You’re an expert, so you’re clearly an idiot
Published April 25th, 2008One of the things that drives me insane - and this is tangentially related to the last post - is the trend in this country to treat “elite” as a four-letter word - especially when coupled with “intellectual”. We talk about the importance of education in this country, the importance of a college education and a degree - and then we cut down those who have gone and followed that advice. The charge of “elite” and “intellectual” has been successfully leveled as a negative against both Al Gore and John Kerry. So we’re saying we don’t want intelligent, top of the line individuals running our country? Really? (Oh, I guess so - look who we ended up with…) I had one friend posit that the reason Kerry was cut down for being an “intellectual” was because he acted like he was smarter than everyone else. And people don’t want to be reminded they’re not as smart as the guy behind the podium.
You know what? Grow up. There are people out there smarter than you - you aren’t Stephen Hawking. (Can we agree he’s pretty goddamn smart at least?) And frankly, I consider myself a pretty bright guy, and I definitely want people smarter than I am running this country. (If that’s not possible, then I want me. If I feel I can do a better job than our leaders, our leaders probably aren’t very good….because….) If we go around telling people to become specialists in a field only to ignore them - what incentive is there to become a specialist? Let’s just have high-school metal shop kids design a nuclear sub. Let’s have first year poli-sci students serve on the Supreme Court. New pharmaceutical drugs? Kids in basements with erector sets.
See, each of these positions, while possibly concerning morality and character, take an AWFUL lot of study and expertise. Only the intellectual elite should be working on these things. So when the vast majority of experts in a field tell you something, you should probably listen and not assume your political stance trumps it. (You might think this is about Global Warming, and though that is an excellent example, it’s not where I’m going at the moment)
This country has sunk over ONE BILLION DOLLARS into abstinence-only sex education in the past 20 years. And just about every study and just about every expert (read, intellectual elite) says that it’s a complete waste of money and it doesn’t work. These are smart, trained experts. They have looked at actual data on the subject. That kind of sex “education” doesn’t work. (Sorry, it’s not education when you leave out 90% of what’s involved in the subject. It wouldn’t be an America history education if you started from 1985 on, it wouldn’t be a math education if you stopped at basic arithmetic.) It should really be no goddamn surprise that pregnancy and STD rates rise when you don’t give kids information on how to avoid those things. Sticking your head in the sand is not a valid response, ESPECIALLY when you have the data in front of you showing you what DOES work.
Does this matter to politicians? Not in the slightest. Rep. John Duncan (R-TN)
… it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding.
Well it’s clearly elitist of me to assume that because you’re in Congress to assume you’re not a goddamn moron, that you might know better about making laws than I do. And yet - I’m forced to question your competence. When you are shown by a mathematician that 2+2=4, stop screaming that it should equal 3! STOP! JUST STOP!
Yes, people with academic health degrees know better than you what type of sex education is appropriate. Why? Because they have the evidence, training and proof. Why is it not the parent’s decision? Because last I checked, the parents who are most likely to believe their little angels never take their pants off are the same parents who think abstinence-only is the way to go. Not only are they not experts in sex-ed, they’re purposely ignorant of it.
If you want to teach your kid not to have sex before marriage, that’s great, that’s your moral duty. HOWEVER it is not acceptable to keep the kid ignorant of how it works. Do we pretend that guns don’t exist in the hope that kids never encounter one? Or do we teach them that guns are dangerous weapons to be avoided if pointing at you. Even more relevant (since we’re talking about a loaded gun in their pants, so to speak), do we teach kids simply to never touch the gun in the house, or do we teach them how to handle it properly, when it should be used, how it works and why its dangerous? Typically #2 is what is done - and if parents stick with #1, well that’s how accidental shootings happen.
I don’t even know if I should bother to go on here. But this is a serious problem. When large swaths of the country ignore FACTS and deny KNOWLEDGE from their children, we’re going to end up with a nation of idiots, or at best, ignorants. Don’t tell people to get all the education they can, and then ignore them when they do. Don’t say America has the best and the brightest, and then pretend like they’re idiots.
Intellectual Elites are what made this country great (check out that Declaration of Independence thing, that Constitution thing) and we shouldn’t forget that. EDUCATION is the greatest weapon in the world - to ignore it is to ask to be plunged back into the dark ages. (which didn’t really exist - or have you not read that post?)
I had a physics professor in college who hated Stephen Hawking. He would always say that the only reason he is so famous is his handicap. Pretty funny coming from a guy teaching physics at Cal Poly Pomona.
Dunning-Kruger effect