A special sort of ignorance

When I was 9 or 10, I read a book called “The Girl Who Owned a City.” Its plot was slightly ridiculous, though surprisingly (disturbingly?) common in children’s and young adult fiction: A plague kills off the world’s teens and grownups, leaving only the kids behind. The book has remained with me because it suggests an interesting thought experiment: What if everyone over a certain age — say, 18 — suddenly disappeared?

Consider, first, what would not disappear. Cattle and cornfields would remain, as would vast oil reserves and pipeline networks, coalmines and power stations. There would, in theory, be nothing stopping the survivors from getting things running smoothly again. But I suspect that these raw materials would not be enough to sustain the survivors. After all, food has always come from supermarkets, while gas has always come from gas stations and light from, well, lights. Once these reliable sources of sustenance ran dry, things would surely go downhill fast.

What makes this thought experiment really compelling, of course, is that this dependency is not restricted to juveniles. We all live in a magical world, which is to say that we live in a specialized world. I have no serious intention of calling this specialization itself into question. Indeed, the “magic” is part of the goal: To live in a world of specialized roles is to be relieved of knowing or understanding exactly how our cars work (that’s what mechanics are for) or even how the tax code works (that’s where H & R Block comes in).

But this comes with a cost. In a magical world, it is easy to slip from mere ignorance into ignorance of one’s own ignorance. As long as everything runs smoothly, even a basic awareness of kinds of knowledge and expertise different from our own can seem unnecessary. I still haven’t forgotten Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen’s 2006 condemnation of algebra requirements in education, particularly his claim that “[m]ost of math can now be done by a computer or calculator” and that algebra’s value in teaching reasoning skills is “a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers.”

And, when everything doesn’t run smoothly, ignorance becomes dangerous. After a financial crisis brought about, in part, by people trapped in the lofty world of derivatives trading, we began to hear manifestations of an all-too-familiar brand of populism: What is the finance sector good for anyway? What does it “create”? Ignorance of the benefits (and the risks) of financial instruments was translated into sweeping condemnation of these instruments.

So, as the government begins an unprecedented intervention into the banking system, a troubling fact has been laid bare: The specialization on which our economy relies has sapped most people’s ability to understand its workings.

The solution to these problems, if there is one, is in education, in that process that must somehow form both a public-minded citizenry and a skilled workforce. Writing in 1929, Jose Ortega y Gasset extolled the virtues of the well-educated “noble man” who transcended the specialization of his age. Some of us at Princeton might see ourselves as the closest approximation of this: smart, highly literate, soon to enter the commanding heights of the economy. But, as the terms “Orange Bubble” and “study break” make obvious, a tradeoff is inevitable. We, more than most, expect a great deal of the world; and we, more than most, are detached from the hard work and misery that goes into meeting these expectations.

We have also heard rhetoric regarding the role that humanities education, or perhaps a “great books” reading list, can play in forming well-rounded citizens. But I see far more sentimentality than anything else in this. Often, the best education one can get comes at the unpleasant moment when one realizes that the high-minded principles found in the “great books of Western civilization” have little to do with the day-to-day reality of that civilization and often serve merely as window dressing. I had one such moment in my Princeton interview with a no-nonsense defense analyst; I had another at my job last summer. I learn slowly, but what I have learned casts doubt on the power of great texts to make great men.

If I seem pessimistic, it is because I tend to believe that certain issues are intractable. This country will always have to wrestle with the conflict between making well-rounded citizens and making good employees. Specialization and selective ignorance will always be with us. But awareness of this can at least put certain controversies, particularly those surrounding K-12 education, in a new light. As long as we live in a magical world, a world whose true workings and unpleasant realities are largely concealed from view, let us not allow schools to propagate the comforting myths that this world engenders. No pseudo-religious accounts of the United States and its place in history; no religious accounts of humans and their place in nature; no empty talk of “self-esteem.” This, then, is my ambitious plan: Don’t use schools to reinforce ignorance. A little lame? Sure. But it is the least this cynic can hope for.

Andrew Saraf is a sophomore from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at asaraf@princeton.edu.