Education is often seen as a be-all panacea.
50 years ago, David Halberstam in his book, “The Best and the Brightest,” blamed the “bright bulbs” in the White House for the Vietnam debacle, by pushing “brilliant policies that defied common sense.”
Halberstam pointed out “the difference between intelligence and wisdom … which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience.” The havoc wrought by the educated – having been positioned to inflict so – hasn’t been adequately measured.
Policymakers often are formally well-educated. Prone to similar perspectives and sameness of socializing, their thinking is more susceptible to remain narrow and enclosed. A “know-it-all” and knowing better attitude of false superiority lays the groundwork for disastrous over-confidence in decision-making.
Uncommon it is not to see technically well-lettered people behave in an uncouth manner because of not being well-rounded. Of what use is ‘Taleem’ (education) without ‘Adab’ (respect) and ‘Tarbiyet’ (manners): sufficient in schooling, yet deficient in class?
Those who read the same newspapers, watch the same TV, cultivate the same company, are more amenable to be vulnerable to disinformation. In other words, insularity and brainwashing. Sometimes, even a slight deviation from the official conformist script can invite ostracism.
In 2010, the doyenne of White House journalists, 90-year-old Helen Thomas, was, in effect, ousted from her front-row seat at White House briefings for voicing disapproval of Israeli usurpation of Palestinian territories. This happened in a society where freedom of speech is sacrosanct and Constitutionally-enshrined and embedded in the First Amendment, which states in part: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
Western journalists whom I have met, returning from Delhi, have been appalled, when sharing their impressions of interactions with educated Indian elites, citing how some of them have used exterminationist terminology against Indian Muslims, reminiscent of the language in vogue in Nazi Germany toward Jewry.
First-class education but with a third-class character, has been a recurring contradiction. Equal emphasis isn’t placed on character-building and ethics.
Ditto, too, for humbleness. Note the showy display that characterizes the nouveau riche.
The Kennedys and the Clintons are exalted by liberal media but their personal record doesn’t match media puffery. Mary Pinchot Meyer, one of JFK’s paramours, was mysteriously murdered in the posh Georgetown enclave of Washington, DC in 1964. The New York Times of Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020, pointed out that Mary had “kept a diary, which was destroyed after her death by her brother-in-law, Ben Bradlee” – later Editor of the Washington Post, arch foe of Richard Nixon, and married to Mary’s sister, Tony – implying cover-up of incriminating content.
Obama had notable accomplishments in his 8 years appealing to “the better angels of our nature,” to quote Lincoln. Yet, he remained mired in sameness, having around himself only those who were glowing with shiny resume optics. The lack of a diverse team meant that when the crunch moments came, he became an easy punching bag for Donald Trump, with no one to counter punch.
Abraham Lincoln
There is a near unanimity in the United States that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest ever American president. The mostly self-taught Lincoln never set foot on a college campus, yet he was endowed with insight, sagacity, and an inherent instinct for the big picture.
The mismatch between top schooling and feeble output can be stark. The poet, Maya Angelou, put it succinctly while paying tribute to Malcolm X, that he had something which many didn’t possess: courage. Of what good is education when it is not leveraged in expressing Haq (truth)? Being courageous doesn’t necessarily equal being foolish and reckless.
The common experience of corona calls for a time of deliverance of hope and light, a time of calming nerves and of a coordinated response. It’s a time for infusing a sense of collective purpose. Academic record alone won’t suffice. A humane vision would.
