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Nichols sees these assaults as entrenched not so much in ignorance, more as being rooted in: The pervasive attacks on experts as “elitists” in US public discourse receive little sympathy in this book (nor should these).
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And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.
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Nichols also asserts this student-as-customer approach to universities is accompanied by an implicit, and also explicit, nurturing of the idea that:Įmotion is an unassailable defence against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. While not against “limited assessment”, he believes:Įvaluating teachers creates a habit of mind in which the layperson becomes accustomed to judging the expert, despite being in an obvious position of having inferior knowledge of the subject material. Nichols outlines his concern about the movement to treat students as clients, and the consequent over-reliance on the efficacy and relevance of student assessment of their professors. Two of his points here exemplify academia’s complicity in diminishing this relationship. His chapter on the contribution of higher education to the ailing relationship between experts and citizens particularly appeals to me as an academic. He reminds us of the ubiquity of Google and its role in reinforcing the conflation of information, knowledge and experience. Nichols also reflects on changes in the mediating influence of journalism on the relationship between experts and “citizens”. It considers the contrast between experts and citizens, and highlights how the antagonism between these roles has been both caused and exacerbated by the exhausting and often insult-laden nature of what passes for public conversations. The book covers a broad and interconnected range of topics related to its key subject matter. A world where argument means conflict rather than debate, and ad hominem is the rule rather than the exception.Īgain, this is not necessarily a new issue – but it is certainly a growing one. He reminds us that we are increasingly in a world where disagreement is seen as a personal insult. Intimately entwined with this, Nichols mourns the decay of our ability to have constructive, positive public debate. He doesn’t claim this situation is new, per se – just that it seems to be accelerating, and proliferating, at eye-watering speed. And this is playing out against a backdrop in which people don’t just believe “dumb things”, but actively resist any new information that might threaten these beliefs. He expresses a deep concern that “the average American” has base knowledge so low it has crashed through the floor of “uninformed”, passed “misinformed” on the way down, and is now plummeting to “aggressively wrong”. Nichols’ focus is on the US, but the parallels with similar nations are myriad.