Choosing Ignorance

Joseph choosing knowledge.

In 1956 I began kindergarten in the classic way, with a scary German lady as my teacher. It's a German word, after all. Garden of Children. I didn't really recognize how scary she was until I was about 7, maybe 8, and took swimming from her. I could do a lot of things she asked us to do in the Franklin, Tennessee municipal pool, but actually putting my face in the water was not one of them. She had an assistant in the swimming class, a boy of about 12 who had the confidence of age and size so that we could all tell that he was infinitely superior to us.

One day during the class, while I was struggling to do something that the teacher had asked of us, she waded up behind me, grabbed my head, and shoved me under the water. When I got back to the surface, coughing and probably crying, she chastized me for not ever having done this same thing myself. As I squeezed water out with my clenched eyelids, I opened them on a scene which has ever remained with me. The boy, the 12 year old, was sitting on the edge of the pool and laughing at me. This made the experience all the worse, of course.

I could never enjoy the classes after that. On the days when I would have to go, I would get a sick feeling in my stomach and hope fervently that something would prevent my having to go. I don't recall how I lived through the classes. I do know, however, that I did not learn to swim there. We were in Idaho, a couple of years and a couple of thousand miles removed from the scene of this terror and humiliation , before I began, ever-so-gradually, to teach myself to swim. Eventually, I succeeded.

All my life I've been easily hurt by the derision of anyone who thought I should have some ability or some knowledge that I did not yet have. Sometimes that sensitivity has extended so far as to include my family, all my friends, or even my whole nation. The first time I read George Bernard Shaw's quotation on American ignorance of geography, I was a little miffed. But I finally laughed and have laughed at it many times since. He said, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Perhaps the rebuke was justified. I don't know. But I understand better than he did why we had become that way. We had spent many generations, by the time GBS began writing great plays and poking fun at others, concentrating on building up a mighty nation which had not previously existed. Kids who had learned a fair amount of geography in grammar school would have forgotten about the non-American parts by the time they showed up in France in 1917 as part of the AEF. Our British and French allies could hardly imagine that we didn't know the names of certain cities, rivers, farming zones, disputed areas, etc. How could we be so ignorant? Yet those same doughboys could probably have rattled off the names of all the states and of all the counties in their own states. As we grow up, our experience and our limited time almost force us to choose knowledge of some subjects, ignorance of others.

Sometimes knowledge and ignorance are assigned to us by higher powers. In 1957 the Russians, who already possessed 15 satellite nations, launched another satellite into space. It was called Sputnik, and it scared us to pieces. I recall hearing the word mentioned almost constantly for a while.

It took more than a year for the Americans to catch up to this scientific and technological achievement. I remember very clearly riding in the car up to a high spot outside Franklin, or maybe closer to Nashville, to see a satellite which had been launched by our people. There were lots of cars and lots of families on that hill. By one accord, all the lights were turned off and everyone pointed and oohed and aahed as the bright, tiny object zipped overhead again and again. The thrust of our amazement seemed to be that the thing which was living in a balance between speed and gravity had been built and sent up there by people. Sputnik had been explained to us as being a "baby moon." Now we had one of our own.

We had no idea what a big impact on our young lives this "space race" would cause. Aesthetic things like literature, poetry, history, and geography were seen by many in government and in the private sector as being wastes of time, effort, and money. What was needed to keep us from being wiped out by accurately placed ballistic missiles launched from Soviet-controlled territory was a generation of kids who specialized in math and science. We didn't feel it right away, but things began to change. More and more older kids chose to major in math, science and other technical things when they got to college. More and more kids were going to college. And the things I enjoyed most, such as reading for the pleasure it gave me, were frowned on in some circles, sort of ignored in others.

This belief that the patriotic thing to do was to study and specialize in technical things certainly did work. Our space program, until recently at least, was the wonder and the envy of the world. So was our R&D of weapons and weapons delivery systems. And I'm not criticizing our accomplishment in these areas, either in space research or in mililtary technology, especially the latter. No less a soldier than Dwight David Eisenhower, after all, had taught us that "Good defense is not cheap defense." It takes concentrated effort and great expense to be ready for anything in a world which just might throw anything at you.

But in the late sixties and continuing through today, we have seen admissions officers in colleges around the nation express "shock and awe" (Thanks, Mr. Bush. I liked that one.) at the degree of utter ignorance we displayed about literature which was a basic part of our national identity. They were stunned that many of us didn't know the history of our own country or the names of a couple of New England states. Some people were applying for admission to college who could not read above a third grade level.

Almost none of them could tell you what Hamlet, MacBeth, or other Shakespeare plays were all about. Some of them thought they knew the story of Romeo and Juliet, but even those kids had somehow missed the chief points of the dramas. The ones who had only seen modern remakes of R&J probably thought that Verona Beach really was a town near LA where two families were wiping out each other with constant "drive-bys." No one had ever told them that Gaius Julius Caesar grew up in a republic and that his "ambition" was a threat to what little was left of that democratic tradition.

Today, many people seem to be choosing to be ignorant of virtually everything. If it doesn't entertain them, feed them, or help them feel good, many of them are simply not interested. I could wish that more of them had read the line that Marion D. Hanks quoted in a talk in October of 1968:

"Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say NO to one's self."

How sweet it would be for more of us to say "no" to that which will weaken or stupify us and "yes" to the kinds of literature, music, art, and yes, science and math which will strengthen us and make us useful and happy.