En Whatever

Wisdom of the Elites

Susan Jacoby had an interesting piece on popular American dismissal of "elites." I'm ambivalent here. On one hand, I think there is a certain egalitarianism in this country that surfaces when facing rhetoric that is essentially an appeal to authority: we are experts and therefore you should listen to our arguments. Frankly, I can understand that impulse, because too often we see experts whose actions in surety are so incredibly wrong that it leaves the entire country to repent in its leisure.

But there is another problem. I think that people assume that data, information, knowledge, and understanding are the same thing. But the four concepts form a hierarchy, from lower to higher. If you don't have the information already collected and available to you by recall, you cannot start to develop knowledge, because you have to put that information into a greater context. And you cannot develop understanding until you can take various areas of knowledge and begin to see the connections among them. So not only does the university student assume that having information available is the same as knowing it even exists, but such kids assume that they can make use of what they find on the Internet.

While that may be true in some limited areas and ways, for the most part, without the necessary grounding, they are hopelessly incapable. Any little success they consider mastery, and they have no concept of how much richer and piercing their thinking and insight could be. It is the equivalent of saying that one could cook a sophisticated meal because the ingredients are at stores and recipes exist in cookbooks. Good luck with that dinner party.

Labels: knowledge, opinion

posted by Erik Sherman @ 7:45 AM