In Defense of Anti-Intellectualism

By Adair Johnson ’27

Intellectualism, a term I define as an expansion of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of “devotion to the exercise of intellect or intellectual pursuits,” ultimately harms society by degrading the so-called common man in favor of a small elite group who chase education for its own sake instead of worldly applications. At Milton, we wrongly embrace intellectualism. As an alternative perspective opposing not necessarily the pursuit of intellect itself but rather this intellectual elitism, anti-intellectualism aims to champion the betterment of society as a whole through valuing and bettering the average member.

Although all intellectualism meets Merriam-Webster’s definition, it will also meet a different definition for the purposes of this article: a philosophy of superiority in dignity or merited respect on the basis of elite intellect, the traditional face of intelligence in higher education.

Of course, intellectualism has its merits in self-satisfaction, superficial goals of societal betterment, and general education. For example, the personal indulgence of reading a non-Euclidean geometry book, even as a practice cut off from a layperson’s understanding, allows one to satisfy their own intellectual wants and needs without somehow damaging another’s dignity.

Inherently, pursuing intellect doesn’t degrade or abandon less educated members of society; in fact, this education oftentimes leads to an improvement in conditions for the average person. Per the Entertainment Software Association, 61% of Americans aged five to ninety routinely play video games, almost all of which undoubtedly use non-Euclidean methods for computer graphics. We have 19th-century geometers Nikolai Lobachevsky and János Bolyai to thank for that.

Limited intellectualism, under only Merriam-Webster’s definition, applies beneficially in federal policy, which requires children to go to school. This general education vastly benefits the general population’s job opportunities, grows social understanding, and nurtures intelligence. However, general education relates little to our definition of intellectualism since the school system’s democratization of education goes against intellectualism’s fundamental idolization of elite intellect as that of the top members of society. Less educated people’s degraded dignity and respect stem from this elitism, which resides mainly in spaces of elite higher education like Milton Academy.

Intellectualism features two issues that come in close succession: first, a withdrawal from the general world, and second, a belief that intellectual pursuits tie into self-worth. To see this first symptom, one must not go far. Right here, in the thralls of The Milton Paper, you can see unnecessarily complex language. You can see this worrying separation from simple, comprehensible writing in this very article, where I clutch the yoke of my education in supposedly dignified language. Separating from the worldly common man usually manifests linguistically into what we call a mastery of the English language. We might speak half in Latin, as The Milton Paper’s editorials fancied last year, or proudly utter things like “Building onto that point, I’d like to add that this dichotomy represents a fascinating duality” at the Harkness Table. To some extent, that flowery uselessness constitutes the goal of our education: to interact with and operate as a part of an elite, intellectualist workforce, perhaps abstractly citing Q1 figures to high-standing executives or talking about geometric measure theory with similarly educated professors in academia. While this corporate intellectualism excludes those without an elite intellect from positions of power in the workforce, it can still regard the so-called common man as dignified and deserving of respect apart from and in other areas of the workforce. However, this first effect of separating from laypeople begins to build a foundation of superiority and thus warns of an almost inevitable and much more dangerous symptom: that of intellect-based self-worth.

When we marry our sense of self-worth to the elite intellect we’ve developed only through our privilege of attending an elite prep school, we view others as lesser-than. When we allow ourselves to fall under the enchantment of the intellectual arts’ siren calls by using Latin in everyday speech, promoting jargon in our news articles, or basing our friend groups off of knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry, we build an elite world—not just an elite workforce—that excludes those who have not had the same privilege of learning elite intellect.

We abandon our grandparents’ tongues, look at our neighbors with pitying eyes, and worship an education meaningless without application. After all, education serves the people, a statement we often forget. Although omnia dici possunt latine—(nearly) everything can be said in Latin—not everyone will understand it. We should write to inform people, use jargon only in spaces like the workforce where we need it, and make friends to build diverse understanding instead of an elite intellect bubble. When we ignore our neighbors and instead center ourselves entirely on the pursuit of higher knowledge, we intellectualize and isolate ourselves from the very community education should support.

Looking forward, we should adopt practices that The Milton Paper has luckily adopted lately: namely, writing editorials clearly and without using Latin so that everyone can understand them. Of course, writing academically—whether for history, English, or foreign language classes—does not necessitate this same clarity because classes reside in an academic, private space, while our social and journalism activities reside in non-academic, communal spaces. We should intentionally make friends with and without elite intellect and value non-elite intellect as intelligence stripped of its jargon. These traits might include fixing a car, playing a sport, or reading fantasy books.

In his graduation speech this past June, Rhys Adams ’26 cited a quote by German-Dutch Catholic writer Thomas à Kempis and written on Milton’s very own Straus: “If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith, and seek not at any time the fame of being learned.” We must view education not as an infinite tunnel of self-reflection but rather as a temporary pathway to true light: that of bettering the common man inside all of us, a goal that we cannot fulfill with our current elitist mindsets of intellectualism.