ANTI INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE BY RICHARD HOFSTADTER PDF

Anti-intellectualism in American Life was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Non- Fiction. It is a book which throws light on many features of the American. A book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say. Richard Hofstadter’s famous Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, his tenth book, earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction (). This “personal book,”.

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One recalls the gospel according to Calvin Coolidge: The stork does not bring profits and prosperity, and sound currency does not grow under cabbages If the intellectual habit centrally consists in a “play of the mind,” some combination richafd “playfulness and piety” 27then from whence derive the fierce resentments on the part of the majority population?

It is aligned with creativity; even the most serious poetry must have a strong element of this, as must wit, and quite probably most high-quality writing. Not much has changed. More often than not, Hofstadter’s analysis of anti-intellectualism retains its currency and relevance after forty-five years. bby

Review: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life ()

It examines in depth the influence of John Dewey on the educational system, and the conflicting drives of traditional education to learn the classical subjects as opposed to ingellectualism modernising desire of the “New Education” whose goal was to prepare students to intellectualisn good citizens in a democracy. But in early America ordinary citizens did not want to fund colleges for the rich.

Business has long been one of the most popular undergraduate majors, often accounting for fifteen or twenty percent of a student population. Arguably, the social status of intellectuals has plunged steadily downward since Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. With current policies we might end up reversing the brain-drain which we have relied upon for so long, it has masked the flaws in our education system and its classist fundamentals.

Primitivism, the favoring of intuition and faith over cultivated rationality, was seen as natural, intellectualism as artificial. Hofstadter believes that an intellectual approach to life accepts the premise that conflict is a constant and there is a need for spirited discussion and an openness to compromise.

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Sep 28, Judy rated it really liked it. This change confirms the notion that one goes to “college” for a hands-on degree that leads directly to a hands-on job.

Vann Woodwardwho offered sharp, if collegial, criticisms of the manuscript. Open Preview See a Problem? From inside the book.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

At one point, Richard prattles off twenty cool names in American Literature in two sentences so the book looked deeper, but unlike the vast hofdtadter of reviewers of this book, I was not a big fan even though I had high hopes.

Their air, manner and conversation are alike contracted. So does Hofstadter, whose long view instructs us that, at least for professors-as-intellectuals, we’ve always been a minority game, though once in a while–the first six Presidential administrations, the tenure of both Roosevelts, Wilson, and possibly Kennedy–the life of the mind has been cherished, not scorned, by the masses.

Gives me amercan lot to think about, and I’m still processing what I have learned. The exultation of the common man “vote for the guy you’d like to have a beer with” got considerably worse with the Jackson presidency, and byduring William Henry Harrison’s “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign, it officially became the keystone of a party’s election strategy.

Sadly, the same problems hofsgadter existed at the time of this work still have not been addressed today. Apparently some Anto Board or community members don’t want kids hearing an expert discuss scientific evidence of global warming.

Some of them come from places like Darby, whose school district boasted a couple of creationist board members a few years ago.

I picked up this book by Richard Hofstadter because I was sick of reading about him in other books without ever having read him myself. However attacks on intellectuals steadily mounted through his administration interrupted by WWII.

Eggheads make good targets for myriad frustrations and hostilities. A society whose leaders preach “an empire of evil” or “an axis of evil” sees the world in black and white terms as do fundamentalist Muslims such as the Taliban: I iintellectualism that parts of this section dragged a bit, particularly the minutiae of the civil service, but it was a very good primer on each president’s attitudes.

Hofstadter demonstrates that some social movements in the U. Again, I wonder how he would define the triumph of mass media and athletics as big business, a thriving marriage, were he writing today? Finished this a while back been meaning to write the review.

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Apr 02, Donald Luther rated it it was amazing. How can the radical democratizing of “information” result in anything other than the lowest common denominator?

How would the historian avoid overstating the case in ? In this essay I shall review some of Hofstader’s claims for comparative purposes: Fundamentalism feeds xenophobia and denies globalism. The fear and loathing for the intellectual in America dates back to before the founding of the republic.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Essential reading that has not aged at all. Our last child, finishing middle school, rarely brings home any homework and when he does, it takes fifteen minutes.

Curriculums have also drifted from an emphasis on the 3R’s and science to less rigorous subjects, resulting in a less educated populous. Richard Ameriican Limited preview – Colleges have been accused of turning out socialists for years. Anti-intellectuals have no need for data because they have no doubts. Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now. They are insiders who sometimes revel in torpedoing the knowledge establishment and colleagues from the inside. He unflinchingly states the consequences oife his overall subject: Hofstadter regarded the “the Grand Inquisition of the s” as a means “to discharge resentments and frustrations, to punish, to satisfy enmities whose roots lay elsewhere than in the Communist issue itself” The Great Awakening addressed this with revivalist preachers who emphasized the spirit over knowledge, the Bible over academic books.

Perhaps they don’t want such news because it interferes with bedrock religious convictions. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.

Anti-intellectualism is not only an American thing. A large part uofstadter the book is taken up with the philosophy of John Dewey and the focus and purpose of American education, particularly secondary education. My only criticism of the book is that in that Hofstadter wrote it insome of, what for him, contemporary examples of intellectualism now seem dated.

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