How the education gap is tearing politics apart
October 5, 2016 5:26 PM Subscribe
"The possibility that education has become a fundamental divide in democracy – with the educated on one side and the less educated on another – is an alarming prospect. It points to a deep alienation that cuts both ways. The less educated fear they are being governed by intellectual snobs who know nothing of their lives and experiences. The educated fear their fate may be decided by know-nothings who are ignorant of how the world really works. Bringing the two sides together is going to be very hard. The current election season appears to be doing the opposite." [SLGuardian]
I hope we can use this thread to discuss the larger themes in this article about education, society, and right-wing tribalism, not the US election or Brexit alone. Mods: feel free to nix this if you think that won't happen.
I hope we can use this thread to discuss the larger themes in this article about education, society, and right-wing tribalism, not the US election or Brexit alone. Mods: feel free to nix this if you think that won't happen.
There's a really weird thing in the Trump parts of that article, where the author just pretends that people of color don't exist. I'm pretty sure that people of color in the US are mostly not voting for Trump regardless of whether they have college degrees.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:38 PM on October 5, 2016 [34 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:38 PM on October 5, 2016 [34 favorites]
I know plenty of "educated" people who are Trump supporters. They may have gone to school, but I'm now questioning their sanity.
posted by AJScease at 5:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by AJScease at 5:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [11 favorites]
One side of politics seems to be devoted to making higher education solely available to wealthy elites. I can only suppose they find an ignorant and easily manipulated underclass favourable to them. Seems to have backfired now they've tied their fortunes to the most ignorant and classless elite.
posted by adept256 at 5:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 5:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
Some of the most hard-core conservative people I've ever met had CS and EE degrees, so I really don't think being "educated" and supporting Trump are necessarily mutually exclusive conditions. Being white seems to be the glue that binds.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:56 PM on October 5, 2016 [33 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:56 PM on October 5, 2016 [33 favorites]
Some of the most hard-core conservative people I've ever met had CS and EE degrees, so I really don't think being "educated" and supporting Trump are necessarily mutually exclusive conditions. Being white seems to be the glue that binds.
I agree but I'd also wish their were more stats on what type of college level education. Is it just being at a higher level or is their any coorelation with what people are learning.
posted by Jalliah at 6:03 PM on October 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I agree but I'd also wish their were more stats on what type of college level education. Is it just being at a higher level or is their any coorelation with what people are learning.
posted by Jalliah at 6:03 PM on October 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I also think that so much of this current election cycle is being driven by resentment of power structures and establishments that have for the longest time claimed to represent the masses. These establishments (Congress, Universities, Corporations, Wallstreet, etc.) they've been taking advantage of the situation for so long and it's reached that point where people are unwilling to accept it any more. It's turned ugly for these larger systems. People such as Donald Trump are taking advantage of the frustration, fear, and resentment that has been building up over the past few Presidencies.
posted by Fizz at 6:03 PM on October 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 6:03 PM on October 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
I also think that he misunderstood Walter Lippmann, whose point wasn't so much that the masses were dumb as that the modern world was so complicated that no one person could understand it sufficiently to make educated decisions about big questions. The point of experts was that there needed to be a division of intellectual labor to break the world down into manageable, understandable chunks, not that politics had to be rescued from the dummies.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:09 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:09 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
Every few years I reread H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. He was remarkably prescient in describing the Eloi and Morlocks.
posted by twsf at 6:09 PM on October 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by twsf at 6:09 PM on October 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
You don't need to look further than Trump University to discover the value of education to Donald. It's measured in dollars.
posted by adept256 at 6:11 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 6:11 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's important that "education" not just equal "well-positioned for a career". Education needs to include knowledge of history, politics, some basic science, and critical thinking because a) people make ethical and social decisions all the time in all kinds of jobs and other situations in society, and b) if more educated people do end up having more money and power, they _must_ use it wisely.
My education is something that I could convincingly argue I "earned" (I basically paid my own way after my first year, with a tiny scholarship and working for various tech companies), but it was essentially a gift of the circumstances I was lucky enough to live in and the people who constantly go above and beyond in various elementary, middle, and high schools -- if you are a student they feel "deserves" that.
If my circumstances had been a bit better, my education would have been better; I might not have had to work through school, so my grades would have been better, and so on. If they'd been worse -- if I'd never been tested and people had judged me _entirely_ by my appearance, parental connections, and manners -- my education would have probably ended a lot sooner and I wouldn't have been taught to imagine the world from different viewpoints, to understand why the scientific method is valuable, to look for the attributes that make a study published in the mass media credible, or to ask the kind of question that saved me, this morning, from an allergic reaction at a doctor's office.
I also wouldn't know that my success is actually built on voluntary labor done generously and with joy, little bit by little bit, through generations of people each making the world a tiny bit better and safer. I'd probably believe that I earned what I got, and that those who don't have success don't deserve it.
posted by amtho at 6:17 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
My education is something that I could convincingly argue I "earned" (I basically paid my own way after my first year, with a tiny scholarship and working for various tech companies), but it was essentially a gift of the circumstances I was lucky enough to live in and the people who constantly go above and beyond in various elementary, middle, and high schools -- if you are a student they feel "deserves" that.
If my circumstances had been a bit better, my education would have been better; I might not have had to work through school, so my grades would have been better, and so on. If they'd been worse -- if I'd never been tested and people had judged me _entirely_ by my appearance, parental connections, and manners -- my education would have probably ended a lot sooner and I wouldn't have been taught to imagine the world from different viewpoints, to understand why the scientific method is valuable, to look for the attributes that make a study published in the mass media credible, or to ask the kind of question that saved me, this morning, from an allergic reaction at a doctor's office.
I also wouldn't know that my success is actually built on voluntary labor done generously and with joy, little bit by little bit, through generations of people each making the world a tiny bit better and safer. I'd probably believe that I earned what I got, and that those who don't have success don't deserve it.
posted by amtho at 6:17 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
It's certainly a major factor in my own circles. Every single actual real-life Trumper I've met has had 3 years of high school at most, though a few have gone back to get GEDs. Many were homeschooled. Not one went to college of any sort. These folks are roughly my age, and roughly my income bracket. They are definitely all white, and definitely all dudes. But they also have in common this lack of formal education.
And the net effect (apart from which most of them are bright and capable people) is that frankly they just don't know any facts. They did not receive the institutional exposure to, like, many fundamental realities of the world. And they did not have the institutional exposure to things like "verifying sources" or even just research in the first place. As a result, they have no historical context for anything. They don't know how events and nations and economies are related. And they're super vulnerable to conspiracies and misinformation because they don't even have the experience of "hm, that sounds wrong! I thought I learned it was X," much less "no, that's false; I know it was X because I checked these sources."
Again. I don't think any of them would be where they're at if they were not white. (Jury's out on male.) But I also don't think all of them would be where they're at if they had obtained a more extensive education.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:30 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
And the net effect (apart from which most of them are bright and capable people) is that frankly they just don't know any facts. They did not receive the institutional exposure to, like, many fundamental realities of the world. And they did not have the institutional exposure to things like "verifying sources" or even just research in the first place. As a result, they have no historical context for anything. They don't know how events and nations and economies are related. And they're super vulnerable to conspiracies and misinformation because they don't even have the experience of "hm, that sounds wrong! I thought I learned it was X," much less "no, that's false; I know it was X because I checked these sources."
Again. I don't think any of them would be where they're at if they were not white. (Jury's out on male.) But I also don't think all of them would be where they're at if they had obtained a more extensive education.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:30 PM on October 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
Some of the most hard-core conservative people I've ever met had CS and EE degrees
Allow me to address this as an engineer. This is because CE and EE educations don't expose people to a classical educational experience in which you learn to value the experience and viewpoints of others. I was given two elective slots in 5 years in my engineering program.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:49 PM on October 5, 2016 [66 favorites]
Allow me to address this as an engineer. This is because CE and EE educations don't expose people to a classical educational experience in which you learn to value the experience and viewpoints of others. I was given two elective slots in 5 years in my engineering program.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:49 PM on October 5, 2016 [66 favorites]
People such as Donald Trump are taking advantage of the frustration, fear, and resentment that has been building up over the past few Presidencies.
The thing is, to perceive a wealthy New York real estate developer as not part of said establishment requires a genuine decoupling from reality. Every time I read a Trump supporter railing against Hillary's supposed corruption I have to rub my eyes. Setting aside all his branding shenanigans, you think a guy who builds buildings in NYC isn't corrupt?
Do I think there are some folks that ill-informed? Yes, I guess so. But mostly I think such issues are really just stalking-horses for racism/misogyny. The average Trump voter isn't the guy living in the mobile home who lost his job at the factory, even if that's the popular image.
posted by praemunire at 6:53 PM on October 5, 2016 [23 favorites]
The thing is, to perceive a wealthy New York real estate developer as not part of said establishment requires a genuine decoupling from reality. Every time I read a Trump supporter railing against Hillary's supposed corruption I have to rub my eyes. Setting aside all his branding shenanigans, you think a guy who builds buildings in NYC isn't corrupt?
Do I think there are some folks that ill-informed? Yes, I guess so. But mostly I think such issues are really just stalking-horses for racism/misogyny. The average Trump voter isn't the guy living in the mobile home who lost his job at the factory, even if that's the popular image.
posted by praemunire at 6:53 PM on October 5, 2016 [23 favorites]
I'll try to make this brief, because it's a long story. In 1991 I was given a charitable scholarship at an exclusive private boarding school because I was a homeless orphan.
The big debate in the dorm and dining hall and playground was about which is better, Nike Air or Reebok Pump. I had threadbare canvas sneakers from the supermarket. Some students thought it was a choice, not knowing their fancy shoes cost two weeks worth of my orphan's pension.
Attempts to ridicule and bully me over my 'choice' of footwear just bounced off. You weren't bullied unless you had a bloody nose and black eye. I learnt that from going to a state school previously. I also knew how to fight back.
Some kids understood. Some others, however, couldn't reconcile their relative good luck and my bad fortune. They obviously deserve nice shoes, which must mean I don't.
You have to remember that this was a class of 11yo boys. I'm way beyond that now, but some people never grew up.
posted by adept256 at 6:55 PM on October 5, 2016 [57 favorites]
The big debate in the dorm and dining hall and playground was about which is better, Nike Air or Reebok Pump. I had threadbare canvas sneakers from the supermarket. Some students thought it was a choice, not knowing their fancy shoes cost two weeks worth of my orphan's pension.
Attempts to ridicule and bully me over my 'choice' of footwear just bounced off. You weren't bullied unless you had a bloody nose and black eye. I learnt that from going to a state school previously. I also knew how to fight back.
Some kids understood. Some others, however, couldn't reconcile their relative good luck and my bad fortune. They obviously deserve nice shoes, which must mean I don't.
You have to remember that this was a class of 11yo boys. I'm way beyond that now, but some people never grew up.
posted by adept256 at 6:55 PM on October 5, 2016 [57 favorites]
A number of pundits have said that Trump's appeal lies in his salesman speech - tell people what they want to hear, use repetition, etc. It's not persuasion based on ideas, it's based on emotion. An argument based on reason and ideas will not have the impact as a speech that instills fear and emotion. We live in a very anti-intellectual nation. Even among the educated, people are measured more by what they have, not by what they know or understand. What group gets paid so poorly? Teachers. Tells you how valued they are.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:05 PM on October 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 7:05 PM on October 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
I think education AND experience do have a lot to do with H who people support politically and why.
A less educated person is more responsive to primate threat displays. They don't even sense that they have given way to a primate threat display.
Jane Goodall recently remarked on Trump'sbehavior in this regard. I've been saying he's acting like a baboon, or chimpanzee or gorilla who is trying to take over a troop.
Right down to insulting the old silverbacks like McCain, or even Christie and forcing displays of submission from them. The guy isn't a real Alpha, but if he and his friends make enough noise...
It's kind of why I actually LIKED Kaine being a little obnoxious last night. This is what people who aren't that educated respond to on an unconscious level.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:13 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
A less educated person is more responsive to primate threat displays. They don't even sense that they have given way to a primate threat display.
Jane Goodall recently remarked on Trump'sbehavior in this regard. I've been saying he's acting like a baboon, or chimpanzee or gorilla who is trying to take over a troop.
Right down to insulting the old silverbacks like McCain, or even Christie and forcing displays of submission from them. The guy isn't a real Alpha, but if he and his friends make enough noise...
It's kind of why I actually LIKED Kaine being a little obnoxious last night. This is what people who aren't that educated respond to on an unconscious level.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:13 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
The point of experts was that there needed to be a division of intellectual labor to break the world down into manageable, understandable chunks, not that politics had to be rescued from the dummies.
So what you're saying is ... Only an expert can deal with the problem?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:22 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
So what you're saying is ... Only an expert can deal with the problem?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:22 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
And the net effect (apart from which most of them are bright and capable people) is that frankly they just don't know any facts.
I'm wondering if a more accurate way to put this is that they don't value the results of educated collaboration to establish complicated facts or facts outside of their personal experience.
I doubt any of them dispute the sun comes up. They know how to do their job, identify things in their surroundings, and engage with their culture. They know what they can feel, touch, taste, hear, and smell. They know what most of the people around them believe, and if they belong to one they know what their church espouses. All of these are facts. They may be inaccurate in a variety of interesting ways due to a variety of reasons, but even if one doesn't believe YHWH exists, one can identify his books and the beliefs of his followers, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
To take a more studied fact - most people don't know about implicit bias because as much as implicit bias is a fact, it is also difficult to observe in yourself or others - it's discovered not in what people do but how long it takes them to do it. I trust the social scientists who have studied and nailed down implicit bias, I trust my own experience of a bias so strong it wasn't even implicit, and I trust the analysis of social interactions so I firmly believe implicit bias is not only a fact but one which shapes our culture. However, on a perceptual level, on a hear/see/taste/touch/feel level, it is far less convincing to others because it can't be directly perceived most of the time.
There was an interesting study of accuracy versus authority regarding doctors who consulted books about different diagnosis before giving them, and doctors who talked very confidently. The former were more likely to be accurate. The latter were more likely to be trusted. I can argue all day that evidence shows that a physician who checks the symptoms of a disorder in a book before diagnosing it will be more accurate, but that won't change the emotional experience of a lot of those patients, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect it to. For many people, their experience of Authority is that is checks nothing and expects to not be questioned, and they respond to experiences which replicate that.
In addition, the way people have presented science over the years and used it as a club for determining facts and trying to disrupt peoples' cultures and practices has been really disrespectful as well as inaccurate to the core values of science. I'm really uncomfortable with the way science and scientific facts are being used not to explore the world and identify what is accurate but rather are used as a way to insult people who don't automatically accept a given scientific claim. This is true to the history of science - Galileo was really unnecessarily insulting to the Pope - but I don't think it serves science or facts well.
Critical thinking is a lot more complicated than "learn skill, discover inalienable and unquestioned truth". Near as I can tell, there's no evidence there is an inalienable and unquestioned truth, but a lot of people seem to act as if there is one and describe it as "facts" without any qualifier.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:23 PM on October 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
I'm wondering if a more accurate way to put this is that they don't value the results of educated collaboration to establish complicated facts or facts outside of their personal experience.
I doubt any of them dispute the sun comes up. They know how to do their job, identify things in their surroundings, and engage with their culture. They know what they can feel, touch, taste, hear, and smell. They know what most of the people around them believe, and if they belong to one they know what their church espouses. All of these are facts. They may be inaccurate in a variety of interesting ways due to a variety of reasons, but even if one doesn't believe YHWH exists, one can identify his books and the beliefs of his followers, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
To take a more studied fact - most people don't know about implicit bias because as much as implicit bias is a fact, it is also difficult to observe in yourself or others - it's discovered not in what people do but how long it takes them to do it. I trust the social scientists who have studied and nailed down implicit bias, I trust my own experience of a bias so strong it wasn't even implicit, and I trust the analysis of social interactions so I firmly believe implicit bias is not only a fact but one which shapes our culture. However, on a perceptual level, on a hear/see/taste/touch/feel level, it is far less convincing to others because it can't be directly perceived most of the time.
There was an interesting study of accuracy versus authority regarding doctors who consulted books about different diagnosis before giving them, and doctors who talked very confidently. The former were more likely to be accurate. The latter were more likely to be trusted. I can argue all day that evidence shows that a physician who checks the symptoms of a disorder in a book before diagnosing it will be more accurate, but that won't change the emotional experience of a lot of those patients, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect it to. For many people, their experience of Authority is that is checks nothing and expects to not be questioned, and they respond to experiences which replicate that.
In addition, the way people have presented science over the years and used it as a club for determining facts and trying to disrupt peoples' cultures and practices has been really disrespectful as well as inaccurate to the core values of science. I'm really uncomfortable with the way science and scientific facts are being used not to explore the world and identify what is accurate but rather are used as a way to insult people who don't automatically accept a given scientific claim. This is true to the history of science - Galileo was really unnecessarily insulting to the Pope - but I don't think it serves science or facts well.
Critical thinking is a lot more complicated than "learn skill, discover inalienable and unquestioned truth". Near as I can tell, there's no evidence there is an inalienable and unquestioned truth, but a lot of people seem to act as if there is one and describe it as "facts" without any qualifier.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:23 PM on October 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
CE and EE educations don't expose people to a classical educational experience in which you learn to value the experience and viewpoints of others. I was given two elective slots in 5 years
Question and comment- what do CS/CE or EE signify? And people mock liberal arts degrees, or art history, but having a sense of the ebb and flow of history, or how power has been concentrated, or perhaps most importantly that the bible is more of a self help book than a factual account...I dunno. One can learn those things in college, or through life experience maybe. I think it starts with good, old books.
posted by vrakatar at 7:26 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Question and comment- what do CS/CE or EE signify? And people mock liberal arts degrees, or art history, but having a sense of the ebb and flow of history, or how power has been concentrated, or perhaps most importantly that the bible is more of a self help book than a factual account...I dunno. One can learn those things in college, or through life experience maybe. I think it starts with good, old books.
posted by vrakatar at 7:26 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Do I think there are some folks that ill-informed? Yes, I guess so. But mostly I think such issues are really just stalking-horses for racism/misogyny.
I think it's reversed, and that racism/misogyny is in many cases caused by a lack of education. I can speak from personal experience that it was my teachers and experiences in school that have mostly broken me of my previous hard-right, deeply fundamentalist biases and bigotry. I think that people have been right in saying that education doesn't equal degrees, and that when I consider my 'liberal' education it's in a very 'liberal meaning "liberating" yourself' kind of way.
I think that focusing on education and what that education contains and how it influences people, and how the lack of it or fear/hate of it influences people, is quite literally the one and only way to combat racism and misogyny on a generational scale. To do this we need to, fucking repulsive as it might feel, try to understand what made those people that way. They were not born that way, same as liberals weren't born this way, and to understand how to stop people from growing up into racists we need to dig into their shit, find the bigotry-spigots and empathy drains, and do our damnedest to turn them off.
I understand that trying to find empathy for people who might want to murder you is hard, very hard, and not everyone has the energy or wherewithal or what-have-you to delve into a sea of hate and try understand their thoughts and emotions while ignoring your own fear or revulsion. I'm not trying to say we all have to. Take care of yourselves, first and foremost.
What I am saying, however, is that no matter what we say, no matter how sick our burns, there is an illness that is killing both our country and the vectors spreading it. The same group propagating the destruction of the social safety net are the same group whose life expectancy is dropping in part because of that. I'm watching my family get sick and die in underfunded rural hospitals with pitiful insurance, live painful lives in poverty without economic hope, create non-existent fear and conflict out of skin color and live and die hating the world, all while supporting the people who ensure they do so.
When I get to pontificating on the subject, it's because I am personally an example of someone who, less than ten years ago, would have been an enthusiastic Trumper. I had the great luck of patient teachers and friends who challenged me when I was wrong, and through them and the resources they showed me to I got better. I changed. I have written and deleted a far more personal post on exactly how this change happened and how it effected my relationship with my family and a billion other things, but I'm not in the right place right now. It's just not a funny thing, and not a thing to be flippant about. It's the root of the sickness that is so clearly defined in the current presidential campaign.
posted by neonrev at 7:28 PM on October 5, 2016 [76 favorites]
I think it's reversed, and that racism/misogyny is in many cases caused by a lack of education. I can speak from personal experience that it was my teachers and experiences in school that have mostly broken me of my previous hard-right, deeply fundamentalist biases and bigotry. I think that people have been right in saying that education doesn't equal degrees, and that when I consider my 'liberal' education it's in a very 'liberal meaning "liberating" yourself' kind of way.
I think that focusing on education and what that education contains and how it influences people, and how the lack of it or fear/hate of it influences people, is quite literally the one and only way to combat racism and misogyny on a generational scale. To do this we need to, fucking repulsive as it might feel, try to understand what made those people that way. They were not born that way, same as liberals weren't born this way, and to understand how to stop people from growing up into racists we need to dig into their shit, find the bigotry-spigots and empathy drains, and do our damnedest to turn them off.
I understand that trying to find empathy for people who might want to murder you is hard, very hard, and not everyone has the energy or wherewithal or what-have-you to delve into a sea of hate and try understand their thoughts and emotions while ignoring your own fear or revulsion. I'm not trying to say we all have to. Take care of yourselves, first and foremost.
What I am saying, however, is that no matter what we say, no matter how sick our burns, there is an illness that is killing both our country and the vectors spreading it. The same group propagating the destruction of the social safety net are the same group whose life expectancy is dropping in part because of that. I'm watching my family get sick and die in underfunded rural hospitals with pitiful insurance, live painful lives in poverty without economic hope, create non-existent fear and conflict out of skin color and live and die hating the world, all while supporting the people who ensure they do so.
When I get to pontificating on the subject, it's because I am personally an example of someone who, less than ten years ago, would have been an enthusiastic Trumper. I had the great luck of patient teachers and friends who challenged me when I was wrong, and through them and the resources they showed me to I got better. I changed. I have written and deleted a far more personal post on exactly how this change happened and how it effected my relationship with my family and a billion other things, but I'm not in the right place right now. It's just not a funny thing, and not a thing to be flippant about. It's the root of the sickness that is so clearly defined in the current presidential campaign.
posted by neonrev at 7:28 PM on October 5, 2016 [76 favorites]
what do CS/CE or EE signify?
Computer science/engineering and electrical engineering.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Computer science/engineering and electrical engineering.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
It would be nice if one could be educated into perfect rationality. As far as I can tell, however, a college degree doesn't stop us from having monkey brains in our skulls. All humans are subject to unconscious biases, make rash judgments, use rules of thumb, evaluate people by their body language, their gender presentation, their class markers.
Going to college just teaches you to value a different set of all of the above. It is an acculturation as much as an education. Lose your accent. Learn how to tie a tie. Get some credit in the straight world.
The basic tempermental divide between liberals and conservatives persists despite one's level of education.
posted by Diablevert at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Going to college just teaches you to value a different set of all of the above. It is an acculturation as much as an education. Lose your accent. Learn how to tie a tie. Get some credit in the straight world.
The basic tempermental divide between liberals and conservatives persists despite one's level of education.
posted by Diablevert at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
So what you're saying is ... Only an expert can deal with the problem? ytLook: I don't think that Lippmann's solution was ultimately very satisfying, but the problem that he identified was a real problem. Democracy requires an informed electorate, but the individual members of the electorate cannot have first-hand knowledge and deep understanding of all the things that they are being asked to decide upon. We all have to outsource the tasks of gathering and interpreting information, because there's just too much information out there for us to handle. We end up trusting newspapers or governments or other elite institutions, and those elite institutions have biases. He thought that dispassionate experts could substitute for the institutions that he thought were misleading the American public, and I think we now all recognize that there is no such thing as unbiased expertise. We're just going to have to deal with the slightly terrifying fact that we're making decisions based on information that we cannot fully evaluate, because there isn't any other choice. And you can mock him for wanting to believe that there was a solution to his unsolvable problem, but I don't think it's right to pretend that he just thought the uneducated masses were dumb. The problem he identified was real.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:58 PM on October 5, 2016 [6 favorites]
I know plenty of "educated" people who are Trump supporters. They may have gone to school, but I'm now questioning their sanity.
The word you're reaching for is "credentialed."
The bachelor's degree is a requirement for any sort of dignified life in most of the country, and not everyone who obtains one desires, or gets an education.
posted by ocschwar at 7:59 PM on October 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
The word you're reaching for is "credentialed."
The bachelor's degree is a requirement for any sort of dignified life in most of the country, and not everyone who obtains one desires, or gets an education.
posted by ocschwar at 7:59 PM on October 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
Just teaching people a little epistemology, educating people not to be afraid of uncertainty or to be over confident in their less certain knowledge might help. But with our positive thinking, can-do cultural orthodoxy, high levels of certitude and unjustifiable levels of confidence in one's "convictions" (which in our vague language is just a synonym for any knowledge we're determined to hold true whether the evidence bears it out or not) are practically the national religion.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:32 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by saulgoodman at 8:32 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's rarely about education levels, but instead about levels of courage, intelligence and integrity, which aren't modernly taught in schools.
posted by Brian B. at 8:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 8:43 PM on October 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
I was mostly a great student but I did quite poorly in the first college class I took. Math. Fell behind the first week and never caught up, my own fault. I stuck it out and really learned only two things, first being that college could be hard and I shouldn't fall behind early.
The second was when the professor handed out evaluations. Small-ish class, I had talked to him, he knew I hadn't learned squat. Said something like I didn't think I was qualified to evaluate the class, he said "I don't know why not." So yeah, if I didn't learn anything that feedback counted too . . . you can't take only A students.
People who haven't got what they wanted, who have failed or been failed, understand that this has happened. Maybe they attribute the cause to the wrong thing but you absolutely need to count them too, if you want any accuracy about reality. The OP mentions only right wing tribalism but people find all sorts of reasons to systematically ignore subsets of others who got the short end of the stick. And then get surprised that not everyone has bought into their favorite tribal markers, whether capitalism or science or education or anything else.
IMHO Henry Farrell over at Crooked Timber and relatively few others have been good at being explicit the feedback value of democracy--that it allows people at the top to pick up on signals about what people far removed want and think. There's a big temptation to assume your favorite technocratic policies are self-evidently correct and move immediately to ways to get them around the voters (as in the "nudge" mindset).
OTOH I very much agree with every post frustrated by the article's willingness to assume "white men" (30% of the pop) is the default identity so it's OK to just break down our voting habits to find essential national trends.
posted by mark k at 9:52 PM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
The second was when the professor handed out evaluations. Small-ish class, I had talked to him, he knew I hadn't learned squat. Said something like I didn't think I was qualified to evaluate the class, he said "I don't know why not." So yeah, if I didn't learn anything that feedback counted too . . . you can't take only A students.
People who haven't got what they wanted, who have failed or been failed, understand that this has happened. Maybe they attribute the cause to the wrong thing but you absolutely need to count them too, if you want any accuracy about reality. The OP mentions only right wing tribalism but people find all sorts of reasons to systematically ignore subsets of others who got the short end of the stick. And then get surprised that not everyone has bought into their favorite tribal markers, whether capitalism or science or education or anything else.
IMHO Henry Farrell over at Crooked Timber and relatively few others have been good at being explicit the feedback value of democracy--that it allows people at the top to pick up on signals about what people far removed want and think. There's a big temptation to assume your favorite technocratic policies are self-evidently correct and move immediately to ways to get them around the voters (as in the "nudge" mindset).
OTOH I very much agree with every post frustrated by the article's willingness to assume "white men" (30% of the pop) is the default identity so it's OK to just break down our voting habits to find essential national trends.
posted by mark k at 9:52 PM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is because CE and EE educations don't expose people to a classical educational experience in which you learn to value the experience and viewpoints of others.
Can we not do this? Plenty of conservatives major in humanities or classics or even sociology. This just sounds like "they're wrong because they're not as educated as us" which is not just wrong, it's also mean-spirited.
posted by corb at 10:41 PM on October 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
Can we not do this? Plenty of conservatives major in humanities or classics or even sociology. This just sounds like "they're wrong because they're not as educated as us" which is not just wrong, it's also mean-spirited.
posted by corb at 10:41 PM on October 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
You're hearing from CS/CE/EE majors like myself that our training gave us very little grounding in the humanities and social sciences. We're not mean-spiritedly othering, we're mourning.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:49 PM on October 5, 2016 [20 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:49 PM on October 5, 2016 [20 favorites]
Speaking as someone who studied CS and EE (but eventually graduated in Math), I think there's more to a this than the missing humanities curriculum, though I wouldn't be surprised if that's a factor too. There's several implicit narratives in the professional training, chiefly:
* Meritocracy: doing well in these fields involves recall of a lot of technical details and mastering some challenging (but ultimately *mostly* tractable) models. Not too hard to think this all happened because you're smart and worked hard, privileges go unexamined, people who didn't succeed in this way were naturally either less innately deserving or didn't really reach for it.
* Mastering those challenging but tractable models yields a significant amount of power. Naturally, getting just about anything in the world to work the way you want to is, again, simply a matter of applying enough sufficiently brilliant scientific/engineering talent, just like the engineering accomplishments already mastered. You know how the world works! And a few key principles and good-ol' fashioned discipline should get 'er done -- slap together the feathers and wax, strap on the wings!
Whether you can characterize these things as fundamentally conservative problems is something my own liberal education makes me cautious about. I think they're *human* problems first and foremost, and hardly ones progressives are immune from. But my observation is that conservatism in its recent format seems to offer a lot less to reflect on and check these problems than progressive culture and thinking.
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:27 PM on October 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
* Meritocracy: doing well in these fields involves recall of a lot of technical details and mastering some challenging (but ultimately *mostly* tractable) models. Not too hard to think this all happened because you're smart and worked hard, privileges go unexamined, people who didn't succeed in this way were naturally either less innately deserving or didn't really reach for it.
* Mastering those challenging but tractable models yields a significant amount of power. Naturally, getting just about anything in the world to work the way you want to is, again, simply a matter of applying enough sufficiently brilliant scientific/engineering talent, just like the engineering accomplishments already mastered. You know how the world works! And a few key principles and good-ol' fashioned discipline should get 'er done -- slap together the feathers and wax, strap on the wings!
Whether you can characterize these things as fundamentally conservative problems is something my own liberal education makes me cautious about. I think they're *human* problems first and foremost, and hardly ones progressives are immune from. But my observation is that conservatism in its recent format seems to offer a lot less to reflect on and check these problems than progressive culture and thinking.
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:27 PM on October 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
This article is overreaching, to be charitable. Religion, sexism, racism, financialization of the economy and the demise of organized labor have just as much to do with the great gulf we see today as education does.
posted by benzenedream at 12:37 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 12:37 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Wildblueyonder, I would add to that:
• Adherence to authority. It is not an engineer’s place to question the objectives that have been handed down by The Boss, nor to question the figures that appear in The Book.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 12:49 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
• Adherence to authority. It is not an engineer’s place to question the objectives that have been handed down by The Boss, nor to question the figures that appear in The Book.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 12:49 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think that differences in educational attainment do matter for some things, such as the likelihood you'll believe in anthropogenic climate change. My experience is that educated conservatives are more likely than other conservatives to respect science--only certain kinds of science, but still.
But otherwise, education is so profoundly linked to class experience that I'm not sure how you sort it out. A working class person who goes on to college is going to be surrounded by mostly middle-class people, and how can you say it's the education, and not the social environment, that affects their values?
I might be kind of skeptical of how much undergraduates learn about "critical thinking" and "empathy" and "history" etc etc in their degrees. And I am also really cynical about the extent to which knowledge of these are behind political diffeences. I think it is far more tribal on both sides than we like to admit. I just think one side has it more right than the other...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:52 AM on October 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
But otherwise, education is so profoundly linked to class experience that I'm not sure how you sort it out. A working class person who goes on to college is going to be surrounded by mostly middle-class people, and how can you say it's the education, and not the social environment, that affects their values?
I might be kind of skeptical of how much undergraduates learn about "critical thinking" and "empathy" and "history" etc etc in their degrees. And I am also really cynical about the extent to which knowledge of these are behind political diffeences. I think it is far more tribal on both sides than we like to admit. I just think one side has it more right than the other...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:52 AM on October 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
When I read comments like neonrev's above, it's when I wish MeFi had a FUCK YEAH button or something to indicate above and beyond-ness.
I think that focusing on education and what that education contains and how it influences people, and how the lack of it or fear/hate of it influences people, is quite literally the one and only way to combat racism and misogyny on a generational scale. To do this we need to, fucking repulsive as it might feel, try to understand what made those people that way. They were not born that way, same as liberals weren't born this way, and to understand how to stop people from growing up into racists we need to dig into their shit, find the bigotry-spigots and empathy drains, and do our damnedest to turn them off.
This.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 2:10 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
I think that focusing on education and what that education contains and how it influences people, and how the lack of it or fear/hate of it influences people, is quite literally the one and only way to combat racism and misogyny on a generational scale. To do this we need to, fucking repulsive as it might feel, try to understand what made those people that way. They were not born that way, same as liberals weren't born this way, and to understand how to stop people from growing up into racists we need to dig into their shit, find the bigotry-spigots and empathy drains, and do our damnedest to turn them off.
This.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 2:10 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
I am insulted by the insinuations above that people who didn't follow the one true path of formal university education are destined to become right-wing knuckle draggers.
I think everyone is arguing that having a liberal education makes people more likely to be 'critical thinkers' or skeptical of the types of things Trump is saying. No one is saying that you can't be skeptical if you don't have a liberal education, or that all people with liberal educations are anti-Trump.
Frankly, I have no idea how you could interpret what people were saying in the way that you are.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:32 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think everyone is arguing that having a liberal education makes people more likely to be 'critical thinkers' or skeptical of the types of things Trump is saying. No one is saying that you can't be skeptical if you don't have a liberal education, or that all people with liberal educations are anti-Trump.
Frankly, I have no idea how you could interpret what people were saying in the way that you are.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:32 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
Care to provide an example? The 'those people' quote (which strikes me as decidedly non-offensive, but YMMV) refers to racists and bigots. Its also embedded in the phrase: "try to understand what made those people feel that way." Which, to me, is the opposite of othering.
Also there are engineers and CS people in this thread who lament their lack of liberal education. Its not like we're giving them a pass because hey, they went to college, so come on in our social club too.
Its an empirical social fact that across a whole range of dimensions, people with 'bigoted' or 'intolerant' views have lower levels of formal education. Much of this relationship is explained by other factors but its hard to not think there's a causal relationship between A) obtaining a liberal education and B) being able to think critically C) not be bigoted. I mean thats the point of the whole enterprise (at least from A->B).
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:05 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also there are engineers and CS people in this thread who lament their lack of liberal education. Its not like we're giving them a pass because hey, they went to college, so come on in our social club too.
Its an empirical social fact that across a whole range of dimensions, people with 'bigoted' or 'intolerant' views have lower levels of formal education. Much of this relationship is explained by other factors but its hard to not think there's a causal relationship between A) obtaining a liberal education and B) being able to think critically C) not be bigoted. I mean thats the point of the whole enterprise (at least from A->B).
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:05 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don't think it matters whether you think winterhill is in a different conversation than the one you think you're having. They might be hopelessly misreading things, but it's frankly much more likely they're picking up on the subtler undertones and it's worth asking why that is.
posted by hoyland at 4:14 AM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 4:14 AM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
I also think that is important to identify really what is being talked about. Yes the FPP is about broader issues but it is about the election and primarily the wide disparity of support in the 'college educated' categories between Trump and Clinton. In other election years this disparity existed but the connection with the support of racism, bigotry of all kinds, isolationism and general intolerance hasn't been so blatant.
So yeah it is about 'those' people captured in those particular stats as well as what factors are driving that disparity. That statistical research is pointing to college education as a prime factor. The bigger question is it something about the actual education or something else. I'm just not sure how one would have a conversation without referencing what people or category of people that are statistically being talked about. How can it be discussed without talking about it terms that separate between one or another?
posted by Jalliah at 4:23 AM on October 6, 2016
I don't feel at all qualified to talk about Brexit, which I've been watching from a distance, but I think in the case of Trump's supporters, it really matters that we're talking about white people without a college degree, especially but not exclusively white men without a college degree. And for those people, I think it's about loss of status, which plays out in all sorts of ways. On a really basic cultural level, straight, white men used to know that they were the default people. They were the people to who politicians were trying to appeal. TV shows and movies were aimed at them; the pop charts were dominated by people who looked like them and sang songs that appealed to their interests and experiences. They also had economic advantages: they were probably going to be hired over equally qualified people who were not white or male.
And now a lot of that is changing. Straight, white, Christian men are no longer the default Americans. Pop culture no longer automatically assumes the centrality of their experience. Wal-mart greeters say Happy Holidays, and the PA system no longer broadcasts the Lord's Prayer before football games. Speaking fluent Spanish is a career asset, not something to be ashamed of. Politicians brag about their Spanish skills and record ads in Spanish. And while white men still have all sorts of economic advantages, white men without college degrees may feel economically marginalized. It's a lot harder to get a good job without a college degree. Part of that is that many good jobs require skills that people learn in higher education, but part of it is that college is a credentialing service, and people get jobs just for having that piece of paper. And it would sting for any experienced person to be passed over for a job in favor of someone who wasn't necessarily more qualified, but it must sting more for people who have spent their whole lives with the expectation that they would be the beneficiaries, rather than the victims of arbitrary discrimination.
So anyway, it's not surprising that those people would see appeal in calls to make America great again. And it's also not terribly surprising that Trump's rhetoric would be massively less appealing to people of color who don't have college degrees, because they haven't experienced a similar loss of status. And finally, I think it's not terribly surprising that Trump also appeals to a lot of white men who do have college degrees, because they're experiencing some of the same cultural loss of status.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:06 AM on October 6, 2016 [7 favorites]
And now a lot of that is changing. Straight, white, Christian men are no longer the default Americans. Pop culture no longer automatically assumes the centrality of their experience. Wal-mart greeters say Happy Holidays, and the PA system no longer broadcasts the Lord's Prayer before football games. Speaking fluent Spanish is a career asset, not something to be ashamed of. Politicians brag about their Spanish skills and record ads in Spanish. And while white men still have all sorts of economic advantages, white men without college degrees may feel economically marginalized. It's a lot harder to get a good job without a college degree. Part of that is that many good jobs require skills that people learn in higher education, but part of it is that college is a credentialing service, and people get jobs just for having that piece of paper. And it would sting for any experienced person to be passed over for a job in favor of someone who wasn't necessarily more qualified, but it must sting more for people who have spent their whole lives with the expectation that they would be the beneficiaries, rather than the victims of arbitrary discrimination.
So anyway, it's not surprising that those people would see appeal in calls to make America great again. And it's also not terribly surprising that Trump's rhetoric would be massively less appealing to people of color who don't have college degrees, because they haven't experienced a similar loss of status. And finally, I think it's not terribly surprising that Trump also appeals to a lot of white men who do have college degrees, because they're experiencing some of the same cultural loss of status.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:06 AM on October 6, 2016 [7 favorites]
I think when voting Trump in particular is correlated with feeling powerless, you're not going to have a lot of college grads that appeals to, because by and large, they aren't the powerless ones. As winterhill notes, it's harder to get a job without a degree. College education is also correlated with class status, and you really can't separate those.
It's also worth noting a lot of conservatives drop out of college because they have a hostile environment from professors. I know myself, I always knew which professors would grade conservative papers more poorly, and getting through classes for me was a constant parade of bullshitting opinions I didn't feel for grades. Not everyone wants to spend years of their life faking their thoughts.
posted by corb at 5:16 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's also worth noting a lot of conservatives drop out of college because they have a hostile environment from professors. I know myself, I always knew which professors would grade conservative papers more poorly, and getting through classes for me was a constant parade of bullshitting opinions I didn't feel for grades. Not everyone wants to spend years of their life faking their thoughts.
posted by corb at 5:16 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's also worth noting a lot of conservatives drop out of college because they have a hostile environment from professors.
Oh come on.Bullshit. If this were the case, then we would see relatively more conservatives drop out of college when they are enrolled in more left-leaning majors. Do you have any data to support assertion?
On a theoretical note, why wouldn't they just.... switch majors? Are liberal profs in STEM fields grading conservatives more harshly? Why are the profs grading papers? In a lot of cases the TAs usually do that anyway. How do they know that the students are liberal or conservative? So many questions.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:36 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Oh come on.Bullshit. If this were the case, then we would see relatively more conservatives drop out of college when they are enrolled in more left-leaning majors. Do you have any data to support assertion?
On a theoretical note, why wouldn't they just.... switch majors? Are liberal profs in STEM fields grading conservatives more harshly? Why are the profs grading papers? In a lot of cases the TAs usually do that anyway. How do they know that the students are liberal or conservative? So many questions.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:36 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Not everyone wants to spend years of their life faking their thoughts.
But such is the career path of politicians of every stripe.
posted by adept256 at 5:39 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
But such is the career path of politicians of every stripe.
posted by adept256 at 5:39 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's also worth noting a lot of conservatives drop out of college because they have a hostile environment from professors. I know myself, I always knew which professors would grade conservative papers more poorly, and getting through classes for me was a constant parade of bullshitting opinions I didn't feel for grades. Not everyone wants to spend years of their life faking their thoughts.
And in my experience I had to do the same with more conservative leaning profs. One of the keys for people that did well in a lot of course was figuring out what the TA or Prof was looking for and would mark on. Part of it was determining profs levels of bias towards things. Some were worse then others.
Looking back this was one of the most important non-academic skills I learned from going to University because out in the real world dealing with different people and their biases makes navigating the working world easier.
And just for the record I understand what it's like to be looked down on for not having an education. Yes I went to University. Went a couple of times and for way more then 4 years. For various reasons I never finished the actual degree. I don't have the paper. This lack of paper is an automatic black mark to a lot of people. As far as many are concern the credential = the education.
posted by Jalliah at 5:44 AM on October 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
And in my experience I had to do the same with more conservative leaning profs. One of the keys for people that did well in a lot of course was figuring out what the TA or Prof was looking for and would mark on. Part of it was determining profs levels of bias towards things. Some were worse then others.
Looking back this was one of the most important non-academic skills I learned from going to University because out in the real world dealing with different people and their biases makes navigating the working world easier.
And just for the record I understand what it's like to be looked down on for not having an education. Yes I went to University. Went a couple of times and for way more then 4 years. For various reasons I never finished the actual degree. I don't have the paper. This lack of paper is an automatic black mark to a lot of people. As far as many are concern the credential = the education.
posted by Jalliah at 5:44 AM on October 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
But such is the career path of politicians of every stripe.
Also big business. Yowsa have I had to do lots of thought faking to keep my jobs over my work lifetime. It's kinda just a thing one has to do to get along with people at times.
posted by Jalliah at 5:52 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also big business. Yowsa have I had to do lots of thought faking to keep my jobs over my work lifetime. It's kinda just a thing one has to do to get along with people at times.
posted by Jalliah at 5:52 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
The three most popular majors at the university where I work are Health Studies, Finance and Psychology. I don't think that kids are getting hugely indoctrinated in their anatomy classes, and my hunch is that the Finance profs tend to lean conservative, although not in a particularly Trumpian way. And honestly, while I can't say that I never hear complaints about professors' politics, I would say that I hear complaints about other things approximately 100 times more often: they can't understand their professor's accent, the prof asked questions on the exam that weren't covered in class, they hate online homework, it's unfair that the class is curved, 7:30 AM classes are a human rights violation (which to be fair, is sort of true), etc. We also collect data on why students say they didn't persist, and that's not one of the top reasons. I think the top reasons are financial concerns, poor grades, health issues (especially mental health issues), and lack of direction. "My profs are commies" isn't something that I've ever seen on the list.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:04 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:04 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
try to understand what made those people that way. They were not born that way
perhaps we are in fact born with different brain wirings?
I'm thinking of things like the INTP / INTJ divide.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:18 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
perhaps we are in fact born with different brain wirings?
I'm thinking of things like the INTP / INTJ divide.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:18 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think it's reversed, and that racism/misogyny is in many cases caused by a lack of education. I can speak from personal experience that it was my teachers and experiences in school that have mostly broken me of my previous hard-right, deeply fundamentalist biases and bigotry. I think that people have been right in saying that education doesn't equal degrees, and that when I consider my 'liberal' education it's in a very 'liberal meaning "liberating" yourself' kind of way.
I think it's more like a chicken-and-egg kind of thing. For instance, as a white kid in the south, your education could be pretty bigoted all on its own. You could learn that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, which was barely mentioned by the leaders of the CSA, and that Jim Crow wasn't really as bad as "those people" say it was. You could learn that evolution is just as proven a fact as creationism. You could learn that the separation of church and state is largely a myth, and that capitalism is awesome and it's your duty to vilify socialism/communism. You could learn that anthropogenic climate change don't real. You could learn that slaves weren't in fact slaves, but "immigrants" and "workers from Africa." You could learn that Islam is based on and exists mainly because of violence, and that it's anti-Christian to believe otherwise. You could learn that Mexican-Americans are all somehow connected to drugs and have dual loyalties, to the point of advocating "Latin supremacy."
On the other hand, you may never learn that many Founding Fathers enthusiastically supported slavery and held slaves of their own, or the fight for women's rights and LGBTQ rights and the intersectionality (or lack thereof) in those fights. You may not learn that MLK wasn't just the "nice guy" and Malcolm X the "mean guy" in the civil rights movement, or that by the time of the Civil War, most of the rest of the world no longer held slaves. You may not learn about the Tuskegee Airmen or the 442nd Regiment or the Codetalkers. You may not learn about Wounded Knee and the destruction of the plains buffalo, or the Tulsa Riots and the Greensboro Massacre, or the Chinese Massacre of 1971, or the plight of the SS Saint Louis. You may not learn that, contrary to popular belief, our concept of the "Wild West," where open carry of guns were necessary and self-reliance was almost entirely a myth.
And all of that is even before you get into college, where (also contrary to popular belief) neither the student body or the professors are anywhere near the outspoken liberal firebrands they are constantly characterized as, especially at places like Ole Miss or Penn State.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:39 AM on October 6, 2016 [19 favorites]
I think it's more like a chicken-and-egg kind of thing. For instance, as a white kid in the south, your education could be pretty bigoted all on its own. You could learn that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, which was barely mentioned by the leaders of the CSA, and that Jim Crow wasn't really as bad as "those people" say it was. You could learn that evolution is just as proven a fact as creationism. You could learn that the separation of church and state is largely a myth, and that capitalism is awesome and it's your duty to vilify socialism/communism. You could learn that anthropogenic climate change don't real. You could learn that slaves weren't in fact slaves, but "immigrants" and "workers from Africa." You could learn that Islam is based on and exists mainly because of violence, and that it's anti-Christian to believe otherwise. You could learn that Mexican-Americans are all somehow connected to drugs and have dual loyalties, to the point of advocating "Latin supremacy."
On the other hand, you may never learn that many Founding Fathers enthusiastically supported slavery and held slaves of their own, or the fight for women's rights and LGBTQ rights and the intersectionality (or lack thereof) in those fights. You may not learn that MLK wasn't just the "nice guy" and Malcolm X the "mean guy" in the civil rights movement, or that by the time of the Civil War, most of the rest of the world no longer held slaves. You may not learn about the Tuskegee Airmen or the 442nd Regiment or the Codetalkers. You may not learn about Wounded Knee and the destruction of the plains buffalo, or the Tulsa Riots and the Greensboro Massacre, or the Chinese Massacre of 1971, or the plight of the SS Saint Louis. You may not learn that, contrary to popular belief, our concept of the "Wild West," where open carry of guns were necessary and self-reliance was almost entirely a myth.
And all of that is even before you get into college, where (also contrary to popular belief) neither the student body or the professors are anywhere near the outspoken liberal firebrands they are constantly characterized as, especially at places like Ole Miss or Penn State.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:39 AM on October 6, 2016 [19 favorites]
I dismiss any article written overwhelmingly viewed univariately. Boiling down the dynamics of this election to one eye-popping and divisive factor appears disingenuous at the least, misleading all the more, and fractious at the most. As the Me-Fi comments here detail, even the variable "education" appears quite watered-down and too simplistic. The article feels to me a non-starter because of its lackadaisical analytical premise.
But hey, whatever pushes clicks.
Such a disservice. When I see real multivariate analysis that controls for dozens of factors, and their inter-correlations, only then will I open my ears to what the pundits have to say.
Disclaimer: Currently "undecided" in this election *
*or "disgusted", whichever fits your fancy.
posted by Conway at 7:25 AM on October 6, 2016
But hey, whatever pushes clicks.
Such a disservice. When I see real multivariate analysis that controls for dozens of factors, and their inter-correlations, only then will I open my ears to what the pundits have to say.
Disclaimer: Currently "undecided" in this election *
*or "disgusted", whichever fits your fancy.
posted by Conway at 7:25 AM on October 6, 2016
On the other hand, you may never learn
This is not just a problem in "conservative" school districts. In more liberal school districts, there's a move, for example, against teaching much about the philosophy, life history, and activity of the Founding Fathers at all - with nowhere near the depth and breadth that I, for example, learned growing up. If you take 10 high school students educated in that system, I'll be flat out astonished if 7/10 of them can name more than one Revolutionary War battle. I'd be astonished if 7/10 of conservative home-schooled kids couldn't name at least three.
No matter what school system you exist in, they are going to teach some things and not others. It's not an egregious violation if people don't learn about the facets of history you particularly think are important, nor is it an egregious violation if they don't learn about the ones I think are. There is a limited amount of time to teach kids in, and some things are going to be left out.
posted by corb at 7:41 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is not just a problem in "conservative" school districts. In more liberal school districts, there's a move, for example, against teaching much about the philosophy, life history, and activity of the Founding Fathers at all - with nowhere near the depth and breadth that I, for example, learned growing up. If you take 10 high school students educated in that system, I'll be flat out astonished if 7/10 of them can name more than one Revolutionary War battle. I'd be astonished if 7/10 of conservative home-schooled kids couldn't name at least three.
No matter what school system you exist in, they are going to teach some things and not others. It's not an egregious violation if people don't learn about the facets of history you particularly think are important, nor is it an egregious violation if they don't learn about the ones I think are. There is a limited amount of time to teach kids in, and some things are going to be left out.
posted by corb at 7:41 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Some of the most hard-core conservative people I've ever met had CS and EE degrees, so I really don't think being "educated" and supporting Trump are necessarily mutually exclusive conditions. Being white seems to be the glue that binds.
CS and EE degree holders often confuse training and education.
posted by srboisvert at 7:49 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
CS and EE degree holders often confuse training and education.
posted by srboisvert at 7:49 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
There's a really weird thing in the Trump parts of that article, where the author just pretends that people of color don't exist. I'm pretty sure that people of color in the US are mostly not voting for Trump regardless of whether they have college degrees.
I'm guessing that's because the Trump stuff is secondary to the main thing the piece is about, which is Brexit. It cherry-picks a bit of Trump stuff for extra topicality and to show that the education divide it talks about isn't only a local thing. But the main focus is on domestic politics. If it was primarily about the US election I'm pretty sure David Runciman wouldn't be ignoring race.
posted by Mocata at 7:51 AM on October 6, 2016
I'm guessing that's because the Trump stuff is secondary to the main thing the piece is about, which is Brexit. It cherry-picks a bit of Trump stuff for extra topicality and to show that the education divide it talks about isn't only a local thing. But the main focus is on domestic politics. If it was primarily about the US election I'm pretty sure David Runciman wouldn't be ignoring race.
posted by Mocata at 7:51 AM on October 6, 2016
History isn't just about being able to name battles and dates. Anyone can learn and remember historical facts. History is only useful if the process of how things happen, the patterns, is taught. Also how to evaluate facts and put them into broad context. It's more about how and why. Or at least it should be. Otherwise you might as well just memorize lists and be done with it.
posted by Jalliah at 7:54 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Jalliah at 7:54 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sure - but there are many patterns going on at the same time. Even teaching patterns, you have to pick and choose. Economic patterns? Political patterns? Philosophical patterns? Social patterns? For who, and where? For better or worse, we now know so much that no one person can retain it all in their meat brain.
posted by corb at 8:02 AM on October 6, 2016
posted by corb at 8:02 AM on October 6, 2016
This is not just a problem in "conservative" school districts. In more liberal school districts, there's a move, for example, against teaching much about the philosophy, life history, and activity of the Founding Fathers at all - with nowhere near the depth and breadth that I, for example, learned growing up.
Let's not pull the usual "both sides are equally culpable" bullshit here. There is nothing approaching either (to use your words) the breadth or the depth of the ignorance, deception, and outright bigotry of the conservative school districts. And this extends not just to districts but entire states, regions, and in some cases the entire country.
If you take 10 high school students educated in that system, I'll be flat out astonished if 7/10 of them can name more than one Revolutionary War battle. I'd be astonished if 7/10 of conservative home-schooled kids couldn't name at least three.
Naming three Revolutionary War battles says almost nothing at all about the philosophy, life history, and activity of the Founding Fathers. Most of them never even fought in a battle during the war. One decent teaching on, say, the incorporation of the 3/5ths rule into the founding of the country, or the number of arguments over the wording of the original Constitution is worth a million dry recitations of the entire military history of the Revolutionary War.
No matter what school system you exist in, they are going to teach some things and not others. It's not an egregious violation if people don't learn about the facets of history you particularly think are important, nor is it an egregious violation if they don't learn about the ones I think are. There is a limited amount of time to teach kids in, and some things are going to be left out.
This isn't dodging I was talking about. The entire first paragraph of my comment is on being taught things that are false, some of which are completely made up based on virulent and long-standing bigotry, while avoiding other subjects that would give an honest and thought-provoking review of the subjects under discussion. That's deliberate and biased erasure of entire portions of American history and culture, and I can't believe that you can claim with a straight face that stuff like calling slaves "immigrants" and pretending evolution is as scientifically accurate as creationism is just a case of "welp, sorry, not enough time, let's spend several hours talking about the Battle of Cowpens."
posted by zombieflanders at 8:11 AM on October 6, 2016 [12 favorites]
Let's not pull the usual "both sides are equally culpable" bullshit here. There is nothing approaching either (to use your words) the breadth or the depth of the ignorance, deception, and outright bigotry of the conservative school districts. And this extends not just to districts but entire states, regions, and in some cases the entire country.
If you take 10 high school students educated in that system, I'll be flat out astonished if 7/10 of them can name more than one Revolutionary War battle. I'd be astonished if 7/10 of conservative home-schooled kids couldn't name at least three.
Naming three Revolutionary War battles says almost nothing at all about the philosophy, life history, and activity of the Founding Fathers. Most of them never even fought in a battle during the war. One decent teaching on, say, the incorporation of the 3/5ths rule into the founding of the country, or the number of arguments over the wording of the original Constitution is worth a million dry recitations of the entire military history of the Revolutionary War.
No matter what school system you exist in, they are going to teach some things and not others. It's not an egregious violation if people don't learn about the facets of history you particularly think are important, nor is it an egregious violation if they don't learn about the ones I think are. There is a limited amount of time to teach kids in, and some things are going to be left out.
This isn't dodging I was talking about. The entire first paragraph of my comment is on being taught things that are false, some of which are completely made up based on virulent and long-standing bigotry, while avoiding other subjects that would give an honest and thought-provoking review of the subjects under discussion. That's deliberate and biased erasure of entire portions of American history and culture, and I can't believe that you can claim with a straight face that stuff like calling slaves "immigrants" and pretending evolution is as scientifically accurate as creationism is just a case of "welp, sorry, not enough time, let's spend several hours talking about the Battle of Cowpens."
posted by zombieflanders at 8:11 AM on October 6, 2016 [12 favorites]
The bourgeoisie and its scholarly lackeys have been promising the unwashed access to the good life, and now the unwashed are calling bullshit.
posted by No Robots at 8:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by No Robots at 8:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Can't tell if parody or not
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:18 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:18 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
I feel like I've said this before, but as I got further in my education and developed better research skills, I set out to prove that my Republican positions were correct. So I went looking for data, and time after time I found that my positions really didn't have good data to support them. Climate change actually was happening. Tax cuts don't lead to increased tax revenue. Trickle down economics doesn't work. Government debt isn't always bad. Evolution is strongly supported in the fossil record. For positions that can be supported with data, the modern GOP was almost always wrong and the Democrats were usually right. Now, maybe my liberal biases are coloring my view, but I don't think so because I started with very conservative positions and the data made me change my mind.
I don't know how much of the education gap in politics can be explained by similar stories, but it seems indisputable to me that there is one party that generally respects expertise and trusts scientific consensus and one that doesn't. As long as that persists, there's going to be an education gap.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:26 AM on October 6, 2016 [27 favorites]
I don't know how much of the education gap in politics can be explained by similar stories, but it seems indisputable to me that there is one party that generally respects expertise and trusts scientific consensus and one that doesn't. As long as that persists, there's going to be an education gap.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:26 AM on October 6, 2016 [27 favorites]
Bourgeoisie = "the middle class". They're not the ones with the good life.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:32 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Autumnheart at 9:32 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
Bourgeoisie = "the middle class". They're not the ones with the good life.
I'm not hear to give a lecture on socialism 101. Pick away at your nits. It won't save you.
posted by No Robots at 9:35 AM on October 6, 2016
I'm not hear to give a lecture on socialism 101. Pick away at your nits. It won't save you.
posted by No Robots at 9:35 AM on October 6, 2016
I'm actually giving you a lecture on French. Use the right word if you want to make the point you're trying to make.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:35 AM on October 6, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Autumnheart at 9:35 AM on October 6, 2016 [6 favorites]
How about taking a look at something as basic as Wikipedia before you start throwing terms around?
Bourgeoisie: a sociologically defined class, especially in contemporary times, referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class: the upper (haute), middle (moyenne) and petty (petite) bourgeoisie (which are collectively designated "the Bourgeoisie"). An affluent and often opulent stratum of the middle class (capitalist class) who stood opposite the proletariat class.posted by No Robots at 9:39 AM on October 6, 2016
Thank you for independently confirming that I was correct.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:41 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Autumnheart at 9:41 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
You mean the part that says, "referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital ?"
posted by No Robots at 9:42 AM on October 6, 2016
posted by No Robots at 9:42 AM on October 6, 2016
The bourgeoisie are not the capitalist class. This is Marxism 102. Take a second class.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:46 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:46 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
If you take 10 high school students educated in that system, I'll be flat out astonished if 7/10 of them can name more than one Revolutionary War battle. I'd be astonished if 7/10 of conservative home-schooled kids couldn't name at least three.
Well, good, because battles don't matter. It doesn't matter if you can name 10 Revolutionary War battles, that list of names and places tells you next to nothing about what the Revolutionary War was actually about.
Part of the education gap in this country is about the failures of history education. US history is our story, and it matters how you tell it. If you reduce it down to a dry series of dates and facts, or an exercise in empty jingoism, you're doing students a disservice, and you end up with a populace that's history illiterate. There's a huge portion of people who just can't draw a straight line from historical events to the present day, who can't connect historical cause to present day effect, because they've never been given the tools or knowledge to do so, and the media aids and abets this with reporting that's unmoored in context and history.
Now history is a field that's more subject to spin and bias then, say, the hard sciences. Reasonable people can have differences of opinion in how to interpret and present any given historical event/movement. But a good education in history is supposed to give you the tools to make your own judgments about how to evaluate different perspectives and different lenses through which to view history. A good education in history is part of the foundation of good citizenship, and of media literacy.
posted by yasaman at 9:47 AM on October 6, 2016 [6 favorites]
Well, good, because battles don't matter. It doesn't matter if you can name 10 Revolutionary War battles, that list of names and places tells you next to nothing about what the Revolutionary War was actually about.
Part of the education gap in this country is about the failures of history education. US history is our story, and it matters how you tell it. If you reduce it down to a dry series of dates and facts, or an exercise in empty jingoism, you're doing students a disservice, and you end up with a populace that's history illiterate. There's a huge portion of people who just can't draw a straight line from historical events to the present day, who can't connect historical cause to present day effect, because they've never been given the tools or knowledge to do so, and the media aids and abets this with reporting that's unmoored in context and history.
Now history is a field that's more subject to spin and bias then, say, the hard sciences. Reasonable people can have differences of opinion in how to interpret and present any given historical event/movement. But a good education in history is supposed to give you the tools to make your own judgments about how to evaluate different perspectives and different lenses through which to view history. A good education in history is part of the foundation of good citizenship, and of media literacy.
posted by yasaman at 9:47 AM on October 6, 2016 [6 favorites]
The bourgeoisie are not the capitalist class. This is Marxism 102. Take a second class.
The bourgeoisie has a commitment to maintaining the capitalist system, which guarantees its status via its educational institutions. The promise that anyone can rise to the bourgeoisie via this educational apparatus is now generally discredited. The bourgeoisie can continue to enjoy the status confirmed upon it by the education system, but those denied access to that system are now opposed to it.
posted by No Robots at 9:53 AM on October 6, 2016
The bourgeoisie has a commitment to maintaining the capitalist system, which guarantees its status via its educational institutions. The promise that anyone can rise to the bourgeoisie via this educational apparatus is now generally discredited. The bourgeoisie can continue to enjoy the status confirmed upon it by the education system, but those denied access to that system are now opposed to it.
posted by No Robots at 9:53 AM on October 6, 2016
The article points out that Trump does particularly well with non-college-educated small business owners, which is the very definition of the petite bourgeoisie. And the petite bourgeoisie have historically been the folks who are most attracted to fascism, so that's not terribly surprising.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:08 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:08 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
The bourgeoisie are not the capitalist class. This is Marxism 102.
I guess the professor covering this section of 102 is using someone else's syllabus? In Marxist thought the two phrases are basically synonymous. This is about as fundamental a mistake as it's possible to make, literally contradicting the Manifesto, never mind a century-plus of later theoretical elaboration. Coding this kind of unearned sneer in educational terms definitely has something to do with the subject of the thread, though!
posted by RogerB at 10:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
I guess the professor covering this section of 102 is using someone else's syllabus? In Marxist thought the two phrases are basically synonymous. This is about as fundamental a mistake as it's possible to make, literally contradicting the Manifesto, never mind a century-plus of later theoretical elaboration. Coding this kind of unearned sneer in educational terms definitely has something to do with the subject of the thread, though!
posted by RogerB at 10:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
CS and EE degree holders often confuse training and education.
A lot of this will boil down to STEM departments having a different business model than humanities and social science departments, but I for sure have known waaaaaaaay more engineers and physical-science types who were taking literature or music or history courses because they were just interested in it than I have literature or history types who were taking science courses out of interest. But again, humanities/ss departments have an interest in creating courses that "outsiders" might appreciate that STEM departments usually don't.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
A lot of this will boil down to STEM departments having a different business model than humanities and social science departments, but I for sure have known waaaaaaaay more engineers and physical-science types who were taking literature or music or history courses because they were just interested in it than I have literature or history types who were taking science courses out of interest. But again, humanities/ss departments have an interest in creating courses that "outsiders" might appreciate that STEM departments usually don't.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:17 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
literally Marxism 101 different writers have used terms in different ways but it's not as if he has nothing to stand on
posted by atoxyl at 10:20 AM on October 6, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 10:20 AM on October 6, 2016
oh you got there first roger
posted by atoxyl at 10:20 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 10:20 AM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Folks maybe let's leave the specific topic of exactly how to use the term bourgeoisie, and just get back to the substance. Also PSA, please don't flag a dozen comments, just flag a couple and let us figure it out or hit up the contact form.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:33 AM on October 6, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:33 AM on October 6, 2016
People think that things they don't understand are bullshit. If you don't understand US history, world politics, or economics, you will be likely to think that people talking about any of those things, or about things that hinge on an understanding of those things, are full of shit. This is frequently what people are talking about when they call things pretentious or elitist. They often seriously believe that people who talk about things they don't understand are just trying to project some sort of superiority. That's what people mean when they say that Trump is a straight talker. They mean that he's using words they understand and concepts they can grasp. He doesn't do complexity or subtlety, and he doesn't talk about boring things like international law, so if his foreign policy consists primarily of war crimes, that's fine, because that stuff is all bullshit anyway.
It doesn't require a college education to understand those things, or to learn how to think critically, but over a large population, it's probably one of the better ways to sort for that.
The reason college educated people are less likely to be conservative overall isn't because they're being actively indoctrinated, or at least not entirely. It's because it's designed to develop critical thinking skills, to teach people to question what they see and hear and evaluate and think through them themselves.
But Trump isn't even a regular conservative. He's actively hostile and unhinged, and he's moving the Overton window like whoa. I know some conservatives, and they're wrong about a lot of things, but they don't support Trump.
(Oddly, and this is just a weird anomaly, the two people I sort of know who support Trump are not only not white, but they're both immigrants. They're not related or anything, either. Two completely separate people who don't know each other.)
posted by ernielundquist at 11:09 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
It doesn't require a college education to understand those things, or to learn how to think critically, but over a large population, it's probably one of the better ways to sort for that.
The reason college educated people are less likely to be conservative overall isn't because they're being actively indoctrinated, or at least not entirely. It's because it's designed to develop critical thinking skills, to teach people to question what they see and hear and evaluate and think through them themselves.
But Trump isn't even a regular conservative. He's actively hostile and unhinged, and he's moving the Overton window like whoa. I know some conservatives, and they're wrong about a lot of things, but they don't support Trump.
(Oddly, and this is just a weird anomaly, the two people I sort of know who support Trump are not only not white, but they're both immigrants. They're not related or anything, either. Two completely separate people who don't know each other.)
posted by ernielundquist at 11:09 AM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
As others have mentioned above, the key part is critical thinking skills. For the majority of USians, that doesn't happen until you get to college. So the idea is that people who haven't gone to college don't have those skills, but of course that's not true. If you had a primary education that focused on critical thinking, or parents that encouraged it, or if your own mind was curious enough, you can develop those skills outside of college. And alot of people do.
On the flip side, it is very possible to go to college and not learn critical thinking skills. But it can also give you engineer's disease because you believe that a college education makes you able to critically think and be an expert.
I mean, there are people who have gone to college who believe the Earth is flat. Who believe gravity doesn't exist. Who believe that "chem trails" are actually preventing Russia from sending us back in time (a college educated friend of my father's actually believes this). Going to college doesn't make you not stupid, and boy are people stupid.
(my own personal aphorism is "never underestimate the stupidity of the american people" and it has been true for most of my life but good god I hope I'm wrong when it gets to Nov. 8)
posted by LizBoBiz at 11:10 AM on October 6, 2016
On the flip side, it is very possible to go to college and not learn critical thinking skills. But it can also give you engineer's disease because you believe that a college education makes you able to critically think and be an expert.
I mean, there are people who have gone to college who believe the Earth is flat. Who believe gravity doesn't exist. Who believe that "chem trails" are actually preventing Russia from sending us back in time (a college educated friend of my father's actually believes this). Going to college doesn't make you not stupid, and boy are people stupid.
(my own personal aphorism is "never underestimate the stupidity of the american people" and it has been true for most of my life but good god I hope I'm wrong when it gets to Nov. 8)
posted by LizBoBiz at 11:10 AM on October 6, 2016
The article talks around the around the issue of how an uneducated electorate can elect a good government, how do we elect politicians who'll appoint the right experts to implement policy. This goes beyond just having college degree or not, because not everybody can be policy wonk, and nobody can be an expert on every issue the government has to make decisions about, not even politicians.
I think maybe this is a case where parliamentary systems with proportional list representation works better than the two-party system we have in the US. If I lived in Sweden, for instance, I think I could vote for the Social Democrats or Center Party and count on their leadership to fight for my interests, and use their leverage to get smart, competent people appointed to cabinet positions affecting issues I particularly care about if they become part of a coalition government. That's because in this kind of system you end up with parties representing narrower sets of interests and voters can have more confidence that their party's leadership will look out for them.
I don't feel that way about the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton is a very smart, competent politician, but, as a working-class Democrat, I realize my interests are mostly just given lip service to and in practice barely tolerated in the Democratic Party. I'm not very confident that she'll look out for my interests or appoint experts who will advance them. That's something I just have to accept because her opponent would be a lot worse.
posted by nangar at 11:14 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
I think maybe this is a case where parliamentary systems with proportional list representation works better than the two-party system we have in the US. If I lived in Sweden, for instance, I think I could vote for the Social Democrats or Center Party and count on their leadership to fight for my interests, and use their leverage to get smart, competent people appointed to cabinet positions affecting issues I particularly care about if they become part of a coalition government. That's because in this kind of system you end up with parties representing narrower sets of interests and voters can have more confidence that their party's leadership will look out for them.
I don't feel that way about the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton is a very smart, competent politician, but, as a working-class Democrat, I realize my interests are mostly just given lip service to and in practice barely tolerated in the Democratic Party. I'm not very confident that she'll look out for my interests or appoint experts who will advance them. That's something I just have to accept because her opponent would be a lot worse.
posted by nangar at 11:14 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
I am insulted by the insinuations above that people who didn't follow the one true path of formal university education are destined to become right-wing knuckle draggers.
FWIW this isn't how I, at least (as one of the "above" commenters) perceive the situation. For one thing, I don't think it's a 1-to-1 causal relationship. Many factors, and specifically I noted race and gender, interrelate to make someone a Trumper. For another, I attempted, perhaps poorly, to identify the problem not as a lack of "a one true path" of education but simply a lack of exposure to a wide body of information, and a lack of exposure to critical thinking as an important life skill. A person can get these things anywhere, especially today, but I think they are most likely to get them in the formal structure of education.
Finally, I think every single one of the Trumpists I've met could *just* as easily have been a far-fringe left-winger. Because the key is that they are susceptible to just accepting all information as fact, unchecked, and they have no strong baseline against which to compare it.
Near as I can tell, there's no evidence there is an inalienable and unquestioned truth, but a lot of people seem to act as if there is one and describe it as "facts" without any qualifier.
The Trumpers I've met aren't stupid, in the sense of not being able to think clearly or well. But they literally were never taught that state legislatures are different from Congress. Or how treaties work. They have at best a vague concept of separation of powers/checks and balances, and so they believe that US presidents just make declarations like kings and lo, it is done. They've had no pressing reason to question these ideas. So they haven't.
What do you call this other than a lack of verified facts at their disposal?!? I mean if it's just the word that bothers you, fine then! "The US has a bicameral legislature" is a STATEMENT, which is an ACCURATE DESCRIPTOR of a situation in reality. The term "bicameral legislature" also has a widely understood and accepted meaning. And the Trumpers I know have not been exposed to this information.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2016 [9 favorites]
FWIW this isn't how I, at least (as one of the "above" commenters) perceive the situation. For one thing, I don't think it's a 1-to-1 causal relationship. Many factors, and specifically I noted race and gender, interrelate to make someone a Trumper. For another, I attempted, perhaps poorly, to identify the problem not as a lack of "a one true path" of education but simply a lack of exposure to a wide body of information, and a lack of exposure to critical thinking as an important life skill. A person can get these things anywhere, especially today, but I think they are most likely to get them in the formal structure of education.
Finally, I think every single one of the Trumpists I've met could *just* as easily have been a far-fringe left-winger. Because the key is that they are susceptible to just accepting all information as fact, unchecked, and they have no strong baseline against which to compare it.
Near as I can tell, there's no evidence there is an inalienable and unquestioned truth, but a lot of people seem to act as if there is one and describe it as "facts" without any qualifier.
The Trumpers I've met aren't stupid, in the sense of not being able to think clearly or well. But they literally were never taught that state legislatures are different from Congress. Or how treaties work. They have at best a vague concept of separation of powers/checks and balances, and so they believe that US presidents just make declarations like kings and lo, it is done. They've had no pressing reason to question these ideas. So they haven't.
What do you call this other than a lack of verified facts at their disposal?!? I mean if it's just the word that bothers you, fine then! "The US has a bicameral legislature" is a STATEMENT, which is an ACCURATE DESCRIPTOR of a situation in reality. The term "bicameral legislature" also has a widely understood and accepted meaning. And the Trumpers I know have not been exposed to this information.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2016 [9 favorites]
CS and EE degree holders often confuse training and education.
CS and EE degrees are not really that heavy on vocational training really - at least at many schools they aren't - though some people think they should be more so. It's just an education that can be pretty narrowly focused on a certain set of abstractions. (Though I took quite a few humanities courses but then I actually have a B.A. in CS).
posted by atoxyl at 11:50 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
CS and EE degrees are not really that heavy on vocational training really - at least at many schools they aren't - though some people think they should be more so. It's just an education that can be pretty narrowly focused on a certain set of abstractions. (Though I took quite a few humanities courses but then I actually have a B.A. in CS).
posted by atoxyl at 11:50 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
“Trump also leads among college-educated white men....by 11 points”
For some reason everyone seems to think, whatever they want, that at some point there won’t be a sea-change as the result of seemingly small but actually exponential shifts in the system. Sorta like when the pond is ½ full of lilly pads in the math word problem.
Prev.
The problem is not education but bias and pre-judgement. Actually, I’ll go further than the article, it’s not a clash of worldviews, it’s a clash between people who think they know and people who know they know. And both of course are wrong. Certainly most people think a well written or well spoken argument on an issue is more valuable than some “knuckledragger” gibbering on about whatever prejudices.
But what about the issue itself (right or wrong) as an expression of change?
Obviously someone who expresses themselves poorly can be right and someone who argues for a living can be wrong, but that’s not the thing. It’s a matter of apparent anticipation vs. apparent autonomy more than liberty vs. authority (actual or just apparent).
Let me put it this way, very wealthy buddy of mine, Trump supporter (which, tangentially makes practical short term sense from his perspective given he’d have more money in his own pocket) asked me who do I “trust” – Trump or Clinton. And honestly, I’d have to say Trump because the way he framed the question given the implications in his question - TONS I’d have to write here to fully clarify - but suffice it to say he’s saying Clinton is more a part of the old boys’ network and beholden to an entrenched system and Trump, despite (or indeed because of) being part of the wealthy class is more likely to bring deeper, lasting changes. That is, more autonomy (again, apparently.)
So to reframe it I asked him, who would you rather have as president if we made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization during their term?
He’s reconsidered his support for Trump.
Right now, the old saw (if you read "Listen Liberal") is the GOP represent the top 1% and the Dems represent the top 10% and that both (educated people in this case) believe inequity is the normal and righteous order of things (with what kind of inequity being the difference; economic inequity bad, educational inequity good).
(Indeed, people say enormously elitist things without a hint of irony. Why don't those low class dunderheads encourage social cooperation? Or the Orwellian flip of the "no-Fly list" Horrible oppression under Bush. Wonderful tool under Obama or Clinton.)
If you remove the (apparent) protection of respective privilege (wealth v. education in the guardian) and more importantly strip it bare to naked reality – because it could be aliens, it could be a near apocalyptic meteor strike, invention of anti-gravity or smart enough to work robots, hell, could be the technological singularity, any sort of enormous change that basically resets all previously standing socio-economic standards (again, not so crazy, look at what the Black Plague did to per capita income in England, hell of a Brexit there) – you see where societies actual interests lay.
The John Rawls “veil of ignorance” thing. If you don’t know what your place in society is going to be – who you going to vote for?
("Intelligence and talent, for those playing the thought experiment rigorously, would thus cease being mere boons for the individuals that are lucky to have them and instead become social resources that help even those who don’t have them.")
You see, the education isn’t going to do it for you. That implies that you’d trust someone else to make decisions for you if they were better educated. Bush the lesser went to Yale, no?
So if you base your position on (Rawls) idea starting by imagining you know nothing of yourself, how smart you are, your abilities, gender, etc. you’ll try to make decisions for the good of every person in the community without regard to self-interest.
Hence my “aliens” addition.
Hey, Trump’s rich, that’s nice. The aliens bring replicators so material wealth is nearly meaningless. Teleporters and holo-grids, and the ability to colonize other worlds, so real estate is pointless as a commodity.
Now what?
Not that I hold any great hope for people to suddenly get it. We did have to fight wars to end (open) slavery. But I think it’s not just Rawls idea that the concept that slavery seems justified if you can’t see how you could be one and that gets reversed if you see you too could be a slave (because the ancient world had slave systems just like that) – but rather there’s a social intertia of the presumption that there is (or needs to be) an elite.
- of any kind, intellectual, moral, wealthy, etc.
No system can anticipate an outside context problem. Even when individuals or groups can forsee it (and this is the big like of the preppers, et.al, though God help me I’m one), there’s not a whole lot that can be done. Certainly you can survive (and I’m sure there were groups of tough as nails Aztecs) but everything about your perspective on the world gets erased.
And while the “aliens” example probably won’t happen, it’s not like outside context changes don’t happen to civilization ALL the time. The Spaniards giving the big Hello to the Aztecs is just the classic example. Asia and Eastern Europe had the Mongols. The Byzantines had their own plague
The collapse of housing prices in a country with a growing population was weird and did damage, sure. But it didn’t change everything. In fact, the largest problem with it was that it didn’t change anything. What did Brexit, really, change? Yeah, the pound dropped to a 30 year low, blah blah blah. But really, they’re still trying to work out what it means.
The change itself is itself the subject being debated. So whatever happens…nothing really seems to change.
The flaw of thinking it as “democracy letting off steam” is that human adrenal glands give us rage (fight or flight) because the body expects a great deal of (hopefully) useful work to get done.
That’s what anger is for.
When the hormones rage and nothing happens, well, that’s called a panic attack.
Most people will do just about anything to avoid those and saying the action they take (whatever action they take, right or wrong, factual or illusory) isn’t rational, as a criticism, isn’t actually getting anything done either.
We have a veil of forgetfulness over the veil of ignorance that the first terms we debate over - hell, over what "education" is - are tilted from the outset.
Anyone at the negotiating table is privileged from the outset by being able to have a seat at the table.
So yes, concentration of wealth bad. We should stop that since it destroys political rights. But each citizen should have the ability to influence the political realm not only to respect their individual rights, but to maintain our understanding of our position as equal citizens despite differences in talent or ability or social class.
Someone might not have had the same kind of background enrichment as another person grew up with, and may not have equal eloquence in expressing their ideas, but given equal interest and participation in politics, everyone should have an equal chance of influencing it.
And that's simply not so in the U.S. and not just because of respective backing of wealth.
The way the world works, works, because that's the way people make it work. And someone's ignorance of how it works doesn't mean they shouldn't have a right to sit at the table, it means they're excluded from the outset of a self-reciprocating inequality.
Reminds me of Trump saying he was a genius for not paying taxes legally, while also saying he gives politicians who make the laws so much money they kiss his ass when he picks up the phone.
Same dance.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:12 PM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
For some reason everyone seems to think, whatever they want, that at some point there won’t be a sea-change as the result of seemingly small but actually exponential shifts in the system. Sorta like when the pond is ½ full of lilly pads in the math word problem.
Prev.
The problem is not education but bias and pre-judgement. Actually, I’ll go further than the article, it’s not a clash of worldviews, it’s a clash between people who think they know and people who know they know. And both of course are wrong. Certainly most people think a well written or well spoken argument on an issue is more valuable than some “knuckledragger” gibbering on about whatever prejudices.
But what about the issue itself (right or wrong) as an expression of change?
Obviously someone who expresses themselves poorly can be right and someone who argues for a living can be wrong, but that’s not the thing. It’s a matter of apparent anticipation vs. apparent autonomy more than liberty vs. authority (actual or just apparent).
Let me put it this way, very wealthy buddy of mine, Trump supporter (which, tangentially makes practical short term sense from his perspective given he’d have more money in his own pocket) asked me who do I “trust” – Trump or Clinton. And honestly, I’d have to say Trump because the way he framed the question given the implications in his question - TONS I’d have to write here to fully clarify - but suffice it to say he’s saying Clinton is more a part of the old boys’ network and beholden to an entrenched system and Trump, despite (or indeed because of) being part of the wealthy class is more likely to bring deeper, lasting changes. That is, more autonomy (again, apparently.)
So to reframe it I asked him, who would you rather have as president if we made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization during their term?
He’s reconsidered his support for Trump.
Right now, the old saw (if you read "Listen Liberal") is the GOP represent the top 1% and the Dems represent the top 10% and that both (educated people in this case) believe inequity is the normal and righteous order of things (with what kind of inequity being the difference; economic inequity bad, educational inequity good).
(Indeed, people say enormously elitist things without a hint of irony. Why don't those low class dunderheads encourage social cooperation? Or the Orwellian flip of the "no-Fly list" Horrible oppression under Bush. Wonderful tool under Obama or Clinton.)
If you remove the (apparent) protection of respective privilege (wealth v. education in the guardian) and more importantly strip it bare to naked reality – because it could be aliens, it could be a near apocalyptic meteor strike, invention of anti-gravity or smart enough to work robots, hell, could be the technological singularity, any sort of enormous change that basically resets all previously standing socio-economic standards (again, not so crazy, look at what the Black Plague did to per capita income in England, hell of a Brexit there) – you see where societies actual interests lay.
The John Rawls “veil of ignorance” thing. If you don’t know what your place in society is going to be – who you going to vote for?
("Intelligence and talent, for those playing the thought experiment rigorously, would thus cease being mere boons for the individuals that are lucky to have them and instead become social resources that help even those who don’t have them.")
You see, the education isn’t going to do it for you. That implies that you’d trust someone else to make decisions for you if they were better educated. Bush the lesser went to Yale, no?
So if you base your position on (Rawls) idea starting by imagining you know nothing of yourself, how smart you are, your abilities, gender, etc. you’ll try to make decisions for the good of every person in the community without regard to self-interest.
Hence my “aliens” addition.
Hey, Trump’s rich, that’s nice. The aliens bring replicators so material wealth is nearly meaningless. Teleporters and holo-grids, and the ability to colonize other worlds, so real estate is pointless as a commodity.
Now what?
Not that I hold any great hope for people to suddenly get it. We did have to fight wars to end (open) slavery. But I think it’s not just Rawls idea that the concept that slavery seems justified if you can’t see how you could be one and that gets reversed if you see you too could be a slave (because the ancient world had slave systems just like that) – but rather there’s a social intertia of the presumption that there is (or needs to be) an elite.
- of any kind, intellectual, moral, wealthy, etc.
No system can anticipate an outside context problem. Even when individuals or groups can forsee it (and this is the big like of the preppers, et.al, though God help me I’m one), there’s not a whole lot that can be done. Certainly you can survive (and I’m sure there were groups of tough as nails Aztecs) but everything about your perspective on the world gets erased.
And while the “aliens” example probably won’t happen, it’s not like outside context changes don’t happen to civilization ALL the time. The Spaniards giving the big Hello to the Aztecs is just the classic example. Asia and Eastern Europe had the Mongols. The Byzantines had their own plague
The collapse of housing prices in a country with a growing population was weird and did damage, sure. But it didn’t change everything. In fact, the largest problem with it was that it didn’t change anything. What did Brexit, really, change? Yeah, the pound dropped to a 30 year low, blah blah blah. But really, they’re still trying to work out what it means.
The change itself is itself the subject being debated. So whatever happens…nothing really seems to change.
The flaw of thinking it as “democracy letting off steam” is that human adrenal glands give us rage (fight or flight) because the body expects a great deal of (hopefully) useful work to get done.
That’s what anger is for.
When the hormones rage and nothing happens, well, that’s called a panic attack.
Most people will do just about anything to avoid those and saying the action they take (whatever action they take, right or wrong, factual or illusory) isn’t rational, as a criticism, isn’t actually getting anything done either.
We have a veil of forgetfulness over the veil of ignorance that the first terms we debate over - hell, over what "education" is - are tilted from the outset.
Anyone at the negotiating table is privileged from the outset by being able to have a seat at the table.
So yes, concentration of wealth bad. We should stop that since it destroys political rights. But each citizen should have the ability to influence the political realm not only to respect their individual rights, but to maintain our understanding of our position as equal citizens despite differences in talent or ability or social class.
Someone might not have had the same kind of background enrichment as another person grew up with, and may not have equal eloquence in expressing their ideas, but given equal interest and participation in politics, everyone should have an equal chance of influencing it.
And that's simply not so in the U.S. and not just because of respective backing of wealth.
The way the world works, works, because that's the way people make it work. And someone's ignorance of how it works doesn't mean they shouldn't have a right to sit at the table, it means they're excluded from the outset of a self-reciprocating inequality.
Reminds me of Trump saying he was a genius for not paying taxes legally, while also saying he gives politicians who make the laws so much money they kiss his ass when he picks up the phone.
Same dance.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:12 PM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
This is because CE and EE educations don't expose people to a classical educational experience in which you learn to value the experience and viewpoints of others. I was given two elective slots in 5 years in my engineering program.
As an engineer (and an EE, no less), I agree 100%. I enjoyed most of my coursework in college, but really wish I could've taken more liberal arts classes. Most of my classmates seemed to put the minimal effort into their electives and considered them a distraction from their "real" classwork. Unfortunately this seemed to be the prevailing attitude in engineering school - buckle down, learn your trade, then get out and get a job ASAP. I actually liked most of my electives - Political Science in particular was a favorite - and wish I could've taken more. I even toyed with the idea of minoring in a language for a while, kind of regret not doing that now.
FWIW the fellow EE/CS types I've worked with have been all over the map politically. Back when I was private-sector, most of my co-workers seemed to veer libertarian more than anything (not surprising, considering the line of work tended to draw small business owner / startup types). My current workplace (government) is much more liberal.
posted by photo guy at 6:18 PM on October 6, 2016
As an engineer (and an EE, no less), I agree 100%. I enjoyed most of my coursework in college, but really wish I could've taken more liberal arts classes. Most of my classmates seemed to put the minimal effort into their electives and considered them a distraction from their "real" classwork. Unfortunately this seemed to be the prevailing attitude in engineering school - buckle down, learn your trade, then get out and get a job ASAP. I actually liked most of my electives - Political Science in particular was a favorite - and wish I could've taken more. I even toyed with the idea of minoring in a language for a while, kind of regret not doing that now.
FWIW the fellow EE/CS types I've worked with have been all over the map politically. Back when I was private-sector, most of my co-workers seemed to veer libertarian more than anything (not surprising, considering the line of work tended to draw small business owner / startup types). My current workplace (government) is much more liberal.
posted by photo guy at 6:18 PM on October 6, 2016
I was just thinking about this!
I was thinking about taking English and Communications my first year of college, and how much of that was concentrated on propaganda and reasoning fallacies.
I think Teleprompter Trump loves the uneducated, because they have one thing in common... they don't know the difference between "glittering generalities" and a "personal attack."
posted by Mike Hunt at 6:24 PM on October 6, 2016
I was thinking about taking English and Communications my first year of college, and how much of that was concentrated on propaganda and reasoning fallacies.
I think Teleprompter Trump loves the uneducated, because they have one thing in common... they don't know the difference between "glittering generalities" and a "personal attack."
posted by Mike Hunt at 6:24 PM on October 6, 2016
I wonder if it's education or tribalism. The people I know who support Trump violently reject Clinton as not sharing their values and say they "like" Trump. These people have pretty much the same "education" as me.
I went to a diverse college. As a science major I wasn't *taught* anything particular about liberal values, but I came to see the kinds of people I knew in college as my "tribe". If I had gone to a less diverse college I might have gotten a different definition of my tribe. If I had only gone to high school, I might now have a very narrow view of who is like me. You could argue that "education" is having experiences that give you a broader outlook and a deeper empathy and this causes you to embrace a larger sort of tribe. That's not necessarily a college education at all.
posted by acrasis at 6:58 PM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I went to a diverse college. As a science major I wasn't *taught* anything particular about liberal values, but I came to see the kinds of people I knew in college as my "tribe". If I had gone to a less diverse college I might have gotten a different definition of my tribe. If I had only gone to high school, I might now have a very narrow view of who is like me. You could argue that "education" is having experiences that give you a broader outlook and a deeper empathy and this causes you to embrace a larger sort of tribe. That's not necessarily a college education at all.
posted by acrasis at 6:58 PM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
CS and EE degrees are not really that heavy on vocational training really
My CS program in the late 1980s was like a hopscotch progression on how to become a well-rounded (if junior) journeyman programmer. Pascal -> C -> Assembler -> Minix -> Software Engineering -> Compiler Design -> Circuit Design -> AI -> 3D Graphics -> Natural Language -> Databases -> Networking Queueing Theory -> Formal Automata, with large sides of undergrad physics and calculus sequence.
Now, the physics and calculus was useless for CS but did expand my brain to see a bit more how the world actually works.
Political Science in particular was a favorite - and wish I could've taken more. I even toyed with the idea of minoring in a language for a while, kind of regret not doing that now.
heh, I was able to go 7 years as an undergrad and added International Relations as a "minor", along with two years of Japanese.
College was so cool I didn't want to leave. Back then it was essentially free, too (a quarter was just one month's rent).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:56 PM on October 6, 2016
My CS program in the late 1980s was like a hopscotch progression on how to become a well-rounded (if junior) journeyman programmer. Pascal -> C -> Assembler -> Minix -> Software Engineering -> Compiler Design -> Circuit Design -> AI -> 3D Graphics -> Natural Language -> Databases -> Networking Queueing Theory -> Formal Automata, with large sides of undergrad physics and calculus sequence.
Now, the physics and calculus was useless for CS but did expand my brain to see a bit more how the world actually works.
Political Science in particular was a favorite - and wish I could've taken more. I even toyed with the idea of minoring in a language for a while, kind of regret not doing that now.
heh, I was able to go 7 years as an undergrad and added International Relations as a "minor", along with two years of Japanese.
College was so cool I didn't want to leave. Back then it was essentially free, too (a quarter was just one month's rent).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:56 PM on October 6, 2016
It's interesting that the discussion has drifted into how formal coursework in the liberal arts makes you a more open minded, rational, better voter, since that is either orthogonal to or opposed to the article's thesis. Which is that a lot of the new split comes from the self-reinforcing social networks that split off the educate from uneducated, plus the natural bias the educated will have towards technocratic decision making. One results of this process is stated most bluntly here:
But when the educated look out for themselves they can dress it up as something ostensibly better than that: expertise.
To those on the receiving end, that stinks. It stinks of hypocrisy, and it also stinks of self-interest. The fact that the educated are not always the beneficiaries of the social attitudes that they hold – Corbyn’s supporters, like Bernie Sanders’s, would rightly insist that many of the positions they adopt are designed for the benefit the socially excluded – does not help. It just makes them sound even more self-righteous.
posted by mark k at 8:41 PM on October 6, 2016
But when the educated look out for themselves they can dress it up as something ostensibly better than that: expertise.
To those on the receiving end, that stinks. It stinks of hypocrisy, and it also stinks of self-interest. The fact that the educated are not always the beneficiaries of the social attitudes that they hold – Corbyn’s supporters, like Bernie Sanders’s, would rightly insist that many of the positions they adopt are designed for the benefit the socially excluded – does not help. It just makes them sound even more self-righteous.
posted by mark k at 8:41 PM on October 6, 2016
But when the educated look out for themselves they can dress it up as something ostensibly better than that: expertise.
Fuck that. You know what? Fuck that. It's 2016, and the term "red state" is just this close to come to mean "a state where you should check online before drinking the tap water."
Seriously, Tea Party and GOP drive fuckups have poisoned the tap water in: OH, WI, MI, SC, NC, FL, and the list is going to grow, because they are pushing policies that will directly lead to this.
As you might imagine, a Trump presidency will federalize the problem. And that is precisely because the GOP has been on a decades long exercise in political theater that disparages expertise.
Yes, physical and social separation from the un-bachelor's-degreed is a problem, and listen, liberal, you should do something about that. But not all of us with a technical education are narcissists living in Silicon Valley. Some of us have expertise, and the rest of us at least respect it, and if the only respectable way to bring expertise back into the forefront is to pepper it with the Anglo Saxon, then I'll fucking well do it.
posted by ocschwar at 9:19 PM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
Fuck that. You know what? Fuck that. It's 2016, and the term "red state" is just this close to come to mean "a state where you should check online before drinking the tap water."
Seriously, Tea Party and GOP drive fuckups have poisoned the tap water in: OH, WI, MI, SC, NC, FL, and the list is going to grow, because they are pushing policies that will directly lead to this.
As you might imagine, a Trump presidency will federalize the problem. And that is precisely because the GOP has been on a decades long exercise in political theater that disparages expertise.
Yes, physical and social separation from the un-bachelor's-degreed is a problem, and listen, liberal, you should do something about that. But not all of us with a technical education are narcissists living in Silicon Valley. Some of us have expertise, and the rest of us at least respect it, and if the only respectable way to bring expertise back into the forefront is to pepper it with the Anglo Saxon, then I'll fucking well do it.
posted by ocschwar at 9:19 PM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
Fuck that. You know what? Fuck that. It's 2016, and the term "red state" is just this close to come to mean "a state where you should check online before drinking the tap water."
That would be a good way to miss the point.
People in Flint knew there was a problem. They couldn't tell you for sure how serious it was long term but they were living it. It was the city manager from the educated class, imported from out of town by other educated people, who didn't care--he knew better than the locals. The EPA management also knew not to make too many waves because that's not done lightly if you're credentialed and part of the system. I can't think of a much better illustration of the failures of policy that come from when you start deciding the "correct" people have a monopoly on insight and goals are best met if only you can manage to tune out the masses. Learning the lesson from this abject failure of expertise that we should trust uneducated voters less is a better illustration of the way this problem is so pernicious than anything in the article.
You're probably confident you wouldn't have fallen for that one because the educated people screwing it up were (mostly) not your kind of people, more corporate types than you like perhaps. Maybe it's true, but it still leaves you open to the next mistake by people like you if you insist on only listening to "experts" to tell you what people "should" want.
To point at myself, I'm in my mid-forties and very much, by temperament and background, of the educated class. And I can probably list a half-dozen center-left "educated" positions I've held that I now think of as having "fallen" for, because they were thought up by people like me and explained in my terms and the downside for people like me was limited. ("College educations are great and everyone should get one. Let's pressure people in that direction. I'd prefer grants but I'm sure even if we just loan the money it'll be a net positive!") God knows what I'm missing now.
posted by mark k at 11:16 PM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
That would be a good way to miss the point.
People in Flint knew there was a problem. They couldn't tell you for sure how serious it was long term but they were living it. It was the city manager from the educated class, imported from out of town by other educated people, who didn't care--he knew better than the locals. The EPA management also knew not to make too many waves because that's not done lightly if you're credentialed and part of the system. I can't think of a much better illustration of the failures of policy that come from when you start deciding the "correct" people have a monopoly on insight and goals are best met if only you can manage to tune out the masses. Learning the lesson from this abject failure of expertise that we should trust uneducated voters less is a better illustration of the way this problem is so pernicious than anything in the article.
You're probably confident you wouldn't have fallen for that one because the educated people screwing it up were (mostly) not your kind of people, more corporate types than you like perhaps. Maybe it's true, but it still leaves you open to the next mistake by people like you if you insist on only listening to "experts" to tell you what people "should" want.
To point at myself, I'm in my mid-forties and very much, by temperament and background, of the educated class. And I can probably list a half-dozen center-left "educated" positions I've held that I now think of as having "fallen" for, because they were thought up by people like me and explained in my terms and the downside for people like me was limited. ("College educations are great and everyone should get one. Let's pressure people in that direction. I'd prefer grants but I'm sure even if we just loan the money it'll be a net positive!") God knows what I'm missing now.
posted by mark k at 11:16 PM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
You're probably confident you wouldn't have fallen for that one because the educated people screwing it up were (mostly) not your kind of people, more corporate types than you like perhaps.
The Mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, has a Ph.D and has skillfully tried to get help for her city despite being legally disenfranchised. Darnell Earley, who oversaw the transition of water in Flint, has a Masters. His predecessor Edward J. Kurtz, has a Ph.D; Earley claims Kurtz made the decision and Earley didn't think it was his place to question it. Everyone involved is at the higher education level, so I don't think that's a meaningful divide in this case; "racist" covers it much more effectively using the fig leaf of "fiscal responsibility". Education means dressing your prejudices up in fancier language or have more effective ways of justifying it to yourself, but it doesn't mean those prejudices go away.
I'm dubious of a focus on education without including age, race and class factors. Class has an enormous effect on education, in terms of what can be afforded, what is desired, and what can be accomplished. Race, likewise, has an enormous effect especially since for many people of color their education neither includes nor reflects them. Without data that is more broken out to account for other factors, I'm worried we'll be stuck in a "uneducated people do X" while ignoring the correlations with age, race and class and often ignoring that including other factors means that those differences show up in both populations though with a lesser effect (see: white men prefer Trump overall, the tendency exaggerated in white men without degrees, but it's being reported as "Trump leads with uneducated voters").
Interestingly, there's also a significant divide in the UK among it's white races - the Scotts (62.0%) and Irish (55.8%) voted remain while the English (~56.05) and Welsh (52.5%) voted leave - except for London, which voted remain (59.9%). I don't think it makes any sense to necessarily break these down by education more than anything else, even if the results are significant. The article cites age differences in particular as another driver, and certainly results in the 70%s is worth paying attention to, but not at the expense of over-generalization.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:05 PM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, has a Ph.D and has skillfully tried to get help for her city despite being legally disenfranchised. Darnell Earley, who oversaw the transition of water in Flint, has a Masters. His predecessor Edward J. Kurtz, has a Ph.D; Earley claims Kurtz made the decision and Earley didn't think it was his place to question it. Everyone involved is at the higher education level, so I don't think that's a meaningful divide in this case; "racist" covers it much more effectively using the fig leaf of "fiscal responsibility". Education means dressing your prejudices up in fancier language or have more effective ways of justifying it to yourself, but it doesn't mean those prejudices go away.
I'm dubious of a focus on education without including age, race and class factors. Class has an enormous effect on education, in terms of what can be afforded, what is desired, and what can be accomplished. Race, likewise, has an enormous effect especially since for many people of color their education neither includes nor reflects them. Without data that is more broken out to account for other factors, I'm worried we'll be stuck in a "uneducated people do X" while ignoring the correlations with age, race and class and often ignoring that including other factors means that those differences show up in both populations though with a lesser effect (see: white men prefer Trump overall, the tendency exaggerated in white men without degrees, but it's being reported as "Trump leads with uneducated voters").
Interestingly, there's also a significant divide in the UK among it's white races - the Scotts (62.0%) and Irish (55.8%) voted remain while the English (~56.05) and Welsh (52.5%) voted leave - except for London, which voted remain (59.9%). I don't think it makes any sense to necessarily break these down by education more than anything else, even if the results are significant. The article cites age differences in particular as another driver, and certainly results in the 70%s is worth paying attention to, but not at the expense of over-generalization.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:05 PM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
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Talk about the dog that didn't bark. Omitted from the Guardian's article:
Trump also leads among college-educated white men....by 11 points
I guess that's more evenly split, but still pretty lopsided.
posted by jpe at 5:33 PM on October 5, 2016 [7 favorites]