With the quantity of information available to us we have fewer and fewer tools to judge its quality. How can that be? Consider that if it is the printed "word" then it must come from some authority --- not true! Or if you hear it from a spokesperson on the news or in a public place, you can be assured that they have considered the pros and cons and are giving their best shot at a balanced and unbiased report --- horsefeathers! And, if the Government has released the information from one of its many agencies you can accept the report as having been produced at great expense and accurate, yes --- well the great expense part is true. Then there are the educators instructing not only children but adults as well, well meaning tho they are, they repeat matras without thought.
Consider the following headline, "In the year 2000, 85% of all jobs will call for highly skilled and professional workers. (US Department of Labor statistic)" First, while this is from the Department of Labor, it is not a statistic. A statistic is a numerical fact. This information is at best a forecast, perhaps a guess, but actually only a politicized statement. Second, the source has not taken into consideration that the year 2000 is less than three years away, and for such a ground swell of change to take place, there is nothing in the educational field that can be done that will prepare us for such an event. (The headline appeared in the Sioux City Journal, March 30, 1997 in an advertisement promoting community colleges.)
This is at best "Learned Ignorance", the sources consciously and purposefully rejected valid and useful information for self-serving purposes. I owe James E. Tingstad who wrote an article in Pharmaceutical Technology (March 1997), a debt of gratitude for calling my attention to works by Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis was an Austrian physician in the late 1800's, who questioned how it was possible that women, following childbirth, often succumed to childbed fever. In observing the practices of attending doctors, he noted that following the treatment of a patient it was the practice of the doctor to wipe their hands on their smocks (a heavily smeared garment that was a visible sign of their profession) and Semmelweis correctly surmised that this practice was the source of many of the infections. He was ridiculed and dismissed from the clinic. Believing so strongly in his observations he instructed his students to wash their hands in a chlorine solution and infections plummeted. Still no acceptance from the profession, so Semmelweis infected himself with a contaminated scalpel to demonstrate the causative source of the disease, which unfortunately resulted in his death. Nevertheless, learned ignorance prevailed in birthing until this century.
If you think that the medical profession has learned from their mistakes, consider the following. Virtually all males born in the United States are circumsized. Why, because that's just what we have always done. Some defend the practice that it doesn't hurt, so why not --- can they really believe this argument. Anyone caring for a new-born with a modicum of sense knows that the kid is in pain. So the second level of defense is that it protects the males from a form of cancer, perhaps one case in a million, or that it protects females from infections resulting from intercourse with the unclean male. In neither case do statistics from countries that do not practice the procedure when compared to the United States, indicate any advantage to the practice. So we fall back to the final arguement, perhaps it lowers the sexual drive of the male. Argue this point if you will. Isn't it time that the medical profession admits the real reason is that it is a nice "extra" charge that can be tacked onto the bills and since no one complains why not.
Another word or phrase for learned ignorance is "educated beyond his/her intelligence". Or in lay terms, "don't confuse me with facts, my mind's made up". We see this constantly with data dredging, the process of looking long and hard for correlations between events. Long ago in statistics courses we were taught that there was a positive correlation between the salaries of Baptist ministers and the number of prostitutes in Hawaii. Draw your own conclusions. But is that any different from the correlations between radon and cancer, or second hand smoking and lung diseases or .... of course not, it just means that an individual was funded to find relationships and they did. Or, maybe, just maybe, they had an axe to grind.
Yet another characteristic of those who seek to lead, is trained incapacitance. As Thorstein Veblen wrote, this is the ability to get it all wrong! In accepting numbers as facts and using them to advantage to promote their cause, they permit the numbers themselves to become tyrants, leading and misleading the audience. (See also, Daniel Moynihan's foreword in "The Tyrany of Numbers, pp XIX).
The
greatest shame is not those that hide behind the cloak of learned
ignorance but those that accept the tenents without question. Consider the
following, regarding so-called behaviorial problems in our schools:
1) failure in classes because they refuse to do the assigned work, show
disruptive behaviors or lack efforts and self-responsibilty.
2) aggressive acting out or exhibiting behavior that interferes with
his/her learning as well as that of other students,
3) difficulty in social/emotional situations,
4) passive acting out by withdrawing, not completing schoolwork, being
quiet and not a behavior problem, but also not asking questions or not
caring,
5) school discipline plan does not work evidenced by repeated infractions.
These my friend are students with emotional behavioral disorders!!! It's a wonder that all our kids in schools aren't diagnosed with this "disease", rather than the 10% that are. And how do we treat these boys and girls? By making them (and the school), elgible for taxpayer funds! This mantra recited by special education folks without thought is a special form of the disease of "learned ignorance", and it is infecting the populace as well. For more on this subject refer to the Wall Street Jounal's article on May 2, 1997 which explores the thought process of those in the educational profession who are unwilling to accept student's behaviour, which until we became enlightened, was considered the perils and problems of growing up.
And then there is selective memory loss that appears to have infected our politicians and their associates. Where will it end?
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