The New York Times reported today that Republican Congressmen in a House sub- committee have voted to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate the emission of greenhouse gasses. It was also reported that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann introduced a bill last week to roll back efficiency standards for light bulbs, which includes a phasing out of incandescent light bulbs in favor of more energy efficient bulbs. In a similar vein, the legislation proposed by Congressmen Markey and Waxman last year to regulate carbon emissions was defeated in the Congress. In all three cases, the Republicans - along with some equally Neolithic Democrats from the coal and oil states - deny that global warming is a serious threat to our environment or to human civilization.
The opposition of mining and oil interests and manufacturers to any form of government regulation in the public interest, because it might impair their ability to maximize short-term profits, although deplorable, is perhaps understandable given the centrality of greed in our culture. But how does one explain the rejection of science and intellectual disciplines in general by so many Americans?
Part of the explanation for this phenomenon problem has to do with general levels of literacy. The totality of the evidence suggests that American education, at almost every level, is experiencing a profound crisis and that it has failed to create a literate, educated citizenry. For example, the National Adult Literacy Survey found that over forty million Americans age 16 and older have significant literacy deficiencies. In addition, more than 20 percent of Americans read at or below a fifth grade level which is far below the level needed to earn a living wage. The data with respect to scientific literacy is equally disquieting. Americans in general do not understand what molecules are, less than one third can identify DNA as a key to heredity, and one adult in five thinks that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Another important part of the explanation - which also helps us to understand why these low levels of literacy exist and are tolerated - has to do with an ingrained skepticism about "book learning" and education in general that are a part of the legacy of the philosophy of John Locke. Locke's ideology is the bedrock upon which the American liberal democracy has been founded; the pervasive acceptance of his epistemological concepts--his emphasis upon "common sense"--have contributed to the low esteem in which matters of knowledge and learning are held in American culture.
Locke, it will be recalled, denied the existence of innate ideas. Instead, his theory of knowledge was based upon a conviction that meaningful knowledge is acquired by the self through sensory, tactile experience. As he stated in An Essay On Human Understanding:
The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish this empty cabinet, and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind, proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty. And the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials that gave it employment increase.
Locke's epistemology, which was derived from his nominalism, meant that he was unable to acknowledge that the educative function--the process of learning--is an inherently a social enterprise--i.e., one learns from others, from the experiences and wisdom of others, from history, through reasoning and the use of language, all of which are social functions. In contrast, Miguel DeUnamuno--a critic of Locke and his empirical school--emphasized the importance of Reason and reflection as inherently social processes: If man is a reasoning being, his ability to reason is incontrovertible evidence that he is also a social being because, as Unamuno noted in The Tragic Sense of Life, "man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but a member of society" and "Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the distinguishing mark of man, is a social product."
Locke's ideas about the importance of the individual, how one learns, and what one should learn have entwined themselves in the fabric of American culture and, by and large, have had profoundly leveling, and at times, anti- intellectual effects. They have been invoked by a number of disgruntled and irate advocates of "American values," who denigrate professional elites and oppose government control of education. In this respect, Thomas Franks's comments in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas? - which addresses the debate over education in his home state - are pertinent:
Education
at the K-12 level, meanwhile, is the main place where average Kansans routinely
encounter government, and for the Cons that encounter is often frustrating and
offensive. School is where big government makes its most insidious moves into
their private lives, teaching their kids that homosexuality is OK or showing
them their way around a condom. Cons find their beliefs under attack by
another, tiny arrogant group of professionals--the National Education
Association--that stands above democratic control, and they look for relief in
vouchers, home schooling, or private religious schools.
