Audience participation requested

[velvetpage]

Statement: people who are insecure in their own intellectual pursuits find intelligence and higher learning intimidating. This effect is magnified when the higher learning is in a field seen as esoteric, particularly abstract, or which most people see as "other." (For example, few people are intimidated by a graduate degree in teaching, because people see teaching as something they can relate to; they were in school themselves, after all. But a graduate degree in microbiology or physics is an entirely different story.)

Discuss.

(Note: this topic came up a few weeks ago and I never got back to it, and I was just reading back in my journal and spotted it. I am about to take pain meds and have a hot shower to get the knots out of my shoulders before I go to bed, so play nice until tomorrow morning!)

Comments

[archai.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I think it's more a bad societal byproduct for the non-intellectuals. I get to see this in my dad sometimes. He's got an MED and he's a career educator, but in the practical arts, and he does NOT respond well to percieved snobbery by self-styled intellectuals. He doesn't put it in these terms, but he's got good reason: that sort of person puts a lot of stock in intensive education, but often refuses in quiet ways to admit the validity of his skill and experience, either as an educator or as an artisan ("those who can't do, teach" is a bald-faced lie: he's a phenomenal woodworker). He generally doesn't bother to toss out his graduate credentials to that sort unless he's getting into an argument with them and they throw theirs first.

Where this is a societal problem is that the same trend seems to have been applied to a lot of modern education. The validity of the sciences is quickly recognized; we teach reading and mathematics and all manner of other things, but tend to leave the arts out or relegate them to one or two classes here and there. Intuitive and spatial reasoning are abandoned almost completely, and we're very lucky anyone at all turns up with any notability in that sort of talent anymore, since nearly everyone who does has brought up their skillset and honed their intuition almost untutored in the wild - or if tutored, they've been tutored outside of conventional education.

Basically, we tend to leave right-brain-dominant people out in the cold, unless they can adapt sufficiently well to left-brain pursuits to earn some sort of recognition. This, I feel, is a damn shame. If you know the validity of your own talents but nobody will ever believe you've got anything worthwhile, of course it's going to put your hackles up when someone starts lauding high the virtues of a highly trained academic. Particularly when, in 90% of all cases outside that academian's field, you can more or less mentally have them for lunch. There's a bit of jealously there, and I don't think it's unreasonable.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the highly-trained academics I know are also artists of one sort or another. But then, I move in a rarified world. :)