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

[(Anonymous)]

The question came up when I was wearing my "Intelligence is the best aphrodesiac" t-shirt. I can't remember how it came up, but the friend who was here pointed out that his in-laws were intimidated by his physics degrees, and he completely didn't get it. (Which is one of the reasons I love that friend, frankly - he's confused by an assumption of intellectual snobbery.) I've seen it before in the Page side of the family, particularly one uncle, when I talked about elements of linguistic theory or pedagogy that he was unfamiliar with. He attempted to shoot me down, and the only reason I could see for it was anti-intellectual snobbery; HIS profession didn't take six years of overpriced university to get good at, so he had just as much knowledge as I did! (No, I did not point out the logical fallacies there. I value my relatives, even the ones who don't know a logical fallacy when it slaps them in the face.)

I find it's most prevalent when it comes to math and science degrees, probably because it's culturally acceptable to admit that you're no good at math. That means the people who admit to being good at it, and enjoying it, are immediately seen as "other". It is very much a class distinction; someone who has a degree or two in another field is far less likely to be intimidated than someone who barely finished high school. Education has become the dividing line between working-middle class and (for want of a better term) thinking-middle class.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oops. Forgot to log in. That was me.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Please don't tell me that you're implying, since I have not completed a college degree, and I probably never will, I'm of a *working* and not a *thinking* class. There are people whose conversations would have me totally lost in any field I have not studied. The fact that a course of higher education has been completed is an accomplishment. I will never be able to grasp certain facts the way they do, being unfamiliar with them. But you can not say that a degree *makes* you more of a thinker than a worker. Makes society see you as one, perhaps.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's not the education itself that forms the barrier; it's the view of oneself as intellectually driven and capable of holding one's own in matters of intellectual discourse. That surety usually, but not always, comes to people via higher education. In my dad's case, it came through self-education; he's done enough reading to have an M. Div, without actually having the courses to go with it. He's not intimidated by intelligence at all.

I also think that this is a classic issue of social constructivism. Is the lack of a degree holding someone back because they don't believe they're capable of anything else, or because society doesn't see them as being capable, or is it a bit of both? I suspect that much of the time, it's a bit of both.