Mohamed Naiem, ENGL 213 / B

rough draft of the essay 01.

Postman, Neil. “The Educationist as Painkiller.” The Neil Postman Information Page.
Joshua Sowin, n.d. Web. 13 sep. 2010.

In the ‘The Educationist as Painkiller’, Postman argues that educationists should stop trying to
make students highly intelligent, and they rather should start to serve as’ painkillers’ to the
sickness of imbecility if they want to be respected and effective in their tasks.

In a first part of his essay, Postman noticed that academics show disrespect for educationists,
which sounds odd since the most renowned philosopher in history were educationists. Plato,
Rousseau, Lock, and others discussed extensively how learning occurs and which methods are
helpful to achieve it. Also, many great thinkers of the contemporary time, such as Karl Popper
or Ludwig Wittgenstein, were teachers and educationists. Why then, in the USA, is this
disrespect of education so omnipresent that students avoid to study in the education field?
You may think that studying in other subjects enables student to get financially rewarding
jobs, yet this is not the case for many other subjects widely chosen by students.

As academics claim, the reason why education is perceived in this poor way is that
educationists these days don’t have a solid knowledge of the work of great philosophers, such
as Plato, Rousseau, and Lock. However not all professors in other fields are knowledgeable
about the work of the prominent thinkers in these fields. In fact educationists, like other
scientists, show certain ignorance about the core of the subject they are in, yet only
educationists’ ignorance is stigmatized. That’s because education covers almost all kinds of
eras; it deals with the way you can develop intelligence in many disciplines. Then, for
educationists, to be perfectly knowledgeable, they should be of an unconventional wisdom.
That is why they should not claim having absolute knowledge of intelligence and ways to gain
it. Intelligence is far too vast to be understood only by education specialists.

To make a comparison, “physicians” don’t focus on how to make people reach the ideal
health conditions, but they serve like “painkillers” to the sick and attack sicknesses.
So, as Postman details, educators should give up their pointlessly pretentious effort to make
students highly smart; they rather should only assist them in not being dull. The writer may
appear to be using words cleverly, yet this usage is in no way deceiving. In fact, helping
students not to be dull is a realistic and achievable goal for “teachers”. To give additional
details about comparing teachers to “doctors”, the latter are “experts” on illnesses and can
provide precise instructions to prevent them, such as taking some particular medications. In
the same way, educators should become experts on imbecility and deliver effective actions
against it (4).

Imbecility, postman claims, comparatively to illness and ‘injustice’, has never been a subject
of a thorough and effective academic work. Nevertheless, it was the focus of some
distinguished works in the past. Confucius and Plato did ponder the question of imbecility in their
books the ‘Analects’ and the ‘Dialogues’ respectively. As another example’ Socrates demonstrated in
most of his works how wrong those who pretended to be scholars as to the verity. Other thinkers, such
as Erasmus, Jonathan Swift, Jacques Ellul, and Stephen Jay Gould also discussed the “subject” of
imbecility. They all agree upon three characteristics to it. First, every one may be imbecile and the
absolute wisdom is granted to no one, which may provide some consolation to educators (Postman 4-
5). Second, imbecility is a conduct (mostly talks), not a state. So we can fix it if we reform our
conduct. Therefore, the curricula should focus on recognizing imbecility to protect students
from it. In this light, Postman has identified some of its forms:

I do not claim to have been entirely successful, but I have been able to isolate
thirty-two varieties of stupid talk. These include some of the more obvious forms, such
as either-or thinking; overgeneralization; inability to distinguish between facts and
inferences; and reification, a disturbingly prevalent tendency to confuse words with
things. (Postman 6)

Then in a second part, the writer discusses some forms of ‘balderdash”, a word he prefers to
use instead of stupidity to make it less embarrassing for educationists to study stupidity. First,
he explains how pomposity, which consists of somewhat talking arrogantly, may make
student act in a careless way. Second, he points out that euphemism, an excessive politeness,
may be a misleading way to cover wrongness. For instance, President Nixon once declared
that “members of his campaign organization were guilty of an excess of zeal. This was the
first time . . . the word “zeal” has been used as a euphemism for illegal entry, stealing, briber”
(Postman 7). Euphemism then should not be tolerated or taught in order not to normalize
dishonest practices. Third he adds that another widely held practice is the usage of the word’
they’ to refer to a presumed doer of an action, which makes individuals not accountable for
anything that happens to them. Fourth, he notices that superstitions, which consist of
believing that some groups, by nature, are better than others, or that a tendency to study
literature can make students angels on earth. In this specific matter, Postman asserts that “men
with Ph.D.s in the humanities . . . working for the Pentagon, have been responsible for killing
more people in any given week than the Mafia has managed since its inception (Postman 9).

Finally, Postman claims that slogans, which are intended to prompt solidarity, may also
convey the message that only certain groups deserve more attention and care than the rest of
people.

In conclusion, in his essay, Postman notices the low esteem reserved to education and
educationists by academics. This disrespect is hard to explain since the most influential
thinkers in the human history, such as Plato, Lock, or Popper, were themselves educationists.
Academics argue that the reason why education is not respectfully considered is that
educators ignore much about education, their own speciality. However, this argument can’t
stand; professors in other areas are not perfectly scholars as to their area. The right reason,
according to postman, is that educators have assigned themselves an unreachable goal: to
make students intelligent. Intelligence is much too complex to be fully understood. In the
same way doctors attack illnesses, Postman recommend that educators should focus on how to
enable students to avert imbecility in all its figures, such as a pomposity, a deceptive
euphemism, a refusal of accountability, or slogans that promote discrimination.