In 1987, “The Closing of the American Mind” was a nonfiction best-seller. In 2019, we might as well have “The Poisoning of the American Mind” on the best-seller lists.
That thought came to mind when the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein popped up on social media almost immediately — reinforced by none other than the president of the United States.
“Hours after Mr. Epstein was found to have hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell, Mr. Trump retweeted a post from the comedian Terrence Williams linking the Clintons to the death,” reported the New York Times. “Mr. Epstein ‘had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead,’ wrote Mr. Williams, a Trump supporter.”
In no time, an abundance of similar posts appeared on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. When I tried to debunk those claims with facts from credible sources — a time-tested strategy I teach in my English classes — I was met with scorn and ridicule: “How dare you question the idle and speculative theories we formulated within 24 hours of a story breaking!”
Social media, simply, is poisoning American minds.
New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel made a comparable observation, noting how “our information delivery systems were not built for our current moment — especially with corruption and conspiracy at the heart of our biggest national news stories (Epstein, the Mueller Report, mass shootings), and the platforms themselves functioning as petri dishes for outlandish, even dangerous conspiracy theories to flourish.”
While Warzel focuses on the responsibility of social media platforms to quell such disinformation, I place the blame on individuals, who should know better. Unfortunately, “The Poisoning of the American Mind” is in full swing.
But first, back to Allan Bloom’s book “The Closing of the American Mind,” which questioned the direction of higher education at the time. Bloom, a University of Chicago professor and proponent of the “the Western canon” — classic texts that critics deride as the work of “dead white guys” — disliked the multiculturalism emerging on American campuses. The book, not surprisingly, sparked a lofty debate among educational elites.
Funny thing, though: Bloom’s book reached the top spot on the best-seller list and stayed there for four months. In total, the book sold more than 1 million copies in its first year of publication.
Somehow, I doubt an erudite tome espousing the values of a classical education would be quite so popular in 2019. Which begs the question: Has the American mind really “closed” since 1987? Yes, I would offer, but not so much that some poison can’t still seep in.
Author Tom Nichols chronicled just how much the American mind has closed in his 2017 book “The Death of Expertise.” Many factors have been at play, but the rise of the internet is foremost. To that point, Nichols describes the “Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople.” In other words, everyone is an expert now!
“This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives,” writes Nichols. “Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.”
And thus, “The Poisoning of the American Mind.” Social media has insidiously enabled the most ridiculous and pernicious ideas to spread like a virus — think “measles” in a vaccine-free environment — which puts all of us at risk. But rather than waiting for tech companies to deliver a cure, I offer an antidote on the personal level: media literacy.
Adults must become vigilant and apply a skeptical mindset to all information they see. True, many people remain annoyingly stubborn and woefully illiterate in this regard, but most adults should recognize this state of affairs as a serious “societal-health crisis.”
In addition, we must place particular focus on children. To that end, the state Department of Education’s Digital Citizenship, Internet Safety, and Media Literacy Advisory Council has been working for two years on recommendations for the classroom, which can’t arrive soon enough. Otherwise, the poison will only continue to ooze into American brains for years to come.
Barth Keck is an English teacher at Haddam-Killingworth High School and a columnist for ctnewsjunkie.com.
