Ignorance, or the study of ignorance, is having a moment. Ignorance plays a powerful role in shaping public opinion, channeling our politics, and even directing scholarly research. The first collection of essays to grapple with the historical interplay between education and ignorance, Miseducation finds ignoranceand its social production through naïveté, passivity, and active agencyat the center of many pivotal historical developments. Ignorance allowed Americans to maintain the institution of slavery, Nazis to promote ideas of race that fomented genocide in the 1930s, and tobacco companies to downplay the dangers of cigarettes. Today, ignorance enables some to deny the fossil record and others to ignore climate science.
A. J. Angulo brings together twelve experts from across the scholarly spectrum to explore how intentional ignorance seeps into formal education. Each chapter identifies education as a critical site for advancing our still-limited understanding of what exactly ignorance is, where it comes from, and how it is diffused, maintained, and regulated in society.
Miseducation also challenges the notion that schools are, ideally, unimpeachable sites of knowledge production, access, and equity. By investigating how laws, myths, national aspirations, and global relations have recast and, at times, distorted the key purposes of education, this pathbreaking book sheds light on the role of ignorance in shaping ideas, public opinion, and policy.
Edited by A. J. Angulo
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date:
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 384
Ignorance 1 A. J. Angulo PART I: Legalizing Ignorance 1 Slavery 13 Kim Tolley 2 Sex 34 Jennifer Burek Pierce and Matt Pierce 3 Sexuality 52 Karen Graves 4 Evolution 73 Adam R. Shapiro 5 Environment 96 Kevin C. Elliott PART II: Mythologizing Ignorance 6 Class 123 Daniel Perlstein 7 Identity 140 Eileen H. Tamura 8 Religion 161 Adam Laats 9 History 184 Donald Warren PART III: Nationalizing and Globalizing Ignorance 10 US 217 Lisa Jarvinen 11 Germany 244 Lisa Pine 12 USSR 268 E. Thomas Ewing 13 Israel 295 Soli Vered and Daniel Bar- Tal 14 China 319 Dongping Han and Stephen Samuel Smith Refl ections 339 A. J. Angulo Acknowledgments 351 Contributors 355 Index 363
