While OpEdge is on a
two-week hiatus, we are running some of the more evergreen columns from past
years. This blog entry originally appeared on August 14, 2012.
Tooling around the Internet, I found two Forbes articles by a science writer
named David DiSalvo that denigrate education and knowledge. Both are lists, one
of do’s and the other of don’ts. But instead of just titling the articles,
“Some stuff, I’ve learned along the way,” DiSalvo prefers to take pot shots at
those with degrees and smarts.
The names of the two articles say it all:
The aphorisms on the two lists mostly come down to ways to
get along with people: “Don’t talk down to others” and “You can learn something
useful from everyone,” although the specific pearls of advice do take
occasional snide sideswipes at learning, such as “Learning is good; doing is
better” (which turned out not to be true in the case of the atom bomb).
Basically, it’s Horatio Alger-Dale Carnegie kind of advice.
So why did DiSalvo tie both lists together with insults to
the educated? It is possible that he learned the positive lessons he lists from
people who didn’t go to college, just as it’s possible that he saw people he
considers brilliant do the dumb things he lists. But that’s his anecdotal
experience. Most of the stuff on DeSalvo’s do-this list I learned from people
who went to college. His don’t-do list seems to apply equally to people of all
intelligence and educational levels in my experience. Those are my anecdotes.
As a science writer, DiSalvo should know that anecdotes
don’t prove a thing. If he wants to show some trait that we usually admire,
such as brilliance or the discipline to complete college, may be tied to
something unadmirable or dangerous, he should cite a study. That’s what a
science writer usually does, even when sharing something personal. For
example, a recent series of studies gave strong evidence
that wealthy people behave less ethically. Of course, no Forbes writer would ever allude to
these particular studies, since the Forbes ideology
glorifies the wealthy as deserving masters of the universe.
Thus DiSalvo uses a very unscientific approach to make
assertions that undercut his profession, since both doing and writing about
science require education and a certain modicum of intelligence.
In all of these attacks on intellectualism in the American
mass media is a certain smugness, as if to say, we don’t have to read and we don’t have to study. I
can understand climate change deniers or those who don’t want to teach
evolution in the classroom having such an attitude. But someone who writes
about science? You’d think
DiSalvo would find another way to unify his lists of disparate homilies. For
example, he could have just as easily written, “Ten Smart Things You Don’t Have
to Go to College to Learn,” which is less confrontational and not overtly
anti-intellectual.
I would be hard pressed to limit to 10 or even 25 the
important things that I learned at college and graduate school—important
principles of my profession of writing, ways to deal with people especially in
big bureaucracies, success strategies for the real world, the scientific method
and other ways of thinking. I’m just listing the topic areas, not the lessons.
And don’t get me started about the things I have learned
from the many brilliant people among my relatives, professors, clients,
colleagues and friends.
I bet DiSalvo’s list of things he learned from brilliant
people and things he learned in college would be as long as mine.
Of course, no one would pay him to write an article about a
list that praises science, at least not in the current mass marketplace of
ideas, which prefers to celebrate ignorance.
No comments:
Post a Comment