Is it bad to be ignorant?

There's a unexpected post on this over at Philosophy Etc.

I say "unexpected" because I take the answer to be a very obvious "yes", but Richard appears to support the alternative view. I suspect I'm misreading, because I can't imagine Richard rejects what I write below. Indeed, in a sense Richard says what I do here. But then the worry is that he also makes remarks to the reverse, and so I'm lost as to what the overall claim is.

"I'm not convinced that any one of them is vital for ordinary people living ordinary lives. Why would it be "necessary" for average Joe to know the location of Iraq? He's not the one making decisions over there.

As Brandon says, we are all ignorant of a great many things. [...] there are so many things to be learnt, we cannot hope to pursue every one of them. Further, some opportunities for learning will excite us more than others. So, given limited time and resources, it doesn't seem so inappropriate for one to simply disregard some fields as not one's concern."

A lot hangs on "vital" and "necessary" in the first paragraph, but I take it to be true that knowledge has value even when it isn't instrumental. As I see it, it's good to be informed period, not just because of whatever further effects that knowledge might have. Half of the merit of philosophy is the way in which it satisfies mere curiosity. It seems to me that curiousity is the appropriate attitude to interesting but pragmatically unimportant questions.

It is also obviouly true that we are all ignorant of many things. But some are less ignorant than others, and it's better to be less ignorant than more ignorant. So I don't see an objection there to the idea that ignorance is bad.

Finally, of course, one can disregard some fields to some extent due to limited time ("an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less"). But it's also obviously true that (a) most fields relate, so that a lack of knowledge in one has a negative impact on your understanding everywhere else, (b) that lack of knowledge about, say whether the universe is geocentric or not, or where Iraq is, is bound to have a negative impact on your understanding of related issues. Your worldview is going to be vastly affected if you still think that the universe revolves around the earth. Galileo was not a mere scientist; he was a revolutionary!

As I say, Richard hints as these points in the post. But then what is it that's supposed to be ok about ignorance?

(Of course, blame for ignorance isn't always appropriate. People who have had a poor education are victims and not wrongdoers. It's also obviously true that intellectual arrogance is both common and misplaced. But the arrogance of people with an education is not a reason to be ignorant, it's a reason not to be arrogant.)