In the United States, the notion of schooling as the road to success has always been balanced by a pervasive distrust of education. This phenomenon, known as “American anti-intellectualism,” grew out of the first settlers’ suspicion of anything that reminded them of the “corrupting” influences of European sophistication. American anti-intellectualism often shows up most vividly in pop-cultural portrayals of school, students, and educators. It also emerges in recent attacks on the value of formal schooling and the college degree. Working in groups, survey recent portrayals of school on television, in films, and on Internet blogs and Web sites. How is schooling treated in the mass media and by popular bloggers on the left and the right of the political spectrum? Overall, how powerful does anti-intellectualism seem to be in American culture today?