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

[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.