Students at the country’s leading universities have mastered standardized tests and summary-building skills, but they have little knowledge about basic cultural and historical topics.

Despite dazzling transcripts, Princeton, Georgetown, Notre Dame, and other universities report that many students do not know basic historical facts, landmark literary works, or even basic biological concepts.

These are the top notch, but their underpinnings are remarkably shaky. Even though they are good at parsing arcane algorithms and writing fine essays, they have difficulty naming which side the North fought on during the Civil War, nor explaining the Magna Carta’s guarantees.

This knowledge gap isn’t limited strictly to the humanities. Science professors are beginning to share their concerns. It’s not just the arts where kids don’t know how the world works around, but how the food on your plate gets there or how the medicine you take is made.

We are raising a generation of people who are media savvy and scientific illiterate, who can send text messages but have no idea why and how electricity is generated, and who are vaccinated but have no idea how their immune systems respond.

As this lag widens, the social consequences of American ignorance start to loom large. How can a population that cannot read their own history, understand the culture of other peoples, or spell the names of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, hope to play any meaningful role in the ongoing debates about the nation’s future?

This problem goes far beyond the lectern. Even more alarmingly, the rise of consumers who have little understanding of where their everyday needs come from (food, medicine, and so on) is a reflection of this wider intellectual atrophy. Modern society appears to be ill-prepared to counter disinformation and messaging supremacy. If one does not understand the difference between an apple and a tomato, a tennis ball will always be a part of a grand conspiracy.

The Road Ahead

Such knowledge has to come from a variety of sources rather than just learning on the job. It’s going to require a shift – not only in our attitudes to youth, but in educational institutions, which must once more emphasize not just critical thinking but also contextual information and baseline knowledge; not just specializations but also the fundamental skills of social interaction.

Perhaps an aside here: I grew up in a farming community and part time on a Ranch. We fixed farm implements, tractors and swathers, that took knowledge and know-how. I remember clubs at school such as 4-H and FFA which taught about where all our food comes from and how it is prepared and processed to be consumed. We planted potatoes, we dug the potatoes and then we ate the potatoes. I fear that many people born into this new generation think that all food comes from a grocery story and they have only a veil idea of how it ends up at the table. This lack of knowledge causes hate and distrust of farmers and ranchers, some not even knowing what farmers and ranchers do.

Parents and communities have to encourage learning — cultivate children’s inquisitiveness. Return the shop classes, restore the vocations. Give less of a shit about how we feel about ourselves emotionally, or who we think we are. Ask ourselves, ‘What kind of person am I, based on the knowledge and skill that I have, what can I DO? What do I KNOW? Because what we can DO and what we DO know is what is going to define us. Everything else is all just a daydream. We should know our farmers, and we should know where our food comes from. Better yet, we should grow our own food.

As a culture, we need to move towards greater cultural literacy and scientific literacy, connecting consumers to producers. We need to raise a generation that is ready to lead based on knowledge not feelings.

©️ The Rocky Mountain Dispatch LLC. 2024