Militant Ignorance

I am an educator. I have retired from the classroom (actually the school library), but I continue to teach as a Sunday School teacher and through this blog. Educators are on the front line in the ongoing war against ignorance.

The battle used to be a relatively gentle one. Every new class of children and youth would come to us ignorant of our particular specialties, whether basic reading and math or advanced physics and music, and we would help them attain knowledge and skills.

In this process we used to be able to count on our student’s parents to support our efforts – or at least not interfere. We saw ourselves as partners with the parents in raising and educating their children. By helping to develop a civilized, educated, populace, we served society, improved people’s lives, and contributed to making a better world.

Things have changed

Now it appears that that type of well-intentioned, cooperative, mutually-supportive, environment is gone. Rather than the expansive goal of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number, and making the world a better place for everyone, people are focused only on themselves and their narrow personal self-interests.

Large numbers of people have become selfish, ignorant, narrow-minded, and blind to the truth. The proximate cause of this blindness is over-exposure to right-wing media. Of course, people choose what media they expose themselves to. This means our current plague of narrow-minded ignorance is self-inflicted.

It used to be that people who deliberately chose to remain selfish, ignorant, and narrow-minded were relatively harmless. In most cases they only hurt themselves. Unfortunately, modern communications technology allows people to easily spread their ignorance and narrow-mindedness far and wide.

And, because people are selfish, and frequently narcissistic, they gleefully (and often maliciously) take advantage of these technological tools to brazenly spout nonsense as fact.

Professional liars love the ignorant

The problem is that no one believes themself to BE selfish, ignorant, or narrow-minded. We tend to think quite highly of ourselves. When it is pointed out that we may be in error, rather than reconsidering our beliefs, we often cling to our errors even more firmly.

This human characteristic simplifies the efforts of charlatans who want to manipulate people in their pursuit of power and gain. Professional liars, including media personalities and politicians, love selfish, ignorant, and/or narrow-minded people because they are easy to fool.

The most common tool used by these demagogues is phony outrage. This keeps their targets riled up and emotional and short-circuits any thoughtful, rational, introspective tendencies they may have. It also causes their victims to tune in to their poison again and again because the emotional high of self-righteous outrage is addictive.

As a bonus, the people whose thoughts they have clouded and whose emotions they have stirred up, like to go online and help spread the lies and baseless outrage to others.

The ignorant are upset at the wrong people

Thus we increasingly see crowds of unruly people angrily disrupting school board meetings over issues that they don’t understand and that sometimes don’t even exist.

These ignorant brainwashed people have been led to believe that their violent uncivil behavior is somehow helping, or “protecting” their kids. Because they are convinced that their children are somehow threatened, they are loud, stubborn, and will not listen to reason. They become militant about their ignorance.

Most people who are ignorant can’t help it. They had no opportunity to learn. Militant ignorance is different. Ignorance that is proud of itself, that holds knowledge in contempt — that must be condemned.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The sad thing is that by attacking teachers and school board members they are attacking the very people who can help them.

The problems and suffering in our society, and in our world, are never the result of too much education. Valid facts, relevant data, and timely information, along with the humility and wisdom to follow where they lead, are the solution to problems, not the cause.

People do not dedicate their lives to the underpaid and unappreciated profession of public education in order to hurt people and corrupt society. Educators are the most caring and unselfish people on the planet.

Masks, CRT, and book banning

It is ironic that those who do not understand science are angry at school boards who just want to follow the science to protect their kids.

Loudly insisting that teachers should not teach about racism is, itself, racist. And there is really no practical difference, in effect or in intent, between banning books and burning books.

Attacking educators and public education will not, cannot, solve any problems. To the contrary, the widespread acceptance of lies, and the militant defense of those lies, ARE the problem.

The ongoing right-wing political war against education, science, and medicine is a war against truth itself. Which side are YOU on?

Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

1 Samuel 2:3

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Sources

Bill Schneider, “Republicans, COVID, and the rise of ‘militant ignorance’,” The Hill, January 2, 2022.
Margaret Talbot, “The Increasingly Wild World of School-Board Meetings,” The New Yorker, October 8, 2021.
Nate Cohn, “How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift,” The New York Times, September, 8, 2021.