Protester at March for Science in Melbourne, Australia, April 22 2017 (Takver/Wikipedia Commons)
***
Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch’s article “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” has gained traction in the past month, sparking a national conversation about the education system. In the article, Horowitch uses anecdotes from professor Nicholas Dame, who teaches a required Literature Humanities course at Columbia, to argue that there is an epidemic of college students who not only struggle to read full books, but also to understand their broader meaning, subtexts, and themes.
The article itself has its faults—most of the evidence consists of narratives from a hyper-specific pool of Columbia faculty and other Atlantic articles that make similar claims. However, Horowitch calls attention to a growing trend of illiteracy and education deficits within the U.S. According to the data, an estimated two-thirds of young adults between the ages of 16-18 struggle with basic literacy, and about 57% of 19-24 year olds fall below this standard. While these statistics are concerning on their own, this trends could represent a larger cultural shift, one that presents a deeper problem with intellectualism in America.
The official term for this phenomenon is anti-intellectualism, which refers to a mistrust and rejection of modern intellect, knowledge, and academia. This school of thought manifests in three categories: religious anti-rationalism, populist anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism. Religious anti-rationalism depends on emotionally charged arguments of religious reasoning over logic, while anti-elitism favors a rejection of elite individuals, such as professors and the institutions they represent. Unreflective instrumentalism denies seeking knowledge unless it can generate profit.
Focusing on the anti-elitist branch of anti-intellectualism reveals a unique dynamic. It doesn’t reject critical thinking, but rather it rejects institutions and their detachment from reality. This critique is not new. Terms such as ivory-tower, used to refer to places where people generate impractical (often solely theoretical) approaches to urgent issues, have long been used in discourse about academia’s approach to the practical world. Critics argue that being dubbed a political “know it all” means more than being opinionated. Clearly, there is a disconnect between theory and praxis and an acquisition of knowledge as a means of establishing superiority rather than functionality.
This phenomenon is only amplified when applied to 21st century American politics. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a culture of distrust toward health professionals, with only 40% of U.S. adults reporting that they have faith in medical professionals to make the right decisions during a public health crisis. The rise of far-right leaders and media outlets has fed into the distrust of deep state, fake news, and meddling with elections, cultivating an “us-versus-them” mentality, with the “us” being common citizens and “them” being the elites. Over the past decade, American politics has been defined by distrust in institutions, and with that, the intellectualism they represent. Not only are the institutions themselves deemed faulty and illegitimate, but the values and those who represent them fall victim to the previously mentioned ivory-tower status that detaches them from the public.
This hostility towards intellectualism extends to the perception of institutions, especially after the recent defeat of the Democratic Party in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. There’s a clear connection between liberal values and elite institutions, but with that comes a perception of elitism being synonymous with liberal spaces. This election cycle brought about major criticisms of the Democratic Party regarding their failure to relate to the common American and thoroughly acknowledge their concerns. Current president Joe Biden’s comments on Trump supporters being “garbage” certainly didn’t fix the right-leaning narrative that the left is above the common man. This is reflected in Trump’s victory, which was aided by an increased 1.2 million Republican votes compared to last election cycle. The takeaway is clear: many Americans feel betrayed by the elite and are actively seeking a shift in priorities toward the “little guy.”
So, what does this have to do with literacy among college students? While the answer for the struggles of incoming college students is complex, influences such as COVID-19 undoubtedly exemplify the recent culture shift against elite intellectualism. This cultural shift is apparent in the election results, and downright impossible to ignore with Trump’s ambitious goal to defund the Department of Education. When America’s youth are brought up in a culture that demonizes education and is headed by a leader who proudly proclaims his love for the uneducated, it should come as no surprise that there is an epidemic of young people today who struggle with literacy. The now-dominant idea that frames education as a form of wokeness must be deconstructed from the top down to reprioritize the importance of critical thinking, integrative learning, and intellectual diversity—all of which are facets of a liberal arts education. How America can combat the literacy crisis under this current cultural context, however, is still unknown.
