Willful Ignorance

Sometimes it’s the Iraq War, sometimes terrorism, and other times it’s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A professor declares his opinion on a complex subject and detonates a cacophony of nervous throat-clearing and assorted fidgetings throughout the classroom. The only noise missing is that of a student voicing his own opinion.

As a sophomore at PSU main, I’ve witnessed the above situation quite a few times.

It normally unfolds like so: a student in the front row smirks in affirmation of the professor’s statement and furtively peeks over his shoulder to see if anyone else is clueless, too. Chairs squeak, arms are folded, and everyone else contemplates their shoelaces in hopes of staying neutral in the event of a debate.

Sounds pretty uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Contrary to prevailing philosophy, the jolly community of lecture-listeners filling America’s colleges should rightly feel unsettled in class--albeit for different reasons.

Michael Berube, an English professor at Penn State, once said that college students should cherish debate in the classroom. They should expect to be challenged and uncomfortable “as a matter of course. That is, if [their] professors are doing their jobs properly.”

It seems ridiculous that a community whose stated goal is to learn would be so reluctant to consider and discuss other viewpoints. Sadly, our campuses are plagued with a “contagion” of conformity as well as students’ unfounded shame in admitting what they do not know.

Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale University and author of “Irrational Exuberance,” explains that “when people have limited information about something…they use other people as guides to their behavior.” Citing the erroneous confidence in Washington’s real estate market as an example, Shiller contends that belief in stagnant dogmas spreads by way of conformity.

"One hears other people saying things and confirming ideas you have. When things are commonly accepted, you file it in your brain as something that is true." Despite the smattering of opinions found in a classroom, group settings also foster an urge to maintain “superficial harmony” of opinion, according to doctors David and Roger Johnson in “New Developments in Social Interdependence Theory.”

According to their report, many individuals cease making “their own independent, unique contribution to the group” when placed in group settings, thus depriving the group “of the creative contributions that can be made by each of its members.” Also known as “groupthink,” this phenomenon is antithetical to the very purpose of education. The failure to question widespread beliefs was made some of history’s ugliest policy disasters possible. For example, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion was authorized in a “curious atmosphere of assumed consensus,” in the words of the then White House staffer Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Aside from groupthink, students' opinions also go unvoiced because of their lack of knowledge on particular topics. As an international politics major, most issues discussed in my classes are ideologically loaded and terribly complicated. Political ideologies and current events at the heart of the world’s major conflicts evoke powerful emotions, leading students to feel inadequate when an issue deemed important fails to strike a personal, passionate chord within them.

Mark Twain once said that the only way he ever learned was by confessing how little he knew. Students needn’t feel shame in acknowledging the blanks in their education. To eliminate one’s ignorance on a certain topic, it must first be acknowledged and then confronted through a proactive search for an answer.

The aforementioned smirking student in the front row is cheating himself out of his tuition. We are here to learn, not to impress egoists who would rather appear intelligent than become educated.

Though some may claim that ignorance is the opposite of education, it is perhaps the most important element of the learning process. Discovering, admitting, and confronting it enables us to learn. Ignoring the gaps in your education will only land your brain in a hole.


-Citations up soon