Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology[1]
Great song.
In spite of the unforgettable tune, when I first heard it, I wondered why we celebrate ignorance. Just a good old boy. Salt of the earth. $10 words.
When my mother was in rehab after a fall, the staff encouraged us to post something about her in the shadow box outside her door. A wedding picture – my dad in his naval uniform; a more contemporary photo; a memento. A little blurb in which I mentioned she was the first electronmicroscope technician in America. A friend visited and remarked about not even attempting to read “some word about this long” (arms outstretched). She seemed proud of not being able to parse “electron” and “microscope.”
According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level. 4% are nonliterate.
Half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at an 8th grade level according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) reports that only 2% of U.S. adults can integrate information across multiple dense texts; construct syntheses, ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence-based arguments.
I have a friend who was labeled “learning disabled” and mocked as “retarded” at a young age. “Experts” said he could never learn. With proper diagnoses and an educational program tailored to his particular style of learning, he is now a college graduate in PIAAC’s 2%. Almost everyone can learn, but we learn in different ways and at different paces.
Our national problem is not the inability to learn, it is that we’ve become proud of our stupidity. Rather than construct flexible opinions based on logic, we champion ignorance, embrace conspiracy theories, elect liars, ban books, mistrust teachers, and rewrite history. Our civic, educational, and religious institutions, once bulwarks of vetted knowledge, sink into steel silos of close-mindedness where you couldn’t get a new thought in with a crowbar.
Years ago, I was considering various seminaries. One that was recommended to me had a faculty made up entirely of people who got all their advanced degrees from that same seminary. No new thing allowed. A veritable carrousel of redundancy.
One result of ignorance is the proliferation of churches that are all about entertainment, adventure, living your best life now, being all you can be, getting saved so you can fly away to heaven. We are attracted to excitement, wealth, power, and simplicity. We like absolutes. Dualism. Right and wrong. Black and white. I’m in; you’re out. Heaven or hell. We want an authoritative Bible that dropped fully formed (complete with gold edges and maps in the back) from heaven. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Don’t argue with me. We become self-righteous bricks of certitude – arrogant, unteachable, and convinced we are right. If I have the absolute truth, I must defend it. And self-proclaimed militias arise.
The essence of Jewish ethical teaching, according to Jesus, is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. (Matthew 22:37)
Love God with your mind. Learn to think logically. Rise above the 3rd grade humor of the stand-ups and the 4th grade entertainment of the sitcoms. Rise above the fear-mongering ignorance of power-hungry politicians. Question the certitudes coming from the pulpits. By all means, stop believing every cockamamie thing you read on the internet. Embrace learning. Travel. Listen. Study. Consider the viewpoints of those who are not like you. Practice hermeneutical humility. Allow that you might be wrong.
Humility is being teachable, not being ignorant and obtuse.
[1] Wonderful World by Sam Cooke. Written by Herb Alpert, Lou Adler, Sam Cooke
The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor 
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