Why Education Is Important

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American culture is shot-through with anti-intellectual sentiments.

The spirituality of capitalism translates into pre-professional and career planning priorities in education.

History demonstrates that, on occasion, a small religious minority can transform whole societies.

What a time to be an academic: Aggressive forms of surveillance and discipline, institutions crumbling or bending the knee to the current administration, artificial intelligence (AI) destroying cognitive skills in the youth, and state or federal policies destroying research budgets and curricular creativity, to name only a few of the generally overwhelming number of challenges.

I am just a lowly religion professor in the humanities, low-hanging fruit in a hostile culture that is questioning the point and purpose of education, and particularly the profitless, seemingly profligate, liberal arts. Additionally, I am close to retiring from what has been a 40-year run in this world, writing books and teaching courses about death, American religious history, popular culture, sexuality, and drugs.

From this vantage point and in this moment, some realizations come to mind about having committed my life to learning and the larger cultural forces at work that have shaped the life of education in American society. It may not be surprising that these realizations are infused with religious shadings and sacred concerns.

Entrenched Anti-intellectualism

The most obvious starting point is recognizing that anti-intellectualism is entrenched in the cultural soil of the United States. The go-to examination of this prominent and powerful force is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It was written in 1964, but is undoubtedly relevant today, identifying deep-rooted American sensibilities that denigrate scholarly pursuits and the life, and beauty, of the mind. These sensibilities are reaching their apex in the current cultural landscape.

These attitudes are not simply a celebration of ignorance. They are instead the result of a complex mixture of elements, including religious elements, that produce a potent, pervasive collective suspicion about, if not animosity toward, the production and pursuit of knowledge. What are the more striking religious forces at work in American culture, fueling these hostile, debasing attitudes?

Religion and American Culture

First and foremost is the consequential strain of evangelicalism in how Americans think, and think about thinking. A Protestant religious culture emphasizing emotions over reason, individual authority over collective wisdom, and dramatic subjective experience over collective considered reflections plays an explicit and underhanded role in challenging such pursuits. This popular and political force has long exerted influence on local and national attitudes about the value of an education.

Public primary school and college liberal arts curricula have often been the target for evangelical fears about young minds not firmly in the control of right-thinking, bible-focused Christians. Even as American education systems flourished through the 20th century, particularly in the golden years after the Second World War, when government made serious investments in educational infrastructures and scholarly research initiatives, evangelical sensibilities altered the consciousness of the Republican Party and shaped their messaging about the mortal national dangers of dechristianized knowledge formation.

Why Education Is Important

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The religious power of the evangelical influence is easy to trace. The other religious powers at work are much less clear-cut and may stretch the limits of what you think counts as religious. Perhaps most critical in the mix is the religious culture of capitalism and the sacred value of acquiring more money. The spirituality of capitalism translates into pre-professional and career planning priorities in colleges and universities, and the valorization of STEM earlier in students’ lives.

What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why are you put on this earth? Who are you, and who are your heroes that shape your aspirations? How can you transcend death? Capitalism, like Christianity, has its own agenda in educating citizens in the ways to think about answers to such questions in American society, and in corroding any intellectual efforts to question the assumptions of both capitalism and Christianity in American society.

Some other religious forces in American culture that contribute to squashing the intellectual spirit include sacred fixations on entertainment and especially sensationalistic, titillating entertainment that often provides more immediate forms of gratification. Religious nationalism is also a dynamic and powerful force that seeks to prioritize sacred values promoting sacrifice and militaristic thinking, as well as conjoining capitalism with national identity, over the values associated with an educated citizenry who are thoughtful and informed.

Another realization that has come to me over all these years in the academic wilderness takes the religious infusions in a very different direction. It has come to my attention that, while I may not believe in God, I am religious, and my “religion” is education and learning. This countervailing, admittedly fringe religious orientation has, in fact, been my salvation through the years, and teaching and learning a vocation that brings me a spiritual fulfillment that is simultaneously part and parcel of everyday life and at times, occasionally verging on the mystical when the extraordinary flow state hits.

Can the intellectual life be a religious life? I am here to testify that, yes, it can be just as meaningful, comforting, frustrating, corrupted, and illuminating as any religion out there. Is there any hope for its future given the seemingly inevitable demise of the intellectual spirit? To be honest, I take some comfort in the history of religions, which demonstrates that on occasion, a small religious minority can, against all odds, transform whole societies.

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