Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Volume 713Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1963 - 434 pages In this award-winning classic work of consensus history, Richard Hofstadter, author of The Age of Reform, examines the role of social movements in the perception of intellect in American life. Professor Hofstadter sets the standard for the dissection of many facets of U.S. history. Here he tells the tale of the intertwining factors of American culture and politics that lead to prevalent anti-intellectualism. Although published in 1963, this remains the definitive work on the distrust of elites and experts and is sadly relevant to the present day. Thanks to Columbia University's Richard Hofstadter we have at last a fresh, forceful, fluent look from "the nether end" at various aspects of anti-intellectualism in America, past and present, and although it is self-styled a fragmentary rather than a formal study, the work is far-ranging, artfully approached and filled with a spirited, sensibility, without pedantry or polemic. It presents both the historical and socio-psychological aspects of its theme, pinpointing the middle-and-low-brow responses via our go-getter economy, the common man's traditional resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind, and the cyclical ambivalence which seems always to have greeted the scholar or expert when venturing into a democratic culture. For although the Founding Fathers, were a worldly elite, starting with Jefferson, too-much-book-larnin' soon became a political black mark. |
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Page 378
... democracy . In setting this aspiration , Dewey stood firmly within the American tradition , for the great educational reformers who had established the common - school system had also been concerned with its potential value to democracy ...
... democracy . In setting this aspiration , Dewey stood firmly within the American tradition , for the great educational reformers who had established the common - school system had also been concerned with its potential value to democracy ...
Page 379
... democracy , and at the same time shows a central difficulty in his educational philosophy : he was obliged to assume that there is a kind of pre- established harmony between the needs and interests of the child and " the society we ...
... democracy , and at the same time shows a central difficulty in his educational philosophy : he was obliged to assume that there is a kind of pre- established harmony between the needs and interests of the child and " the society we ...
Page 380
... Democracy and Education , p . 101. While it is quite true that the criterion of democracy can be applied to other social institutions as well as to the apparatus of government , there is much to be lost by encouraging men to think of ...
... Democracy and Education , p . 101. While it is quite true that the criterion of democracy can be applied to other social institutions as well as to the apparatus of government , there is much to be lost by encouraging men to think of ...
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academic Adams agricultural alienation Ameri American intellectuals Andrew Carnegie anti-intellectualism Baptists beatniks became become believe Billy Sunday Boston businessmen Catholic cent century character child church civil service clergy common criticism culture curriculum democracy democratic Dewey Dewey's educa England established evangelical experience farmers fundamentalists Gerald L. K. Smith Gilbert Tennent H. L. Mencken high school ideal ideas institutions intel interest Jefferson kind labor Lawrence Cremin leaders learning lectual less liberal life-adjustment literature living ment mental Methodist mind ministers ministry modern moral movement mugwump party political popular practical preachers preaching problems professors Progressive era Progressivism Protestant pupils Puritan reformers religion religious remarked revivals role Roosevelt Scopes trial secondary education seemed sense social society teachers teaching things thought tion tradition vocational writers wrote York