Marty Kaplan: How Dumb Do They Think (Know) We Are

* Marty Kaplan Huffington Post *

I know some scary smart people who never graduated from high school, and I know some real doofuses with graduate degrees, so I understand that the number of years of formal education that someone has racked up is no guarantee of intelligence. But every once in a while, I see some poll numbers that pretty convincingly correlate believing idiotic things with having less education, and not believing idiotic things with having more education.

A recent example is a Harris poll that asked whether each of 15 statements about Barack Obama is true or false. In every single case, the less schooling people had, the more likely they were to believe that false things are true.

For example, 18 percent of Americans with high school or less education think that the president may be the Anti-Christ. Thats ‘right, nearly one out of five people who are eligible to vote, same as you, believe Obama is the bad guy in The Omen. But only 13 percent of people with some college believe that; and 9 percent of college graduates; and down to 4 percent of people who’ve had some post-graduate education.

It’s the same descending scale with “He is doing many of the things that Hitler did.” Twenty-four percent of high-school-or-less say yes; 20 percent of some-college; 18 percent of college grads; but only 10 percent of post-grads. “He was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”: 32, then 22, then 21, then 7. “He is a Muslim”: 43, 30, 24, 9. “He wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government”: 37, 28, 21, 12. You get the idea.

I can think of three explanations for this pattern.

One is that it’s not a pattern. Correlation isn’t causation. It’s just a fluke that educated people believe fewer bubbe meises.

Or, taking a different perspective, the explanation of those numbers is that liberals run America’s schools and colleges, and the longer you stay there, the more chance they have to brainwash you.

A third possibility is that the more education you have, the more you understand that there is a difference between an opinion and a fact, and that there actually is a way to test assertions of fact against reality. No matter how hard you clap to save Tinkerbell, really-really believing in fairies doesn’t make them real.

Read more at Huffington Post

Marty Kaplan is the Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School