16.10.2022, Paris.
The Western elite is in deep intellectual decline, this applies to both European and American high society, said French historian Annie Lacroix-Riz in an interview with The Essence of Time newspaper.
“The situation today in France, and in the West in general, is in many ways similar to past pre-war periods – 1914 or 1939. And yet it is in some respects unprecedented … The unique is the degree of intellectual decline, I would say, in all strata of society, including the highest,” Lacroix-Riz notes.
Lacroix-Riz, a PhD in history and researcher of Western elites, advised to pay attention to the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), “the forge of the French elite“.
“The level of historical knowledge at [Sciences Po] is strictly zero. It is history without archives, without scientific and critical thinking. There remains the US elite, but it is also incomparable in quality to past periods. This can be called decay – the highest stage of decay of imperialism,” believes Lacroix-Riz.
According to the historian, the situation is even worse with public education: its level in the West has always been low, but in Europe it was slightly higher than in the USA. Now Europe has caught up with the US “by the degree of ignorance of the masses“.
“It’s funny, but Ukrainian pupils who went to French schools as refugees were somewhat taken aback by what is required of them here in, say, mathematics,” Lacroix-Riz notes.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
