Equality?

Equality?

By Marco M. Pardi

“…all men are created equal.” The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence.

“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.” John F. Kennedy. 6 June 1963.

All comments are welcome and will receive a response.

Although I’ve had college classes in the subject, I make no pretense to be a political scientist. I am merely a participant-observer of the human condition. But surely every reader of this column can discern a distinct difference in the two statements rendered above. I have always viewed the first statement as well meaning but dreadfully naive. The second statement, although rather soft, provokes us to consider what is meant by “talent”. Does that mean capacity, as in the capacity for critical thinking? Or are we to sidetrack ourselves toward discussions of child prodigies such as Mozart and others like him?

In a time when we, the species Homo sapiens, face decisions which will decide whether we perish or prosper we must honestly and critically examine the predicate upon which we empower people to make those decisions. We are long past the ethic of, If you screw up a place, just move. We are in the corner and the paint is not just wet, it’s rising.

What are these decisions mentioned above? Let’s start with Climate Change, gaining speed and momentum like an oil tanker train and needing many miles of track before it can stop and then reverse. How about an essentially Fascist regime in the White House in an era when most Americans seem unable to identify Fascism even as it speaks lies to them through their ubiquitous sources of “news”? Or what about the regime developed Tax Code revisions which favor the Kleptocrats while scheming to pay for it through cuts to Social Security, MediCare, MediCaid, the Public School System, and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program? We could also discuss the current attacks on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Then there is the Man/Baby in the White House who seeks to deflect attention from his impeachment by assassinating a very highly placed figure in a foreign and hostile government. (Interestingly, the film 1917 is now playing. Perhaps a tiny few in the audience will remember that WWI was started with the assassination of one man – Archduke Ferdinand). Are these good for a start? Actually, I’m sure they are since the readers of this column demonstrate they think deeply and critically. Can we say that of every person who is entitled to vote?

As I’ve written of previously, I differentiate “smart” and “intelligent”. And again, I caution against the facile trap of conjuring a stereotypic image of a “dumb person” with a “smart person”. All physicians are smart; they have learned what was needed to graduate from medical school and pass the Boards. Not all physicians are intelligent. That is, not all of them are able to take the information they have learned and generate new knowledge. At the other end of the social scale I knew a retired train engineer (he drove them; he did not design them) who left school after third grade to do what he could to financially help his family. Despite his almost total hearing loss we spent many hours discussing a wide array of current events and the insights afforded us by history. How did we do that? In every spare moment he developed his reading skills and voraciously read all the serious literature he could get his very dirt stained hands on. Many of my physician friends would have been lost at “Hello”.

As an author I have been watching an accelerating trend since the 1970’s: serious readership has been markedly declining at an ever faster pace. Daily newspapers are going out of business almost as quickly as restaurants. Independent bookstores are disappearing. Even network television news programs are in dramatic decline, losing viewers to other media outlets which, in many cases, are nothing more than propaganda organs. Lets look at these trends.

The research organization STATISTA tracks reading trends in the United States. The collated findings of several national surveys indicate the following:

“ On average, Americans aged 20 to 34 spend a mere 0.11 hours reading daily, which amounts to less than seven minutes per day. Although the time spent reading increases in the older generations, the general trend is worrying – an overall average of only 0.28 hours spent reading per day. Despite these stunning numbers, there are also some positive things to note: As of 2018, 74 percent of adults stated that they have read at least one book in the past year, and additionally, Americans continue to spend around 110 U.S. dollars per year on reading.” 

“Average annual expenditure on reading per customer in the U.S.: 108 USD. Share of U. S. adults who have read at least one book in the past year: 72%. Average Daily Time Spent Reading in the U.S.: 15.6 minutes.”

While the figures above give us little to no insight into the types of books read, perhaps the figures on magazines will do so:

Entertainment and TV: 7.11%

Science, Nature or Medicine: 3.61%

Political: 2.77%

Scholarly: 1.01%”

Is it any wonder a television “reality” show host, producer of insipid beauty contests, and purveyor of “conspiracy theories” was elected as President of the United States of America? I was not at all surprised.

One of the more puzzling recent developments is the push to lower the voting age to 16. Some point to Greta Thunberg, the Swede who, at the age of 15, captured the world’s attention with her brilliant indictment of Climate Deniers. Yet, many say she is an exception. I think the claim she is an exception is an American bias. During the 22 years I taught at various universities and colleges I consistently found that students whose K-12 education was European, British, or Scandinavian based were far better able to understand and discuss the nuances and ramifications of world events, especially world politics. Perhaps American schools seek to produce smart students, able to remember and repeat what they have been taught while other systems seek to produce intelligent students able to understand, extrapolate, and build on what they have learned.

Another caveat against the granting of the vote to 16 year old people is the information about the development of the brain itself. But I cannot accept this applies only to Americans. Note the “starting at 16 or 17” in the following:

“The front part of the brain, responsible for functions such as complex reasoning, problem-solving, thinking ahead, prioritizing, long-term planning, self evaluation and regulation of emotion, begins to develop in early adolescence with a final developmental push starting at age 16 or 17. It is not that these tasks cannot be done before young adulthood, but rather that it takes more effort and requires practice.” K. Teipel of the State Adolescent Health Resource Center, Konopka Institute, University of Minnesota.

Should I assume, then, that American adolescent brains are “wired” differently? I think not. Rather, I will conclude that the American culture is wired differently. I would like to know if, and to what extent, Teipel’s study sample included subjects from various cultures and educational systems. Unfortunately, I do not have that information but I will venture to suggest that his results were at least in part culturally influenced.

My point here is that until the American culture makes a fundamental shift from trying to produce smart to trying to produce intelligent we will see a rapidly worsening gap between those who have the answers appropriate to yesterday and those who have the competence to negotiate tomorrow. As tomorrow advances upon us with ever increasing speed our “equal opportunity to develop our talents” is rapidly diminishing. We must become sober and serious in the granting of power to affect the course of our journey into the future that our profligate past has brought us.