Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Anti-intellectualism/archive1

Anti-intellectualism

 * Created fac from archive.

This is an excellent article about a fascinating subject. It's not beyond all POV problems, I'm afraid. Still, this has surely become one of the best articles I've ever read on here. Weasel
 * Object. This needs a history of anti-intellectualism from at least as far back as classical Greece. It does not need to begin with a section on America. What on earth does being a politically homogenous society got to do with the subject? Do you imagine that there is no anti-intellectualism in Europe or Asia? And an article with a section called Anti-intellectualism in other countries that reads:


 * There are, no doubt, many instances of anti-intellectualism and anti-intellectual subcultures in many other countries. People knowledgeable about these may want to add them to this article.


 * is nowhere near ready. Send to WP:PR Filiocht 14:54, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Object. For exactly the same reason as Filiocht wrote.  Revth 15:03, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Object. Certainly Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche belong here. Ejrrjs 17:41, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Object. Not close enough for FAC to be useful.  +sj +  20:14, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * it does not need to begin with a section on America... This was surely done because there exists quite a strong correlation. I didn't contribute to the article, I just thought it was very clear prose with a sound and rather fascinating line of thought. The state philosophies of all Communist countries are mentioned as European anti-intellectualism (the GDR leadership was proud to be "plain folks in a country of plain folks"), which (boldly stated) in most of Western Europe doesn't exist on such a scale as in the US (I don't have anything against the hands-on approach!). The article contains all that. I don't know about most of Asia, but the article does mention Cambodia etc.
 * What on earth does being a politically homogenous society got to do with the subject? Aaah, don't be nitpicking! :-) Fair enough, I didn't see that. But it's just one sentence.

Weasel (quarter past five UTC, frivolous, but I forgot how to do the timestamp)
 * Object. The lead is okay, but the whole article is poorly organized.  Specifics on anti-intellectualism in different regions of the world should follow the more in-depth points on the causes of anti-intellectualism.  Fairly substantial editing still needs to be done, even after the reorganization; for instance, it's a sprawling article with a lot of hypothetical wordings like "it would be said" or "the pro-Israel side would probably respond."  I would probably say, if I were asked, that this sounds like a high school essay. - Karl Ward 22:04, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I was considering (self)-nominating this one myself. (Even found some pictures).  Then the interesting sections about Russia and Cambodia were added, and I tend to agree now that more could be done.  OTOH, prominently featuring the USA makes sense here, if only because American anti-intellectualism has international political consequences.  Smerdis of Tlön 19:11, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * So did anti-intellectualism in, for instance, the British Empire and Nazi Germany. It didn't do Socrates much good either. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a newspaper and needs to look beyond the here and now. Filiocht 13:26, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Object. The stuff about China and Cambodia is grossly distorted, and this not the place to discuss it; it cannot be treated adequately in this article. The article suffers greatly from undefended opinions ("societies in Europe and Asia are much more politically homogeneous"&mdash;what is this supposed to mean?). Ditto most of the stuff on the USSR: it's mere opinion, and not very good opinion at that. What basis is there for asserting that the Soviet Union, which by the 1930s had dramatically improved literacy in all areas of the country (even to the point of creating writing systems for dozens of unwritten languages) and instituted public education that compared favourably to that of many Western countries, had a "policy … to maintain a spirit of anti-intellectualism"? There is only one reference (admittedly a good one), but it is to a book on anti-intellectualism in the US.
 * I would also like to see "America" changed to "the United States". Much more information is needed on contemporary anti-intellectualism in the US.
 * Better organisation would help. What exactly does anti-intellectualism oppose? At many points, the article seems to equate intellectualism with the possession of university degrees&mdash;an equation I certainly would not draw. What about the general social hostility, most notably in the US (a veritable cesspool of anti-intellectualism), towards anyone with a thought of his own to his name? That's what anti-intellectualism means to me, yet it's hardly even discussed. Shorne 03:14, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)