In America, freedom of opinion has been recast as the freedom to believe whatever we want, and anyone challenging that notion, or suggesting that opinions should have some basis in fact, does so at his own peril.
Like the value of the humanities, which will be understood afresh by their absence, the value of a rigorous education will come clear by the alternatives. It will probably still take quite a while.
Oh, Mark, all so true, so sad, so detrimental to us, the people in the US , and the world. We must do whatever we can to stop the Felon and his henchmen. Sharing your words.
A lot of the problem seems to be corporatization, where higher education is a business and public k-12 is an afterthought because it’s a public service. However the value that drives that doesn’t seem to be anti-education as such just anti-public services. And it might be the deeper value there is the lie force fed to Americans for some time - that they can do anything and don’t need anybody else to approve if it. Remember that in places like Germany and CZ most people don’t get to study their preferred subject (at least last time I checked in CZ it was like 70% - this may have gone down since there are more private universities now). Studying literature in college? Philosophy? Forget about it - for most, at least. That said, there is a stronger highschool education, which provides a lot of what American college tries to catch people up on. Another interest thing is that the people who teach in public schools in the US are college educated - and for some reason education majors in the US are some of the dummest, most intellectually incurious people (at least according to one person I met who was forced to teach them which is sadly reflected, except in a few shining exceptions, in my own observation.) Perhaps these sorts of people would never be allowed to teach in a system that actually made all college selective (not just those few I institutions that provide a “pedigree” as Vance maddeningly calls his Ivy League degree in his memoir). But that, of course, would require good highschool education and public college education which would be selective. So, I think it’s a systems problem more than anti-education problem as such. After all, more people are getting college degrees than ever, or certainly the trend has been upward.
Like the value of the humanities, which will be understood afresh by their absence, the value of a rigorous education will come clear by the alternatives. It will probably still take quite a while.
Oh, Mark, all so true, so sad, so detrimental to us, the people in the US , and the world. We must do whatever we can to stop the Felon and his henchmen. Sharing your words.
Hofstadter's book is really good. I read it a long time ago and it left an impression.
A lot of the problem seems to be corporatization, where higher education is a business and public k-12 is an afterthought because it’s a public service. However the value that drives that doesn’t seem to be anti-education as such just anti-public services. And it might be the deeper value there is the lie force fed to Americans for some time - that they can do anything and don’t need anybody else to approve if it. Remember that in places like Germany and CZ most people don’t get to study their preferred subject (at least last time I checked in CZ it was like 70% - this may have gone down since there are more private universities now). Studying literature in college? Philosophy? Forget about it - for most, at least. That said, there is a stronger highschool education, which provides a lot of what American college tries to catch people up on. Another interest thing is that the people who teach in public schools in the US are college educated - and for some reason education majors in the US are some of the dummest, most intellectually incurious people (at least according to one person I met who was forced to teach them which is sadly reflected, except in a few shining exceptions, in my own observation.) Perhaps these sorts of people would never be allowed to teach in a system that actually made all college selective (not just those few I institutions that provide a “pedigree” as Vance maddeningly calls his Ivy League degree in his memoir). But that, of course, would require good highschool education and public college education which would be selective. So, I think it’s a systems problem more than anti-education problem as such. After all, more people are getting college degrees than ever, or certainly the trend has been upward.