive nothing more then something like “animal training” socialization. Then keep in mind that revolution starters are not emotional driven people, they are those who are smart enough to sway others with emotion. I think the current paradigm in public schools has set up a system that mass produces unthinking, emotionally driven automatons, with a severe loathing for intellectual pleasure, and an obsession with materialism and pop culture.