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"Expert Knowledge" vs. Wisdom By Katherine Kersten
Yet when "experts" begin to encroach on, or even preempt, our fundamental human bonds -- that of parent and child, for example -- we suspect that our tendency to defer has gone too far. Recently, I saw a small, but telling, example of this trend. At a meeting in a school auditorium, I noticed a poster addressed to students. "Having problems with school?" it read. "Tell an adult you trust -- your guidance counselor, your school psychologist or your school nurse." Then, almost as an afterthought, it added, "or your parents." Increasingly, our society seems to assume that experts of various kinds are in a better position than parents to know what's best for children. Some parents, of course, fall seriously short in their responsibilities. But often -- in matters like sex education, for example -- it's not just that we're afraid parents won't do the job themselves. It's that we don't trust them to do it as experts say they should. Paradoxically, the deference we accord experts may be contributing to parents' diminished expectations of themselves, and undermining their confidence and sense of authority. Many parents, we're discovering, are all too willing to cede control and responsibility to the professionals we tell them know better than they. Why does our society hold parents in such low esteem? Surprisingly, the roots of this phenomenon go back over one hundred years. During the Progressive Era -- roughly 1880 to 1920 -- our nation changed from a predominately agricultural, to an urban, industrial society. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, many reformers came to believe that science, and "scientific management," held the key to progress. In spheres as diverse as factory organization and child-rearing, they championed rational planning by highly trained experts, with efficiency and standardization as main goals. The Progressive movement produced a host of benefits, but it had a downside. For many progressives tended -- almost unconsciously -- to view average citizens as ignorant and incompetent. Among reformers, historian Glenna Matthews has observed, "a sincere desire to improve social conditions often co-existed with contempt for ordinary people -- workers, housewives, immigrants. This explains the appeal to the expert and the desire to apply 'scientific' knowledge to areas of life that had hitherto been areas of common sense." Progressives made the reform of child-rearing and education a top priority. The influence of Darwin led many to believe that the family -- the oldest human institution -- was, by definition, hopelessly primitive, and required intervention by authoritative experts if it was to cease to be an obstacle to progress. The "science" of home economics was founded in 1899 to spearhead this reform. Rejecting the reigning, spiritually-charged vision of the home as "a haven in a heartless world," home economists sought to rationalize household processes by applying scientific principles, setting standards, and promoting efficiency -- even developing "scientific" rules for tasks as trivial as removing work from a sewing basket. Home economists made many valuable contributions, particularly in hygiene. Yet, as Matthews notes, "to establish their own profession as worthy" they needed to "denigrate the quality of housewifely competence." In a variety of forums -- from women's magazines to public schools -- home economists sought "to destroy mothers' faith in their own judgment and tradition." Housewives, wrote one, needed expert guidance to cook, clean or care for their families properly because "[there is a] blank wall between women and true progress erected chiefly by their own hands...." The Progressive era also saw the rise of the field of child development. In 1915, the federal government -- anxious to get the latest scientific information into parents' hands -- published a pamphlet entitled "Infant Care." The pamphlet, which enjoyed an enormous circulation, urged parents to follow expert advice, rather than trusting their own natural inclinations. Babies should be fed, bathed and put down to sleep on a rigid schedule, and parents should refuse to pick them up if they cried. Toilet training should begin at three months, and parents should not tolerate pacifiers and thumb-sucking -- pinning babies' sleeves closed, if necessary. Many progressives placed their greatest hopes for reform in "scientific schooling." According to historian Lawrence Cremin, they sought to design schools that would "correct" family "miseducation" and "compensate for its shortcomings." Using a host of tools -- revamped curricula, new teaching methods, and extensive testing and counseling -- these progressive educators aimed to "liberate youngsters from conformity to the traditional and familiar and nurture ... a devotion to 'science as the basis of intelligence.'" The result, they anticipated, would be "limitless" progress. In retrospect, progressives' faith in experts appears exaggerated. (As one child development professional put it later, "I [see now] that those Italian women knew what a baby needed far better than my Ann Arbor professor did.") Progressives forgot that -- in child-rearing, as in many areas of life -- "expert" advice alone is insufficient. It cannot replace the common sense, moral judgment, and knowledge of human strengths and weaknesses that are the fruit, not of graduate training, but of life experience. Experts -- insofar as they claim scientific status -- deal in objective laws and processes. But human life, and human nature, are far too complex to be captured by scientific models, or reformed by "rational" plans. Science cannot speak to the moral or spiritual questions that give human life its dignity. It cannot tell us what is good or evil, just or unjust, or how best to order our lives. In these matters, we must be guided by the wisdom and spiritual traditions that preceding generations have bequeathed to us. Faith in the common sense and moral judgment of ordinary people is the rock on which the United States was founded. We can't all be experts. But, as democratic citizens, we are called to judge among the oft-conflicting proposals that experts set before us. Experts have contributed much of what makes modern life so rich and secure, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude. But we must not forget that expert knowledge, and wisdom, are two very different things. -- Katherine Kersten is chairman of Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis and a commentator for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." |