I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to post. Also the initial excitement of blogging had also worn off, but since I'm not as busy and won't be until September, maybe I'll start posting a little more often. If you're interested add this blog to your RSS feed (if you don't know how to do that, you should figure out how, it's worth your time).
Today I'm posting a sort of rant about the intellectual atmosphere (or lack thereof) in America.
[Sorry for the political message—that's not the point, it's just the best image I could find. Substitute basically any public figure's face above.]
I started thinking about this because I just finished an online survey for Stanford (where I'll be going next fall) and they asked if "Intellectual" is a widely-used word to describe their school. I said no. In fact, really the only school in the entire US I would call "intellectual" is U Chicago. Stanford has good students who want to learn—so why isn't it "intellectual," I asked myself? Well, the answer is because American culture is so anti-intellectual! This is true even among people who care about academics, such as Stanford students, and anti-intellectualism is an oppressive force throughout our society, including among youth. (Don't you hate the word "youth"?)
To be honest, America has never really been an intellectual society, and that continues today. Let me cite a few statistics from this article (which I think I've linked before, it's called America the Illiterate).
• 1/3 of high school graduates and 42% of college graduates in the US never read a book after graduating. (It's higher for college graduates, I assume, because some high school graduates read a book in college and never after that.)
• 80% of American families last year did not buy ONE BOOK.
This lack of reading is not by any means the only way Americans are not intellectual; it's just one manifestation.
So why isn't our society conducive to intellectualism? Our values. People are more driven by their desire to be "successful" (i.e., hold a prestigious job). Also, addictive but superficial entertainment is so readily available, whether it's the internet (Facebook, Reuter's Oddly Enough News, news stories about grisly murders, porn, etc.), TV, or something else. Not that these are all bad—facebook is a nice way of keeping in touch with people and some TV shows (not many) are fulfilling, exciting, whatever, and entertainment is after all entertaining—but ask yourself how much of your free time each week you spend watching TV shows, on Facebook, browsing YouTube, and doing other things that are fun and that I wouldn't say should be eliminated from your life but that aren't really THAT fulfilling/stimulating. When's the last time you read a good book, or even an enlightening article on the internet? (I don't know if this post counts.)
Now I know that many people are very busy. In fact, this is another flaw of our society, and I believe it is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) reason that our society's overall happiness levels have gone down in the past decades despite a surge in material wealth. People spend time rushing around, their lives are filled with anxiety, and they don't have opportunities to either really do their best on something or to have their time to themselves to do what is most fulfilling to them. (Ask if there is some element of truth to this for you—I know there is for me.)
Anyways, back to the main argument. The people who might be most inclined to intellectualism in our society (i.e., the smartest people, who really like learning) must instead as kids cram their schedules full of the hardest and as many classes as possible and fill the rest of their time with clubs, sports, research, etc. For many this is consciously or semi-consciously to build a great résumé to, for example, get into a top college. This has become more necessary in recent years due to a conflation of several factors, including an increasingly competitive global economy, an increasing population in the US, and an increase in competition for the top spots in the US. And this trend of résumé-building by being overly busy year-round has trickled down from those gunning for "success" to everyone capable, both because it has become something of a necessity and because, well, it's just what you do if you can. Looking back I realize that when signing up for next year's classes each year in high school, I basically thought of either maintaining the same load or increasing if possible—there was no thought as to whether I should decrease the load; and I wasn't even doing it for colleges.
This business leaves no time for truly intellectual pursuits. Really, it doesn't even leave extra time to work hard on a subject in school that one truly enjoys; students basically learn to work the bare minimum they can for each class to still get whatever they consider a good grade. In the summer, for the students who are not doing a 12-week research project (not that research is wrong, but it does have some side-effects), they are likely too burned out from the school year to take the initiative to do more learning; learning is something necessary that you do in school because you have to in order to get good grades. There is also the issue that most are simply not in the habit of, for example, picking up a good book and reading it. I know this has been true for me in past summers; I really haven't known what to do in the past when I didn't have anything I had to do. I might go on Facebook, surf the web a bit, watch TV, come back to my computer but have nothing left to do, eat, then go out with friends. Sound familiar?
Well, I have a suggestion for all of you who can relate to this post. Try doing something intellectual this summer of your own volition. You will probably have more free time than you do during the school year; the only thing you need is a little initiative. It's really not that hard. Go to amazon.com and look at some of the bestselling books. Some are sort of crappy (in my opinion), but if you look around a bit you'll probably find a book that sounds like it could be really interesting to you. (Check out fiction and non-fiction!) Then, get over to a bookstore and buy it! Heck, I even recently discovered that some of the books that are on my house's bookshelves might actually be worth reading, and also that libraries have books.
To wrap up, I'm going to address a question you may have—what is really the value of intellectualism? Personally I believe that reading great fiction books is a big part of leading a truly intellectual life, so I will address why you might want to read some fiction outside of English class (even though I don't think I can completely answer that question yet). There are several reasons in addition to it being great for your vocabulary, ability to understand writing, and writing ability, and these three reasons alone make it worth it in my opinion. But in addition, reading is simply fulfilling (and hopefully interesting/fun). It is hard to exactly describe why it is fulfilling, but doesn't it kind of make sense that reading about someone's life that is different than your own and becoming familiar with their set of emotions and thoughts will leave you feeling like you did something more meaningful than look at your stalkerfeed on Facebook? (Although I do love to do the latter.) Reading great literature brings you in touch with the big questions of life. So set aside a little time this summer to think about the big questions instead of the academic questions you spend the whole school year thinking about and hurriedly answering.
Well this post hasn't been completely comprehensive, but I figured that it had gotten long enough. I'd love to see any comments you have (partly to see if anyone actually read this whole thing). And if you have a blog of your own, maybe even post a little response to this post to start a blog war.
