What is the point of a ranking of how happy the various countries of the world are? I ask myself this question on March 20, the tenth World Day of Happiness established by the United Nations.
“Let’s take a normal school day,” writes UNICEF on its website. “Across classrooms around the world, more than 1 billion children will walk through the door. This is the highest number in history: humanity has never seen so many children and young people accessing education. And yet, a decent quality education is still a distant goal for many of them. The lack of qualified teachers, inadequate learning materials, makeshift classrooms, and poor sanitation facilities make learning very difficult for children. Others arrive at school too hungry, sick, tired from work, or burdened by domestic chores to benefit from the lessons.”
Children and Education Issues
“The consequences are severe,” continues UNICEF. “617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not able to reach minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics, even though two-thirds of them attend school. Even worse, 58 million children remain without access to primary education, most of whom belong to marginalized groups. Socioeconomic conditions therefore strongly influence the likelihood of attending and completing primary education, with 1 in 4 children in the poorest countries not accessing it at all.”
Children and young people are excluded from education for many reasons. Children from the poorest families, for example, are much more likely to be excluded from education than wealthier ones. Living in rural areas, belonging to ethnic minorities, having a disability, or simply being female are factors that often result in being left behind at school.
The State of Education in Italy
In Italy, ISTAT data tells us that in 2021 we saw a slowdown both in high school graduates and in those obtaining tertiary qualifications. Moreover, we continue to have the lowest number—compared to the European average—of people who pursue education beyond middle school. There is also the discouraging certainty that one out of two students finishes school without even acquiring basic skills! In this context, we must also consider the budget cuts to education that have been taking place since 2008, with funding levels consistently below the European average, along with the gradual loss of the central role that personal development and education historically held—making way for a widespread ignorance.
Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance
According to Robert Proctor, American science historian, professor of the history of science at Stanford University, and author of *Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance* (2008), there are three types of ignorance: native ignorance, selective ignorance, and induced ignorance. The first arises from a simple lack of knowledge; the second occurs when we choose, due to lack of interest or time, not to inform ourselves or delve into a topic; while the third is “a deliberate manufacturing of doubt aimed at sowing fear and mistrust toward scientific knowledge.”
In his view, we are living in a ‘golden age of ignorance,’ one that is deliberately manufactured by powerful forces to keep us in the dark. Among the clearest examples of manufactured ignorance, Proctor cites the enormous influence of organized economic groups—such as major cigarette producers, the oil industry, and large companies selling sugary drinks—that spread misleading information in society.
But beyond industrial lobbies capable of steering public opinion by disseminating falsified data, another major driver of induced ignorance is a certain kind of political propaganda, which distorts reality and manipulates facts in order to gain support.
Robert Proctor’s View on Misinformation
“To counter the spread of misinformation,” Proctor argues, “we must recognize that induced ignorance is a reality from which we must urgently protect ourselves—by relying on trustworthy sources, always referring to reliable and never approximate data, and learning to distinguish truth from lies. To do so, it is essential to invest energy, time, and above all, more resources in education and the development of critical thinking, because building a solid foundation of knowledge is essential to navigating the multitude of stimuli and information we receive every day.”
The sharp call to action we derive from Professor Proctor’s theses is that if historically philosophers have concerned themselves with knowledge, today it is more urgent than ever to focus on ignorance, and agnotology (from the Greek agnosis) is precisely aimed at defining the science of ignorance—the history of ignorance, the politics of ignorance, and especially the systems by which ignorance is produced.
