TPM Reader AS has a provocative, some might think it even offensive, look at Ben Carson’s striking level of ignorance about so many things. Though, I don’t agree with all of it, I found it quite insightful …
Good job on the Dr. Ben Carson / Egyptian pyramids nonsense. There’s another aspect: what his apparent lack of general knowledge says, pro or con, about his fitness to be President.
I happen to be the daughter of an archaeologist, and I 100% agree with your commenter who said it is so infuriating to see someone pontificate about the field in total ignorance, but I have a different point to make.
“General knowledge”–basic awareness of the mix of facts and empirical discoveries that undergird modern society– tends to correlate strongly not merely with one’s own level of formal education, but with that of the people in one’s formative circle–mainly, family–when growing up. Carson’s level of formal education is high: Yale undergrad, U. Mich M.D.
But his mother married at age 13 and was “barely literate” (according to Carson himself), and his father left the family when Ben was 8 (and his older brother was 10, and his mother was in her early 20s). Dr. Carson’s mother appears to be a woman of remarkable character, perseverance, and fortitude, and also, most likely, high intelligence. But her ability to impart general knowledge would have been severely constrained.
Her regimen, of forcing her sons to read two library books a week and write her book reports on what they had read, could contribute a certain amount of general knowledge for them, but, in essence, Carson’s general knowledge is self-taught and from books and formal education.
This inevitably leaves gaps, even when fundamentalist Biblical literalism doesn’t rush in to fill them! I experienced this in my own family: my father’s mother was very intelligent, read widely, but was largely self-taught, and her formal education had ended in high school. Her general knowledge had major gaps, and she tended to adopt odd conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It drove my mother crazy, the same way Carson’s pyramids remark is bothering you.
My mother had graduated from Bryn Mawr, but, of more importance, her mother had graduated from Douglass College (and her father from Princeton.) Her grandparents (my great-grandparents) were also very well educated, for their time, including the women. My mother’s fund of general knowledge, due to the educational attainments of her parents and their parents, was far broader than that of my self-taught grandmother, her mother-in-law.
Among other things, my mother had a better nose for intellectual-ish malarkey. It wasn’t that she was smarter than her mother-in-law. But the disparity in generations of formal education created a cultural, and class, gap, despite the fact that my great-grandparents on both sides were all pretty much at the same (relatively high) level of wealth, so material poverty and deprivation were not a factor.
In sum, I think you are beating up on Carson for a class issue. But nonetheless, it’s a very valid political issue. Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Abraham Lincoln, to take three examples of mostly self-taught political geniuses from impoverished family backgrounds, prove, that if a person is aware of their own lack of general knowledge, it is possible to overcome it.
But if Dr. Carson does not recognize that he may be at a disadvantage–due to his very high success in a field, brain surgery, which demands an extreme level of formal education but calls for relatively little general knowledge–that could cause major lapses in judgment. George W. Bush is a good example of that, despite the generations of education in his family! Bush wasn’t stupid, and he was exposed to formal education, and his parents would, I suspect, score off the charts on general knowledge, but Bush didn’t seem to know or care, and, as a result, his judgment was very bad and he was susceptible to being conned (another topical story!)
