Hey there comrades, there is a very worrying trend that I have noticed in recent years in Australia and I have noticed that it has been growing since the early 2000's.

It seems as if there has been a rising sentiment of anti-intellectualism, particularly towards tertiary education. It used to be rare or at the very least "weird" for somebody to discourage members of society from attending university. I am not sure whether this is a side effect of the ever-increasing costs of attending, or if it is something unrelated. However, I find it quite puzzling and am sometimes unsure how to combat this. It used to be that it was the norm for people to attend - if not after secondary, then later on in their life (I notice quite a lot of mature age students these days doing thing) - but it was never really considered as something to be unconditionally ruled out or worthless. Many I know still had the goal to attend tertiary (this includes technical colleges/TAFE/etc) education even if the field they wished to work in was totally unrelated to academia.

I am unsure if this is isolated to Australia however. I currently live in the Philippines and the situation here lies in stark contrast - many do not attend simply because they are unable to, due to the lack of public funding - HOWEVER, the majority of them would definitely attend without a doubt if they were able to do so. There seems to be a rising apathy towards it these days in Australia though, and this worries me greatly. With rising costs it is still feasible for poor motherfuckers like me to attend and do well if you cut corners like crazy..never buy any textbooks of any kind for example.. I need that shit to buy food.. but I digress.

What do you think of this trend? Does it worry you as much as it does me? Or am I misplacing my worries entirely here?

How does this anti-intellectualism manifest itself, typically?

It is more of a social trend resulting in a hostile attitude towards education.

I don't understand it myself, but I suspect the fact that unless you're loaded you have to scrimp and save and cut corners probably doesn't help matters. If school education is lacklustre or outright crap, that could turn people off learning and education. Young kids are intensely curious but it seems that these days school completely crushes any learning instinct they might have had.

You could also be importing your cultural anti-intellectualism from the US, where it's a cruel old joke that the stupid jock with rich parents can get away with almost anything.

I must say that I intensely dislike all varieties of anti-intellectualism.

Anti-intellectualism is a part of British culture too. The right-wing tabloids often push pseudoscience and pseudomedicine while denigrating empirical science and technology. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express are both examples of this, they find the "over-educated" to be threatening.

I think the importing of US culture in those terms is probably one of the main factors, as the US is now the main source of cultural imports in Australia these days. The "class gap" in students could definitely be a contributing factor to this.

PM, I know exactly what you mean in the promotion of pseudoscience and pseudomedicine, that seems to be very common.. especially in the promotion of pseudomedicine. These are both very worrying trends to me.

This aggresive anti-intellectualism is a prominant feature of the American far-right. It's deeply embedded in the right wing base, the evangelicals, the "Tea Party" people, etc. (Not least because even a casual perusal would reveal that there is no historical or intellectual connection between this group and the American revolutionaries.)The memeplex has been mutating over time; from a hatred of leftist intellectuals, particularly among the faculty at prestigious universities (I wonder why that is???) which has overtime been degraded and mutated into a kneejerk hatred of intellectualism. This is the appeal of George W. Bush or Sarah Palin, they talk like 'reg'lar folks.'

I'm pretty sure this kind of populist rhetoric was also employed by Hitler. It's a narrative that involves the 'elites' who secretly conspire to ruin the lives of the 'regular people.'

The right needs to be anti-science because science doesn't support their cause. Emotional manipulation (propaganda) is their primary strategy.

What confounds me is that it's so obviously a fake populism. Thomas Frank wrote a fantastic book about it; "What's the Matter With Kansas?" You have these working class people spouting what sounds like populist rhetoric but is in actuality almost completely divorced from the populist tradition. They're, if anything, anti-union, against social spending, pro-corporate, anti-regulation., etc., etc. It's so absurd.

It's disturbing how transparent it is. We just had this special election here in Massachusetts, and it's really amazing, first, a republican senator cleaning up in Massachusetts, but that he took over Ted Kennedy's seat, it's just bizarre. (Hopefully, we'll get rid of him when the term is over.) The first line in this asshole's campaign ad was; "I'm Scott Brown, and this is my truck." What's really sad is a disturbing percentage of the electorate were like; "You had me at 'truck.'" Like that's all they need to know. Case closed. These people are living in a different reality.

This is why I advocate for a meritocracy - an ascent of volunteers selected for their utility within the framework of a given project - rather than a pure democracy. You could also call this Technocracy.

Even the Founding Fathers understood that meritocracy was the goal - it was thought that democracy would be the best way to achieve meritocracy. History has shown otherwise.

The final criteria for determining if someone is qualified for a job should be their skills and knowledge applicable to the job, not their popularity.

I think you misunderstand just what "populism" means. It means (or at least I understand it to mean) whatever is "popular" and gets one elected. This will obviously vary from time to time and place to place. That's not much basis for a "tradition".

Because of the disgusting state of the American education and political system, the sort of crap you decry is what is popular, and hence that is what populist politicians will pander to.

Populism isn't a principled political strategy - it's opportunism, pure and simple.

I meant 'populism' in the sense of historical American populist movements and leaders, like the labor movement, the New Deal, FDR, etc.

i think the anti-intellectualism of which yazman speaks stems from the centricism of working class communities towards vocational as opposed to academic work.

Certainly in my school, academia was discouraged in favour of lower skilled jobs. Socially, there is even an element of machismo involved, as if choosing education is somehow a percieved indication of your sexual orientation for which you should be ostracised in kind through pejoritive names and harassment.

Its a cultural phenomenon which is embedded as a tenent in the class system.