I saw this in the comic section of the newspaper. “Algebra” was a kid’s answer to a quiz question regarding FDR’s most famous quote.
Funny? Sure. But also sadly true. According to a Pew Foundation study, only 23 percent of Americans are “science literate.” Of course, as a nation we are also math illiterate, literally illiterate, verbally illiterate and ignorant about most every other branch of knowledge including our national history and the workings of our government..
I took the science quiz Pew used in its study. It was easy peasy. While I have a degree in science, that education was not necessary for me to “ace” this simple test. (Take that “stable genius,” Donald. BTW: The “IQ” test Trump brags about is a simple screening test for dementia and has nothing to do with IQ.) Pew’s test is about stuff you read about or see on the news every day. My wife who majored in art in college aced the test with ease. Only 16 percent of the responders got all eleven questions right. Unsurprisingly, the majority did poorly.
To a great degree, they are ignorant by choice. In his novel. “City Boy,” Herman Wouk’s school boy character marvels at how his classmates couldn’t memorize their times tables but could tell you the batting averages of every baseball player in both leagues.
For those who are too young to remember, before the advent of calculators we memorized, believe it or not, what was the product of every multiplication problem for every number through 12. Same with division, addition and subtraction. Almost 75 years later, my wife and I can rattle them off with ease. This knowledge benefits us every day.
This fund of knowledge would have been useful to the poor lad I encountered back a few decades ago who was clerking at a gas station convenience store. Cash customers were lined up outside the door as the fellow’s cash register had crashed and he had no clue how to make change.
I recently published a blog describing our times as the “neomedieval” age in which the average person is almost as ignorant of science and math as people were during the original Dark Ages. Yet they know everything about pop culture and, like so many denizens of that thousand year period, cling to the most simplistic versions of spiritual awareness in the form of mind numbing and socially regressive fundamentalist religion.
Our sad state of scientific ignorance and dearth of philosophical reflection demonstrate that people are either too intellectually challenged or too lazy to make the effort to study science. This just at a time when research has brought us to a new age when advances in medicine, for example, are poised for blossoming. That ignorance is fine with MAGA landers. Like many of his supporters, it’s likely Trump had no meaningful higher education having dropped (flunked?) out of Fordham and cheated his way through business school where I’m sure they were not teaching Shakespeare or the hard sciences. His pathetic vocabulary is a marker of his profound ignorance. His constant insulting and disrespectful treatment of others reveals his utter lack of character. The two are linked as he lacks the language skills to express himself in a dignified way and is too lazy to learn how to speak intelligently.
(Or could it be he can comport himself differently but chooses not to in order to appeal to the lowest elements in our society? I doubt it, but if it’s so, this only shows his entire existence is a fraud and a scam. Which it is either way.)
America’s throwing up of the hands in the face of the challenges of complex thinking is culminating in the degradation of medical research and treatments, abandonment of controls on polluting industries and an upsurge of prejudice and inequality while further dumbing down John Q. Public. All this plays into the plans of greed driven oligarchs to whom the ego trip of having yet more useless billions at the expense of the peasants is their organizing principle of existence.
I recall having been unhappy as a student when we got to algebra and beyond. Of what practical use was all this mind straining stuff? Likewise the hard sciences. I am more naturally drawn to and adept at the liberal arts. But as one who wanted to be a physician, I was obliged to struggle through. Though ultimately my medical practice did not utilize anything beyond arithmetic, and the practice of psychiatry never required me to understand evolution, cosmology, relativity, gravitational waves, quantum theory, and the like, these studies were far from a waste of time. The mental discipline they required strengthened my mind and yielded a broad view of the world and of life. It cultivated the focused, incisive and logical mode of thinking that many readers appreciate in these blogs. It resulted in an approach to life that has enriched my experience of it beyond measure.
The ignorant masses who know nothing of such things and instead embrace simple “answers” to complex questions are only half alive. Their weak minds are ripe for being taken over by scammers and charlatans to whom they have yielded unbridled power while they waste life’s precious hours with vacuous amusements. I feel sorry for them, but even more sorry for the rest of us who will suffer along with them the consequences of their poor choices .
As the devastating results of their blissful ignorance sends the world crashing down around them, they still do not appreciate the tragedy they foist upon us all by so willingly accepting the low brow as their standard.
An Author's Inner Mind 