One of the things that I dislike most about the American public is what seems to be its collective and intentional lack of education coupled with its insistence on allowing a chosen few to do their learning and their thinking for them. I see this everyday as I watch our cable news channels. The fact that these channels exist and that the people on the news channels exist are evidence to me of this problem. As I listen to the stories being told and the things that are being said, I surmise that the audience must be buying into all of it because they are still there. What I have learned from our news is that the stories of most importance to the American publice involve celebrities and their private lives and that reporting the news is a political and manipulative act, rather than an informative act. The result of all of this is an audience who is being told who to respect, who to hate, what to think, and what is best for themselves and the rest of the world.
This is what I immediately thought of when I read Willinsky’s book. I think that expanding access to information and the products of higher education would do a lot to alleviate the problem that I complained about above. In addition to making knowledge accessible, itwould be very helpful tofind a way to let the public know what is available and how they can get to it all. It may still take a little more work than people have become accustomed to, but perhaps it will begin a build up of momentum and people will learn more and more. I know that my fantasy of everyday Americans reading in their spare time, expanding their knowledge, rather than watching TV or looking up the most recent videos of people hurting themselves on the intenet will probably never be realized, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to hope for some progress in that direction. It would be great for students and teachers, as well.
Google seems to be systematically undermining the capitalist control of knowledge that has been a stple of our culture for a long time, and I admire the company for that. I am very grateful for the free access that google has provided so far and I hope that much more will come in the future.
I truly enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you. It seems that the American public are easily swayed by whatever the news wants and we gladly follow in whatever direction we are led. Thank you writing what you did in such a straight forward and well written way.
You make an interesting point about intellectualism in the United States. I hadn’t before drawn any kind of connection between information firewalls and this dismal state of affairs. Would more open access to scholarship increase the search for and respect for knowledge? Or, is this a case for the proverbial saying, “you can lead a horse to water…?”
I really like your thoughts on the effects of open access on the public. My first instinct was to just assume that the public as a whole is too.. not smart.. to handle open access. But I like the transitional period, there will always be a learning curve and it’ll be a bit rough at first but in the long run, it could be a good idea. And useful for the people that do want access and a little more than ridiculous videos and tv. Having the option might make a difference.
Unfortunately there will always be bigger hurdles to learning than firewalls. Very few children in my neighborhood even have computers; as you expand outward into Baltimore’s less appealing neighborhoods, you’ll find that parents can’t even get fresh food for their children, let alone hope for a working school system, a computer, and a free internet connection. I’d be happy if they could just keep the public libraries open. Money is the gateway to learning in this country.
This problem is perhaps not new. The style of the news channels of which you speak is fairly close to the “paranoid style” identified by Richard Hofstadter in the 1960s. There is something very attractive in the way these news channels present the news, a way that clouds real learning and debate.