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1 9 t h e p r o b l e m w i t h t h e m e r i t o c r a c y c h a p t e r o n e Richard Hofstadter and Theodor Adorno were both deeply concerned about the relationship between anti-intellectualism and the cultural politics of the twentieth century. They were both interested in the emergence of an antiliberal bent of mind in the modern era. They were, at the same time, both opposed to the instrumentalization of thinking and the administration of human experiences . They were both implicitly critical of routinization and professionalization and harbored deep suspicions about the Progressive Era’s reformist zeal. Their defense of critical and liberal values made them especially unpopular “elitists” during the rise of academic populism in the 1990s. In reevaluating the significance of their work, Hofstadter’s critique of American antiintellectualism should be integrated with Adorno’s conception of the culture industrytorenderamorevividportraitofthewaysinwhichadministrationand scientific management shaped the emerging education and testing industries of the mid-twentieth century. For Hofstadter, a starkly utilitarian and American vision of knowledge reveals itself in periodic hostile attacks on the educational system, which is then subject to the efforts of wide-ranging and often radical reformism.1 Hofstadter ’s work isolated a singularly American configuration of ideas regarding education:suspicionorresentmentofintellectualendeavorswasaccompanied by a “faith in popular education” as a means of resolving social contradictions and meeting social needs. He saw the politicization of education in its embrace of what he saw as populist-Progressive as indulging in a particularly American brand of reactionary anti-intellectualism that plagued the American body politic . In Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Hofstadter remarked that despite their suspicion of book learning, Americans were remarkably confident that education could improve society and that massive reorganizations of curricula in the name of relevance and utilitarianism would make both teachers and students better individuals in the most amplified, expressive sense of that term; that is, they would be more aware of who they are and where they come from. They would acquire the sensitivity and consciousness to be tolerant of difference and to recognize in others a magnificent diversity. It was assumed that students of Progressive education would learn to be better citizens and better critics, c h a p t e r o n e 2 0 and they would acquire a kind of hard-won sensitivity that they would want to transmit to their benighted peers. Just as they would not tolerate injustice or violence, so it was imagined that they would organically become curious about and respectful of the arts. All interest was alleged to originate in the students themselves: the school was a place that merely responded to the spontaneous set of passions that each student brought to bear on the materials offered. Instead of joining the chorus singing the praises of this antiauthoritarian reorientation of the teaching process, Hofstadter pointed out that educational reformsseemedtoleadtoanembedded,institutionalizedanti-intellectualism. Progressive policies inevitably and wrongheadedly subordinated education to “life.” Based on the preceding critique of Progressive education and its goals, Hofstadter would argue that the Progressive Era reforms actually produced many of the problems within American schools and universities. He concluded that the tenets of progressive education supported the introduction of an antiintellectual , pragmatic business ethos into the administration of mass education . Like his colleague Daniel Bell, Hofstadter sought to defend the values of liberal education and critical negativity in his historical study of anti-intellectualism . Both Hofstadter and Adorno saw critical thinking and intellectual life as increasingly besieged, but Hofstadter did not blame the excesses or simplification of mass culture for the poverty of twentieth-century intellectual life; instead, he fingered hubristic educational reformers and administrators for betraying the values of education itself. It is not easy to grasp the broad outlines of a history of educational reform and administration in the United States. When the first shocks of an economic and social crisis reach American schools, educators and administrators respond by promoting urgently needed innovations, reconfigurations, and cutbacks in order to increase efficiency. In the twenty-first century, educational reforms , imposed by the force of social and economic pressures, result in cuts in resources but are justified by demands for accountability. These perpetual calls for reform in the name of efficiency and accountability in fact disguise the ways in which these two tenets had already taken hold in the mind of administrators who adopted them as the watchwords by which...

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