A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from "American Idol," appearing on the Fox game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography cur-riculum, the $25,000 question asked: "Budapest is the capital of what Eu-ropean country" Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. "I thought Eu-rope was a country," she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. "Hungry" she said, eyes widening in disbelief. "That's a country I've heard of Turkey. But Hungry I've never heard of it."

YouTube上有一段很受歡迎的影片，片中「美國偶像」滿頭淡金髮、人見人愛的少女凱莉．皮可樂上福斯電視台名人周競賽節目「你比小五學生聰明嗎？」考題出自小三地理課，獎金兩萬五千美元，題目是：「布達佩斯是歐洲哪一國首都？」皮克樂兩手一攤，看著大黑板，滿臉困惑說：「我還以為歐洲是個國家。」為了安全起見，她選擇一位真正五年級同學所提供的答案：匈牙利。「很饑餓（hungry）？（與匈牙利Hungary音近，少個a）」她半信半疑，瞪大眼睛說。「那是國名嗎我只聽過土耳其（火雞），還真沒聽過饑餓。」

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason," up a wall. Ja-coby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.

喔，就是這類對世界缺乏認識的事實，逼使《美國非理性的年代》作者蘇珊．賈可比快瘋掉，而賈可比只是無數出新書哀嘆美國文化現況的作家之一。

Jacoby, whose book came out re-cently, doesn't zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge. She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. "I expect to get bashed," said Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.

賈可比的書最近才出版，它並未針對某一特定科技或情緒，而是把矛頭對準她覺得普遍對知識的敵意。她很清楚，有人可能給她貼上瘋子的標籤。62歲的賈可比說，「我已料準要被圍剿。」不管是被批倚老賣老，訓斥年輕人水平和價值觀低落，或世俗主義者藉由為科學理性主義辯護來詆毀宗教。

Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.

但賈可比很快指出，她的控訴不受年齡和意識形態限制。沒錯，她早就知道，那些自以為有學問的人、笨蛋、書呆子、嬉皮、知識分子、自認文化修養高人一等和自稱無所不知的人在美國歷史上早已遭人嘲諷鄙夷；何況自由派和保守派作家，從霍夫斯達德到艾倫．布魯姆都經常分析這種現象並提出建言。

But now, Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellec-tualism (the attitude that "too much learning can be a dangerous thing") and anti-rationalism ("the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion") have fused in a particularly insidious way.

但今天，賈可比指出，已出現一些不同的發展：反對知識的追求（抱持「知道太多是危險的事」的態度）及反理性主義（「那種沒有所謂證據或事實，而只有意見的看法」）已經以某種暗中蔓延的方式結合。

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don't think it matters.

她表示，不只一般百姓對基本的科學、公民和文化知識一無所知，而且他們認為無所謂。

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don't think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are lo-cated. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

她援引2006年「國家地理」雜誌的民調發現，18到24歲受訪者近半認為，不需要知道發生新聞事件的國家的地理位置，也無關緊要。因此，伊拉克戰爭打了三年多，只有23%受過一些大學教育的人可以在地圖上指認伊拉克、伊朗、沙烏地阿拉伯和以色列的位置。

Jacoby, the author of seven other books, was a fellow at the New York Public Library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11. Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she qui-etly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day's horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

另外出了七本書的賈可比是在2001年9/11恐怖攻擊當天第一次發想要出這本書，當時她是紐約公共圖書館研究員。當天驚魂未定、心煩意亂走回位於紐約上東城的公寓時，她到一家酒吧，一邊啜飲雞尾酒「血腥瑪麗」，一邊默默聽兩個西裝筆挺的男人交談。起先她還以為他們要把當天的恐怖攻擊事件和1941年日本轟炸〔珍珠港〕，把美國打進二次大戰的事件相提並論：

"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of the men said. The other asked, "What is Pearl Harbor" "That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied. At that moment, Jacoby said, "I decided to write this book."

其中一名男子說：「這就像珍珠港事件。」另一人問道：「什麼是珍珠港？」第一位男士回答說：「那就是越南到一個港口投彈，結果引起越戰。」 賈可比說，就在那一刻，「我決定寫這本書。」

Jacoby doesn't expect to revolu-tionize the nation's educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off "American Idol" and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vul-nerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, "the empire of infotainment doesn't stop at the American border," she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.

賈可比無意發動美國教育制度革命，也無意要求數以百萬計的美國人關掉「美國偶像」節目，改看德國哲學家叔本華的著作，但她希望啟動對話，探討美國為什麼似乎特別容易受這種反知識的敵對趨勢傷害。畢竟，「娛樂資訊王國不只限於美國，」她說，但很多其他國家的學生在科學、數學和閱讀比較測驗上表現一直優於美國。

In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. "Although people are going to school more and more years, there's no evidence that they know more," she said.

她認為，一部分要歸咎於失敗的教育體制。「雖然人們上學的年分拉長，但證據顯示，他們並未因而增長見聞，」她說。

（取材自紐約時報）