Americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education-not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficult to find.
今天的美国人不很看重才学。我们的英雄不是学者而是运动员、演艺圈名星和企业家。即使是我们的学校也只是我们送孩子去接受实用教育的地方，而不是让他们为了知识而去追求学问。学校里不难发现反智主义的普遍表现。
But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, “We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society.”
但学校是能够并应该做到这一点的。鼓励孩子们排斥精神生活使得他们极易被利用和控制。如果不能批判地思考、不能捍卫自己的思想、不能理解他人的思想，他们就不能充分地参与我们的民主。作家厄尔·绍利斯说，沿着这条路线发展下去，“我们将变为二流国家。我们的社会将不再那么文明。
“Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual,” says education writer Diane Ravitch. “Schools could be a counterbalance.” Ravitch’s latest book. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits.
教育学作家戴安·莱维西说：“学校始终处于实用重于才学的社会之中。”“学校本来可能是一种抵消的力量。”莱维西最新著作《落后：一个世纪的失败学校改革》探索学校里反智主义倾向的根源，书中的结论是：美国学校绝没有抵制美国人对才学追求的厌恶。
Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: “We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized-going to school and learning to read-so he can preserve his innate goodness.
拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生和其他一些先验主义哲学家认为学校教育和严格的书本学习限制了孩子们的天性。“我们被关在中小学和大学的朗诵室里十年或十五年，最后出来满肚子墨水，却啥都不懂。”马克·吐温的小说《哈克贝利·芬》即是美国反智主义的例证。该书的主人公逃避教化——不上学和不学习读书写字——因此他才得以保住善良的天性。
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines.
按照霍夫斯塔特的观点，才学不同于天生的智力，它是一种我们不太情愿去赞赏的品质。才学是精神世界中的批评、创造和沉思的一面。智力寻求的是理解、运用、整合和调节，而才学是审视、思考、探究、形成理论、批判和想象。
“Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege,” writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
历史学家兼教授理查德·霍夫斯塔特在《美国生活中的反智主义》中写道：“才学被看作一种权利或特权而遭厌恶。”该书探讨美国政治、宗教和教育中的反智主义的根源，曾获普利策奖。霍夫斯塔特说：自我们的历史之初，我们对民主化和大众化的渴望就驱使我们排斥任何带有精英优越论味道的东西。实用性、常识以及与生俱有的智力这些素质一直被视作比可以从书本里学得的任何东西都高贵。
School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country’s educational system is in the grips of people who “joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise.”
学校仍然是才学备受怀疑的地方。霍夫斯塔特说，掌握我们国家教育体系的人“沾沾自喜地、霸气十足地公然宣称敌视才学，迫不及待地认同那些看来在才学方面最难造就的孩子。”
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