Don’t Let the Smugnorant Win!
There is hope, but you won’t find much in our education factories
Imagine a world that tolerates bad takes, bad arguments, and lazy thinking. I’d want to live in that world. You see, I’ve committed those offenses plenty of times, but so what?
Freewheeling cultures tolerate such lowly behavior, and for good reason. If we learn from our mistakes, being wrong helps us get closer to being right. As Socrates taught, being ignorant can be the first step toward being wise.
Now imagine a world where chronic bad takes, bad arguments, and lazy thinking weren’t just tolerated, but were rewarded. Well, I live in that world. And so do you.
Last week, I addressed the rise of the Smugnorant, the new breed of human that isn’t just relentlessly dumb and cocky, but is rewarded for it. In early human societies, being relentlessly dumb and cocky could get you eaten by a saber-toothed cat. Today it could get you social media adulation, maybe even a large cash reward.
Consider the charming Rollo sisters of northwestern Arkansas who, in the course of destroying a Charlie Kirk memorial, managed to pull off a shotgun blast of smugnorance. They demonstrated remarkable ignorance of Kirk, the First Amendment, fascism, grammar, and irony. Yet they pulled off their performance with such chutzpah that members of their tribe rewarded them with more than $24,000.
Depressing? Yes. But what if we could rewind the clock on the Rollo sisters?
What could be done to prevent them and others from falling into a life of smugnorance?
A mellow, baby-faced high school teacher offers an answer.
Preventing Smugnorance
In a casual exchange, Warren Smith speaks with an off-camera high schooler about J.K. Rowling. The student regards Rowling as a bigot and Smith asks why he thinks that.
“She has had a history of being extremely transphobic, I’ve heard.”
Smith asks him for a specific example, but the student can’t provide one. Smith waits as the student searches through Rowling’s social media feed for evidence.
The student returns with a post in which the Harry Potter author criticizes those who would force women out of their jobs for saying, “sex is real.”
“So you find that bigoted?” Smith asks.
“It was deemed transphobic,” says the student.
“Do you find that transphobic?”
“I don’t really have an opinion on that, but I’m just going with what a lot of other people have said.”
“Let’s not go with what other people are saying,” says Smith. “Let’s learn how to critically think.”
Smith remains gentle with his questioning, but keeps the student on point. Eventually, the student admits he doesn’t have any evidence against Rowling. He says he “feels like an idiot” because he had formed his opinion based on what some of his classmates had said.
But briefly feeling like an idiot opened the student up to much larger rewards. He became aware of his ignorance, and now has a much better shot of avoiding smugnorance.
But what about the Rollo sisters? Let’s imagine them in an exchange with Smith.
If Kerri repeated her contention that Charlie Kirk “lived as he died, supporting violence,” Smith would calmly ask her to support her claim with evidence. Kaylee Rollo has contended that her sister’s First Amendment rights were violated when Kerri’s boss fired her from her restaurant job after he discovered the video footage of the sisters trampling the Kirk memorial and disparaging the conservative activist’s reputation. Smith would likely ask her to explain her novel theory.
That’s what any professor at Thomas Aquinas College would ask as well.
Socrates to the Rescue
At TAC, classes are small. No more than 20 students sit at a round wooden table while a professor (referred to as the “tutor”) guides them in a Socratic discussion. Students read the great minds of Western Civilization, and know they must come to class prepared. If they haven’t done the assigned readings, they can’t hide in the back of a crowded lecture hall or tap AI to make themselves sound smart.
Here students explore ideas out in the open. If someone comes to class unprepared, everybody else will know. We all remember what it feels like to be on the spot and not know what we’re talking about. And we also remember the rush that comes with finally beginning to understand a difficult concept.
TAC students would likely be well versed in the First Amendment because each student must read the U.S. Constitution and various related works. They would ask the Rollo sisters to explain why they think they’re First Amendment martyrs. The Rollo sisters also seem to think they’re fighting fascism, but would they be able to define its key features? And could they compare themselves to Charlie Kirk, and show how he comes closer to exemplifying fascist Germany than they do?
In the environment created by TAC and Smith, the carrots and sticks of social pressure incentivize effort, self awareness, and eventually wisdom. It’s a world away from the environment that produces the Smugnorant, where social pressure goads people into flaunting their ignorance and arrogance.
But here’s the problem: Few young people will encounter the kind of environment created by Thomas Aquinas College or Warren Smith. TAC is a tiny Catholic college, and most colleges and universities avoid the Socratic method in favor of a factory approach to education. And as for Smith — well, after Elon Musk tweeted about his interaction, administrators fired the young teacher.
Blame Social Media?
Professor Duke Pesta inadvertently documented the rise of the Smugnorant. Over the years, he noticed that his incoming students devolved from ignorance to smugnorance. Instead of simply not knowing what they were talking about, students arrived on campus stridently committed to their baseless views.
If Pesta’s findings represent students in general, we can’t pin the rise of smugnorance on social media. Yes, social media exacerbates smugnorance, but Pesta noticed the shift in the early 2000s, long before social media became ubiquitous.
So what’s the source of smugnorance?
Consider a response to Kirk’s assassination from one Phillip Hook:
I don’t give a flying f*** about this Kirk person. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was. I’m sorry for his family that he was a hate spreading Nazi and got killed. I’m sure they deserved better.
In other words, Hook admits he doesn’t know who Charlie Kirk was, and yet he’s sure Kirk was a hate-spreading Nazi. Hook’s social media post is an unabashed piece of smugnorace, one that should be on display in a museum one day.
Like the Rollo sisters, Hook won’t let ignorance get in the way of a hot take. But unlike the Rollo sisters, Hook isn’t a wayward 20-something. He’s also not an Antifa goon or a social media shut in. He’s a tenured professor.
And unlike Warren Smith, Phillip Hook won’t get fired from his teaching job.
Think about that the next time someone tells you that more education will cure what ails America.
Logic is kryptonite for the smugnorant.
This is one of the saddest posts I've ever read.
Not at all surprising, but sad.