These are two sides of a dialog I've listened to, and sometimes been in, in many places around the world. Sometimes it helps to define "ignorance" precisely, as conscious deprivation of learning. Someone who is ignorant in this sense knows that she is illiterate, and wants to learn to read, for example. Some people also know that in addition to being deprived of learning they are intelligent: they are conscious of having minds that want to grow and are being starved.

Intentional ignorance, persistence in not wanting to learn, could by this approach be called "stupidity," but that produces judgmentality that isn't desirable.

It is correct that many people given opportunities to learn will be easily distracted by activity that substitutes for learning. Probably this trait is expressed in the preponderant majority of humankind. Every human being can learn, some better than others. But a few human beings enjoy learning particularly, are markedly good at some aspects of learning, and are determined not to be deprived. Exposing those people to anything they want to learn without regard to their economic or social circumstances will alter the social life of the rest of humankind, notwithstanding the ratio of such learners and thinkers, because culture immensely amplifies their value to the rest of humanity, as it has been doing since the onset of complex articulate speech, probably some 200,000 years ago.

I think the dialog is a useful stage in forming a different thought, by explaining two aspects of a complex phenomenon. I think the next draft here should be very much improved by going through, and perhaps coming out the other end, of the apparent opposition.