There are reasons for the anti-intellectualism, the anti-science, the suspicion of the intellect and intelligence, and of education and knowledge in general.

Part of it is historical, we are a bourgeois society with a long tradition of hostility to an aristocracy (which in the eighteenth century meant formally educated). In America, the life of the intellect is viewed as elitist, effeminate, anti-democratic. It is considered arrogant and conceited to display any sign of intelligence, except when it comes to knowledge of business or sports.

The other part is practical. If education is a commodity, it can be controlled in both distribution and effect. And most important, it can be marketed. Have you noticed how just in the last few years an education has merely become the means by which you can get a good job. And once you have convinced the proles of that, they will pay,(or borrow), whatever they possibly can to get one.

The founders of this nation were highly educated men, they studied things like history, science, literature and the classics. But they worked as businessmen, soldiers, politicians and farmers. I wonder what Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin would have had to say about Johnson's theories on education. For that matter, I wonder what Ken Burns would have made of them.