Knowledge-Schmowledge: Proud anti-intellectualism on television

Alright. Get your barf-bags ready again. There is a new inductee in the Sherri Shepherd hall of ignorance (in case you don't remember, Sherri Shepherd is unclear about the shape of the Earth, and believes that history started with Christianity and was surprised to hear about the Romans). This is a clip from Are you smarter than a 5th grader?:


Yikes!!! (and sexist jokes are just part of the gravy)

This clip was the starting point of New York Times article, Are Americans hostile to knowledge? It talks about a number of new books on the topic but focuses on The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby:

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

Ok...then. We are all set for the future. Read the full article here.