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According to Newsweek, when the magazine asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test in early 2011, 29 percent "couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar. For as long as they’ve existed, Americans have been misunderstanding checks and balances and misidentifying their senators." The magazine's analysis treats all of the questions as equally important. However, I contend that the lack of knowledge on matters such as governmental checks and balances is more problematic than whether a citizen knows the name of his or her U.S. Senator. To take another pair, only 20 percent could name the U.S. President during World War I, while roughly the same percentage could name one of the enumerated powers of the federal government. The second lapse is more serious, for if the electorates do not know the constitutional limits placed on the power of the U.S. Government, the founders' assumption that elections would correct for any encroachment can no longer be relied on in the absense of other checks on the federal government. Given the continued growth in the power of the federal government relative to the state governments during the twentieth century, it could be that the voters are the last remaining wall in the way of complete political consolidation. However, if only one fifth of American citizens know what the federal constitution enumerates for the U.S. Government, how can a majority determine whether that government has overstepped its constitutional authority? Lest we leave this matter up to the U.S. Supreme Court, we might want to be reminded of the institutional/governmental conflict of interest in a branch of one of the governments in federalism contest being the umpire. Ordinarily, one could point to the constitutional amendment process superseding the high court's decisions, but this process involves representatives elected by the citizens, and most of us haven't bothered to study our own federal constitution.

As another example of some ignorance being more harmful than others, Newsweek reports that "(a) 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent." This ignorance could well mean the demise of the United States, for a $14 or $15 trillion debt held by the federal government alone (Illinois, California, Nevada and Florida having sizable sovereign debts of their own) may well be unsustainable. It is conceivable that American electorates will elect representatives who will placate them by cutting waste to "make a dent" in the deficit (which is the annual increase in the debt), as if that would deal with the problem. 

In general terms, the American founding fathers believed that for a republic to endure, its citizens must be virtuous and knowledgeable concerning the republic and the issues of the day. Public education was thus viewed as having a civic as well a vocational and academic function.  Hence, American college students typically get an undergraduate degree in the Liberal Arts or Sciences before moving laterally over to a law or medical school for its undergraduate (i.e., first) degree (i.e., the J.D. and M.D.).  The E.U.'s states do not require such a broad education at the college level, though their pre-college education is said to be more rigorous than in the American states.  In fact, even in making this comparison, even educated Americans suffer from ignorance, as we tend to mistake political categories, such as in likening the U.S. to one of the E.U.'s states rather than to the E.U.  Anyone want to guess how many American citizens know of the E.U. at all? I would put the figure at 5 percent, but this could be overly optimistic.  To see the category mistake in action among the "best and brightest" in this land of isolationism, consider the following argument presented in Newsweek.

"Most experts agree that the relative complexity of the U.S. political system makes it hard for Americans to keep up. In many European countries, parliaments have proportional representation, and the majority party rules without having to 'share power with a lot of subnational governments,' notes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker . . . In contrast, we’re saddled with a nonproportional Senate; a tangle of state, local, and federal bureaucracies; and near-constant elections for every imaginable office (judge, sheriff, school-board member, and so on). 'Nobody is competent to understand it all, which you realize every time you vote,' says Michael Schudson . . . 'You know you’re going to come up short, and that discourages you from learning more.' While at Yale, I took a seminar on the politics of American education in the political science department. I don't know if Hacker was on the faculty then, but his ignorance in comparing the U.S. and E.U. is startling. I suspect that he is simply stuck in an old paradigm traditionally used in trans-Atlantic comparitive politics. I contend that the E.U. is just as complex politically as are the U.S. For example, in terms of education alone, just as the American states must deal with local school boards, so too must the European states.  Furthermore, just as the American states must deal with federal regulation, so too must the European states. Indeed, the E.U.'s executive branch, the European Commission, has been actively involved in education policy in standardizing the various degrees offered by various state universities. While it is true that some of the E.U.'s states have regional governments that are also involved in education policy, whereas the American states only have counties and localities, the differential amount of complexity is not significant as compared with the basic union-state-locality structure that characterizes both the E.U. and U.S.  Newsweek reports that European citizens tend to do significantly better than Americans on citizen questions; the reason is not because the U.S. is somehow more complex.  Rather, I would point to the relatively lax schooling in the U.S. and the attitude of American parents (and students) toward academics, self-discipline and homework. Anti-intellectualism thrives amid such disvalues.

In the end, the American plight is one of values, and this transcends love of money and even knowledge. The ignorance reported by Newsweek is kein Zufall (no accident), and it will continue unless knowledge stands up not only to power and money, but also to conceit and the ignorance itself to break the cycle of "I can't be wrong."  Ignorance presuming itself as impossibly wrong!  This is the tragedy of the American dream--of modernity as having "made it."  Of course, we have no need of the classics; they have nothing to teach us!  We are the highpoint of human civilization, standing here among our sophisticated technology in the twenty-first century. We are like the Arian Christians who said more than a millennium ago that they could save themselves, as though they were gods on earth. Augustine sought to hammer humility into them by (overstating) the depravity of the fall in creation and mankind. The question for us is perhaps how a crack in arrogance can be found such that ignorance may finally be made uncomfortable in its own presence. Modernity is too comfortable with itself--too convenient wallowing in its own ignorance, which too many American citizens portray as knowledge. A bad smell!  Sadly, we have grown so accustomed to it that we can no longer smell it, so we presume it no longer exists. We presume.

Click to add a comment or question (and view published comments) on arrogance and American education.

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html

The EU and US can be seen to differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities.  That is to say, the difference goes beyond the question of the relative influences of the lobbyists. I contend that the relative proclivity toward business in the American states tilts the political playing field in the direction of the financial interests. This difference reflects a more basic subterranean difference on how much wealth and its manifestation as business are valued.  That is to say, it is easier for financial sector lobbyists in the United States because the societal values lean in their favor. This can be seen from the respective financial reforms in the EU and US after the financial crisis of 2008. This case bears strongly on my thesis because in both economies the financial sector was viewed as culpable. So one would expect the ensuing laws to come down on the banks rather than be conducive to their interests, unless a societal value on the profit-motive were still in force.

On March 10, 2010, the EU Parliament adopted a Resolution (536 votes in favour to 80 against) calling for the financial sector to contribute fairly towards economic recovery since the costs of the crisis are being borne by taxpayers. On 25 March, Members of Parliament’s special “Financial, Economic and Social Crisis Committee” debated the rationale behind a possible financial transaction tax. Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research in Vienna said short-term financial transactions can make short-term prices of currencies and other financial products such as derivatives and shares vary wildly. Schulmeister claimed that a tax on financial transactions of just 0.05% would eliminate these short-term transactions, bring greater stability and bring €300 billion of additional revenues to the EU. While the tax would undoubtedly bring in revenue, it is not clear to me that short-term transactions would be eliminated, as they can be worthwhile even with such a tax. Moreover, the financial crisis of 2008 shows us that the volitility can come from the market mechanism itself (in so far as it magnifies irrational exuberance). At any rate, even as there has been division on the matter of such a tax in the parliament, that the proposal has been made distiguishes the legislative body of the EU from the Congress in the US, where such a proposal would undoubted by blocked. Indeed, the EU Parliament has gone ever further.

On July 7, 2010, the EU Parliament approved some of the strictest rules in the world on bankers’ bonuses.  In the legislation, caps are imposed on upfront cash bonuses and at least half of any bonus will have to be paid in contingent capital and shares. MEPs also toughened rules on the capital reserves that banks must hold to guard against any risks from their trading activities and from their exposure to highly complex securities. “Two years on from the global financial crisis, these tough new rules on bonuses will transform the bonus culture and end incentives for excessive risk-taking. A high-risk and short-term bonus culture wrought havoc with the global economy and taxpayers paid the price. Since banks have failed to reform we are now doing the job for them”, said British MEP Arlene McCarthy. Upfront cash bonuses are capped at 30% of the total bonus and to 20% for particularly large bonuses.  Between 40 and 60% of any bonus must be deferred for at least three years and can be recovered if investments do not perform as expected. Moreover at least 50% of the total bonus would be paid as “contingent capital” (funds to be called upon first in case of bank difficulties) and shares. Bonuses also have to be capped as a proportion of salary. Each bank must establish limits on bonuses related to salaries, on the basis of EU wide guidelines, to help bring down the overall, disproportionate, role played by bonuses in the financial sector. Finally, bonus-like pensions are also covered. Exceptional pension payments must be held back in instruments such as contingent capital that link their final value to the overall strength of the bank. This is to avoid situations, similar to those experienced in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 in which some bankers retired with substantial pensions unaffected by the crisis their bank was facing. The rules apply to foreign banks operating in the EU and to subsidiaries of EU banks operating abroad. The law gives state regulators in the 27 EU states binding powers to take action against banks that fail to comply with the new rules (contrast this with the US Gov’t going after Arizona for trying to enforce US immigration law).

Clearly, the US financial reform does not go this far. Notably, it does not put much of a crimp in the American bankers’ life. This is no accident. The feeling among big bankers in the US is that they dodged a bullet concerning what could have been in the bill. That is to say, there was no “too big to fail” limit put on a bank’s capital or size generally speaking, or on the bankers’ compensation. The American media and President Obama have been strangely silent on why.  Perhaps it is as in the case of the health reform, where the President removed his objection to an insurance mandate and dropped his desire for a public option after the lobbyist for the American health insurance companies told him that her support was contingent on these changes. My point is simply this: Were not American society leaning in a pro-business direction (e.g., economic liberty being salient in how liberty itself is viewed), the President might not have felt the need to be bent in the lobbyist’s direction. That is to say, the lobbyist would not have had so much leverage. Wall Street no doubt had massive influence in the crafting of the financial reform as it was making its way through Congress (even though the banks were culpable in the financial crisis—which is itself telling). I submit that the reasons go beyond the sheer power of money. Fortunately, we can look across the pond for a better look at ourselves.

Sources: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/044-71441-088-03-14-907-20100329STO71433-2010-29-03-2010/default_en.htm
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/focus_page/008-76988-176-06-26-901-20100625FCS76850-25-06-2010-2010/default_p001c011_en.htm
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0„5769943,00.html

See related:http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/regulating-financial-and-commercial-derivatives/ (for a look at the US financial reform—esp. derivatives) and http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/immigration-and-federalism/ (contrast this federalism with that of the EU wherein the states are to enforce the bank bonus limits passed by the EU Parliament).

Just after winning the World Cup of 2010, FIFA officials handed the trophy to the team captain of the Spanish team rather than to the coach or a team owner (in this case, an official of Spain).  In contrast, at the Kentucky Derby, the honors went to the horse’s owner, rather than to the jockey. The distinctively American value on wealth could not be more evident, and the contrast with the World Cup confirms it.  We value wealth so much that we regularly hand trophies to team owners rather than to the players, even as the world does otherwise.  Hence when George Steinbrenner died, the NYT ran a front-page article describing him as “a visionary and a giant in the world of sports.” To be sure, he was a notable team owner. However, in terms of the winning, what of the players and coach of the renowned Yankee teams that won the World Series? It was their talent that was decisive. It is odd at best that at Steinbrenner’s last appearance at the 2010 home owner, the manager and team captain presented him with his 2009 World Series championship ring. That being an owner would justify getting a ring evinces a sort of sordid category mistake—and at the very least an over-reaching.  Putting money on the table does not mean you won; rather, to be out on the field would be necessary.  Sports, in other words, cannot be vicariously won.  Yet wealth is vaunted so in the U.S. that such a stretch is accepted without question.  So, too, we allow physcians to go by the “Dr.” title in front of their names even though they have not earned a doctorate (unless they have the D.Sci. M. degree, which is the graduate degree in Medicine, for which the first degree—the MD—is a prerequisite).  I would even say that we (meaning Americans) are blind to how distortive our dominant value on wealth is, and how it has been exploited.  Essentially, I am pointing to a societal blind-spot rather than merely complaining over trophy ceremonies. Once the blind-spot becomes transparent, it is apt to be approached differently.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/sports/baseball/14steinbrenner.html?ref=sports

 "Professional" is a cherished word in modern American society. We are all professionals.  On Craigslist, people use the word to signify that they are not students. Technically, the term applied to highly trained professions in which the extent of training meant that only one's peers could be one's boss. A manager trained at a business school is hardly able to supervise a surgeon, for example.  Only other surgeons can evaluate how well a surgeon does in the operating room.  This differs from a janitor, for example, whose work could be assessed by a manager who has not been trained to clean. Our misuse of the term "professional" can be viewed as an inevitable expansion that plays on the value that we accord with vocation in particular and money in general. That is to say, we look up to executives, physicians and lawyers because they make a lot of money.  Accordingly, other professions want to be known as professionals.  The term thus comes to mean "mature," which can indeed apply to anyone.  Beyond the misuse of professional, the value we put on the moneyed professions (and wealth) has blinded us to the place of the first degrees in schools of medicine and law.  As the first degrees in academic schools, the MD and JD are undergraduate (before graduation in those fields) rather than graduate. That those two degrees are viewed as doctorates by many of their holders in the United States (not so in Europe) illustrates how self-serving the value of being a professional can be.  Essentially, it is the value on wealth that has usurped academic distinctions, resulting in false-entitlement. If those who have not earned doctorates would feel insulted rather than ashamed when called on their ignorance, the extent of arrogance in the value on professionalism and wealth could finally be seen.

It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.   Each one is the first degree in its school, or discipline.  Yet we presume them to evince advanced knowledge, even allowing people with two undergraduate degrees to be "professors" (really instructors) in American law and medical schools. In the school of law, the sequence of degrees is: JD (same as the LLB), LLM (hint: M...Masters), and JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The JSD degree includes advance study, a comprensive exam (an academic exam graded by faculty--not a industry-qualifying exam like the bar), and a defended dissertation. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree of a field, contain a comprehensive exam, and include significant original research in a defended dissertation. The JD misses on all three points. The title of the first degree in law, the LLB (bachalors in letters of law) was replaced with "JD" largely for marketing purposes in 1901 in the founding of the U of Chicago law school (by three Harvard professors) because prospective students were complaining about having two "B" degrees after seven years of school.  People don't like to think they have gone to school for seven or eight years for two undergraduate degrees, but this is precisely what they have done. Nevertheless, the new law school in need of students complied with the "customer" complaint with a feat of mirrored marketing that was perhaps intentionally ambiguous.  To eviscerate the ambiguity in  Juris Doctor and a doctorate, one must look beyond the mere words.

In medicine, the MD is the first degree. Substantively, it contains survey courses and some seminars, just as in a BA or BS program in liberal arts or sciences. The D. Sci.M. is the doctorate in the field of medicine, and the M.D. is a prerequisite (so the latter cannot be the terminal degree of the field).  The fact that some schools give the D.Sci. M. degree as an honorary degree does not mean that it does not exist elsewhere as the real, terminal degree. Particular medical schools may give the degree as honorary where there are not enough prospective students interested in a doctorate in medicine. 

In divinity schools, the M.Div (before 1968, called the BD) is the undergraduate degree. It is followed by the STM (the masters) and the DD.   When the BD name was changed to the M.Div name, a perhaps-deliberate ambiguity was created wherein one apparent masters would be followed by another (M.Div. and STM).   It evinces a category mistake to have two masters degrees with one being substantively prerequisite to the second. Substantively, the M.Div. program consists of a year and a half of survey classes, followed by senior seminars (just as in the undergraduate law, liberal arts & science, and medical programs).  To regard a graduate with a M.Div., JD, or MD as having achieved advanced knowledge in the respective field is a fallacy perpetuated by the superfluous esteem we heap on the "professions" on account of their association with money (the religious vocation being revered for sacrificing the vaunted wealth).

It makes no difference how many degrees a person has in other fields before commencing study in a professional school. In beginnning to study law, medicine or theology, one begins with survey courses. Furthermore, it doesn't matter whether one's particular school or even country offers the doctorate in the field.  Try telling people that your BA is a doctorate in English because no Ph.D. in the field is offered at your college or even in one's country.  Every field (just like life itself) has a first degree and a terminal degree.  A student does not obtain advanced knowledge in two or three years in a law, medical or divinity school, but only a first degree's worth in liberal arts and sciences.

Sadly, we as a people have esteemed the physcians and lawyers so much that we have vaunted them by unwittingly appreciating their degrees into the stratisphere.   One degree in a given field does not a doctor make.   Europeans have been correct in refusing to call an American physician, "Dr. Smith."   The fact that Mr. Smith would take offense just points to the arrogance that lies in ignorance.  The rest of us enable Mr. Smith to claim the doctoral title before his last name because we don't know any better.   We give physicians titled trophies that they do not deserve.  Moreover, the use of vocational titles (including Professor Jackson) risks a vocational reductionism wherein a person is rgarded (and comes to regard himself) as that which he or she does.   Is vocation really so important that it eclipses or overcomes a person's identity? 

 Maybe it is time that we say "enough is enough" on the green glitter and deflate those who have vaunted their own entitlements going along with being a  professional  to a value or level more fitting to what they have earned.   The extent of illusion that a society can create and maintain is astonishing, yet being in the illusion (think here of the Matrix) we do not see it.  It is time to see the green numbers on the wall.  No wonder even the hint of such sight is apt to incur the wrath of the agents who instinctively protect the illusion because they benefit inordinately from it.   It is time, ladies and gentleman, that we wake up, as the sun is already quite high in the sky and there is much to be done.

Today, the term ”professional” is commonly used to mean “does X for a living” (other than what, a hobby?).  Actually, the word properly refers to being sufficiently high skilled that one is subject to the industry self-regulation of one’s peers rather than to a manager who is not a peer from the standpoint of the skills.  Modern management is taught in business schools under the premise that a person can apply managerial skill to anything.  However, where a given vocation is highly skilled and a manager doesn’t have that skill (having instead managerial skill), a manager is not qualified to manage the highly skilled professionals.  Put simply, the professionals know so much more about what they are doing that managerial skill alone cannot be a basis for competency in decisions that involve the highly skilled.    The subversion of the term “professional” is meant to democratize the true professionals beyond physicans, dentists, priests, professors and lawyers—the professional class.  That is, the misnomer is actually a rejection of there being higher classes based on skill.   There is an overreaching involved in the common usage.  In Nietzschean terms, it evinces the herd animal claiming a dominance without the requisite strength.  In other words, democratication can be a case of overreaching and presumptuousness borne out of a resentment towards the wealthy and higher skilled.  The misnomer is a case of passive aggression.  I submit that the incorrect use of the term points to a tension within modern society wherein two distinct groups of people do not respect each other.  The highly skilled and the highly educated dismiss the people using the misnomer as pretentious idiots, while the non-professionals dismiss the distinction based on the skill or education.  “I’m a professional too!” the salewoman proclaims while the lawyer replied, “No you aren’t.”  Mutual dismissiveness.  The culpability is not symetric, however.
Fundamentally, the misnomer is rooted in the non-professional’s presumptuousness and resentment.  These qualities are no substitute for continuing one’s studies in graduate school to become a scholar or turning to a second bachelors degree in a professional school by earning a first degree in  law, divinity, or medicine (business is a professional school but managers are not professionals).  That one degree in law or medicine is typically presumed (mostly in the US) to be a doctorate even though it is the first rather than the terminal degree in the school (the latter degree requiring it as a prereq)  is an instance of the democratization of “professional”—but here it is the professional’s credential that is overstated.  That is to say, it is a case of a lawyer or physician rarifying herself beyond her professional grade as if a lateral move to another field were equivalent to getting two graduate degrees (a masters and doctorate) on top of a first degree. 

The professionals who are accustomed to claiming more than they have actually earned educationally may be motivated to overreach here because their professional standing is in turn being claimed by overreaching pseudo-professionals, such as managers (or bankers).  Not unexpectedly, marginal universities are turning some of their skills-oriented masters degrees (such as physical therapy)  into doctorates by adding a year of study without the required doctoral comprehensive exam of the entire discipline and book-length dissertation of original research, which are required for the Ph.D., D.Sci. M, DBA, DD, and JSD— these are the doctoral degrees of Liberal Arts & Sciences and several of the professional schools (Medicine, Business, Divinity and Law, respectively).  Two years (roughly) of survey courses and a year of senior-level seminars in a professional school does not a doctorate make.  The move is lateral from the first bachelors.  Yet the presumptuousness of the physican and lawyer claiming to have doctorates by virtue of their first degree in medicine and law, respectively, are missed by society in the effulgent gloss of “professional,” which comes to be applied by the society further and further down its chain of vocational being.   The emperor is not wearing any clothes, yet fawning crowds marvel at the cloth and claim to be wearing like material themselves.

Does this make me an elitist—pointing out that the cloth is not as refined as we have been led to believe by those claiming to wear it?  Admittedly, my argument may seem elitist prime facie.  My use of big words doesn’t help. However, it may simply be a case of good old-fashioned truth-telling in the midst of some dandy fibbing to the unknowing, who do not realize that they are being lied to by people with a vested interest in the lies.  Surely it is an act of kindness to tell a man, “excuse me, your fly is unzipped,” or to tell a woman, “there is something in your hair in back.”

Democracy is great; it is the overreaching pretentiousness whereby the demos takes itself for something more that it is—something unearned and thus undeserved—that is pernicious and nefarious.

I think it is because income/wealth/profits is valued so much in the US that there is such selfishness recoiling from Obama’s desire for universal health coverage. Also, the republican argument that the Bush tax cuts on incomes above $200,000 should be continued attests to the value. The fact that the argument is being made at all is unbelievable.  Data shows that the rich save the extra money saved from taxes, but that isn’t stopping the Republicans and some House democrats from arguing that the rich would spend the money to hire (i.e., lowering unemployment).  Incroyable, je crois.  The income taxed of small business people is on the income they take out…which would otherwise be saved or spent on themselves…not on their business.  The argument doesn’t make sense and yet it is made as if it does!  Incredibly, some democrats are beginning to buy it.  It is incredible that tax cuts are being talked about at all, given the $13 tillion US govt debt. I understand that raising tax has a contraction effect on the GNP, but how much?  The rich avoiding some additional taxes: would that really mean such a contraction?  Even if it does, the increase to the debt would tend to increase interest rates as well as the amount that the US Government will have to pay on interest. Moreover, an unsustainable public debt makes the US itself ultimately unsustainable. It seems small to worry about a slight contraction (if any) from the restoration of tax rates on those people who have the means to pay higher taxes. I suspect that the underlying reason for the argument is the hypertropic value put on wealth in the US.