Elitism

I am going to link to an editorial that is not like what we normally link to here, but it is on a favorite topic of mine, one that I have written about here before (here, here, here, and here), in order to continue asking a question and perhaps to challenge our faith as librarians. Mark Morfords has a column in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle about elitism, in a positive sense, titled, 37 Percent of People Completely Lost. Morfords is asking the uncomfortable question about how a democracy can function when the population is, as measured by surveys, shockingly ignorant and determined to stay that way. He further suggests that providing more and better facts to the ignorant multitudes has not worked and is not going to work, which challenges the faith of librarians who see our mission as supporting the foundations of democracy through information. What do you think?