The Right to an Opinion Or How Education Carefully Cultivates the Dunning-Kruger Effect

There is a psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Put very simply, people with low levels of competence tend to overestimate their own competence. In other words, the less a person knows, the more confidently they speak. 

Once upon a time, this was considered an unfortunate defect of human nature, otherwise known as stupidity. Today, the Dunning-Kruger effect has become an educational objective.

The modern education system, especially in the humanities, proudly announces that it no longer focuses on “memorising facts.” Now, it develops “critical thinking,” “personal opinion,” and “analytical skills.” It sounds great, provided one does not ask inconvenient questions. Such as: analyse what, exactly? And on the basis of how much information?

Knowledge itself has somehow gone out of fashion. It is now treated as something suspiciously old-fashioned. Almost embarrassing. Why remember history when there is Google? Why study literary movements, philosophical schools, or historical context when one can simply “express an opinion” based on a short extract from a primary source? 

From their early age, the modern students are trained to embrace a remarkable idea: an opinion possesses value in and of itself, even if it is based on three textbook paragraphs and one YouTube video. Furthermore, doubting one’s own opinion is now considered almost improper. After all, it is “your truth.” And truth, as we are constantly told, is different for everyone, including those who have never read beyond the summary or the headline.

This cult of opinion reveals itself most vividly in humanities programmes. School history, literature and psychology courses are the farms, where confident ignoramuses are being produced. Here one can always say, “That’s just how I see it.” And should a teacher dare to disagree, they are immediately accused of authoritarianism, elitism, and perhaps even psychological or emotional oppression.

Students are asked to write essays on extraordinarily complex subjects requiring an understanding of historical context, philosophy, literary tradition, character psychology, political processes, and a dozen other interconnected areas of knowledge. Conveniently, those very areas of knowledge are quietly removed from the curriculum. Because the syllabus “cannot possibly cover everything.”

And besides, why burden children with facts when we can simply teach them to “reason”?

The result is a truly remarkable situation: children are taught to form opinions based on minimal knowledge. Never mind that knowledge is the very fuel that makes thought possible. Without it, thinking quickly degenerates into an imitation of thought - elegant verbal juggling devoid of depth or understanding.

Particularly touching is the argument: “But today any information can be found online or asked from AI.” Of course it can. There is only one small PROBLEM: it is impossible to want to find out something whose existence you do not even suspect.

A person without conceptual knowledge cannot see the gaps in their own worldview and they do not know which questions to pose to the same Google or ChatGPT. They do not understand what it is they fail to understand. They do to know what they do not now. And that is precisely the perfect foundation for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

But the climax of this educational theatre of the absurd arrives during examinations. Take, for example, a question from the 2024 IB Russian Language A exam on The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov:

“Analyse the extent to which the portrayal of the relationship between Ranevskaya and Lopakhin is successful in this play.”

MAGNIFICENT! I want to see the eyes of those writing such exam questions. 

An eighteen-year-old student is apparently expected to evaluate how “successfully” one of the greatest playwrights in world literature executed his artistic vision in one of the most celebrated works of the theatrical canon. Why stop there? Why not also ask a biology student to assess the quality of a neurosurgical operation after watching a few YouTube videos?

The democracy of opinions ought to be consistent. Correct me if I am wrong.

To any reasonable person, it is obvious that answering such a question even remotely adequately would require reading a substantial body of Chekhov’s works and those of other playwrights, understanding the development of theatre, literary history, realism, symbolism, dramatic structure, the cultural and historical context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia, and much more besides.

Most eighteen-year-olds neither possess nor can reasonably possess such knowledge. And that is perfectly normal. Eighteen is a wonderful age for learning but it is not an appropriate age for delivering expert verdicts on the artistic achievement of Chekhov or Shakespeare, for that matter.

Yet the modern educational model stubbornly insists otherwise: you are already competent; your evaluation has the right to exist; the important thing is to argue confidently. Even when there is way too little to support the argument.

This is how not critical thinking but the self-confidence of ignorance is cultivated. Humanities students are taught that “there is no such thing as a wrong opinion,” which is a plain lie. Wrong opinions exist constantly and everywhere. Humanity has, in fact, built an impressive portfolio of its historical catastrophes upon the wrong opinions of people who poorly understood the subjects they were discussing and acting upon. For example, the 1917 October Revolution in Russia was organised by intelligentsia to improve the lives of proletariat, about whom that intelligentsia, frankly, did not know very much. 

If a person lacks historical knowledge, theoretical understanding, and contextual awareness, then the probability that they will speak utter nonsense approaches absolute certainty. Modern culture, however, teaches the youth to do so confidently. Because confidence and feeling good about oneself is valued higher than competence nowadays.

And so these graduates enter adult life. Then, they go onto social media and begin pronouncing with absolute certainty on the structure of society and ways of life in Russia, China, Iran, Palestine, or Korea without the knowledge of the history, culture, language, or political context of any of those states. Their opinions usually come from headlines, memes, and fragments of propaganda carefully selected by algorithms to impose beliefs planned by the creators of those headlines and memes.

And the most beautiful part is this: such people are now the majority, because, for decades, the system has taught them that having an opinion is their inalienable right, while supporting it with knowledge is optional.

When an expert who has devoted years to studying a subject encounters thousands of confident amateurs in the public sphere, they naturally begin to feel an overwhelming desire to hang themselves. Though perhaps, of course, they merely lack the skills of “democratic dialogue” - skills they had neither the time nor the inclination to develop.