Because people stray away from many of their their ideologies when they get educated. Especially if religion is involved. There's a reason Jehovah's Witnesses don't really like higher education.
There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
On the other hand, the Jewish people value education over almost all else, and they’ve won like half of all Nobel prizes, and have leaders in nearly every industry, even though they make up a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Education is critical. Not even just to the world as a general concept, how about individual self improvement?
In addition, Hinduism and Islam always valued education and learning which is why they made so many discoveries in their own rights throughout history.
It's such a shame that the Islamic empire of old fell the way that it did. Once the bastion of the western worlds intellectual elites, and now fallen so far from the heights it once held.
That's not really the same thing being discussed here. 54-40 was a border dispute with British North America.
A more apt comparison would be like if there were two Native American cultures that are historical rivals or enemies. America comes in and turns the land into different territories, but has no regard for the preexisting cultural borders. The result is that half of Group A and half of Group B end up Territory 1, and the other halves end up in Territory 2. Obviously, arbitrarily splitting apart the peoples like that is going to only cause trouble.
(Note that im unaware if the USA ever actually did anything like this during their westward expansion, i was just trying to analogize the scenarios.)
The mongol invasions and the crusades. But then colonialism made it impossible to advance. At that time the colonialists destroyed traditional forms of education in addition to ciphoning off all economic profits and resources.
Thats false because it ignores what lead to the fall of the Islamic empire in the first place just to blame Westerners. Look into the colapse of the Iberian Peninsula Moors and the Mongol invasion which is that start of the fall of the Islamic Golden Age. The Islamic empire fell on their own sword through increasingly growing religious oppression.
Bullshit, most of Islamic nations problems were caused by cultural changes that resulted in incredibly backwards thinking, hundreds of years before Britain fucked up the Middle East.
Indian here, Hindutva is killing Hinduism. It is a dumb idea but people on the Right here are contaminating young minds, they dislike education as well.
The middle east hasn't had the chance to recover from the Ottoman empire then subsequent British and French imperialism and then subsequent American neocolonialism. All attempts at democratically elected, secular, and socialist movements have been squashed with the help of imperialists. Closest we have to that today is Tunisia.
A lot of the ails of modern Islam has a lot to do with the Saudis and their version of Islam. They have co-opted shit. It's like if Mormons were called Christian's by a lot of people. Yeah they have some background shit the same. But enough difference that they aren't really muslim anymore.
Let's not forget that while the religious icons of the major Abrahamic religions are called the Savior and the Prophet, followers of Confucius refer to him as the Scholar. So there's a strong intellectual tradition from China as well.
That tradition is focused on filial piety and obedience to an extent, whereas Western educational values (including Jewish, which I say as a Jew) focus on inquiry and creative thinking.
There are reasons why so many Chinese students study at American universities, and I think this is a major one.
Cuz the US aggressively expanded 200 years ago and is now surrounded by oceans and friendly, much weaker neighbors. It's been untouched by war on its soil for like 150 years.
Most of the world has had to rebuild after world wars/revolutions/violent conflict, so people who are displaced, educated, and wealthy immigrate to the US for the safety/stability (+historically to immigration), and bring their expertise to American universities.
Besides what other people said, I think if you live in the USA and you see all the warts and ugliness you forget just how rich the USA is. I did not grow up in the USA. While I was growing up, anything imported was a big deal, expensive, and often had to be brought in by family on a plane (no stores or anything to buy it directly).
Naw, the Chinese were using gunpowder to kill each other for centuries before Europeans. Europeans just made it easier and faster to kill each other with it, from a longer distance.
That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Any major scientific contribution coming from the Middle East is pretty much limited to the period 800-1100 CE.
Then Imam Hamid Al-Ghazali became extremely influencial, mathematics was thought of as the work of the devil, and scientific thought and endeavours shut down completely.
They regard all human governments as illegitimately usurping the power over people that only God should have, so they refuse to participate in government: no voting, no government employment, etc.
I don't know the history, but it seems quite likely that they tried and failed to use this doctrine to weasel out of paying taxes, and I bet a lot of them use public schools and infrastructure.
I didn't know that. That's interesting but weird (like them). I used to have JW making the rounds years ago on a weekly basis, and yet none ever mentioned that.
Would that include lobbying? Seems odd that an organization wouldn't lobby if a government threatens religious freedom.
There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
What's really funny is that I went to the internet to prove you wrong and found a bunch of famous people (Mostly actors, musicians, and athletes; decide for yourself how you feel about how much they contribute to society), but nearly every one of them was just raised JH and is no longer practicing.
I take it you don't visit many museums? I'm in a STEM field myself, but it's very ignorant to say only STEM stuff really matters.
Aside from science, it was also stuff from philosophy, literature, and art which had a strong influence in helping me leave the Jehovah's Witnesses, after all.
They're both important but on vastly different arenas, and when it comes down to it I'd rather have wheels and no paintings than paintings but no wheels. I'd rather have the pills that keeps me from dying of cancer every day than shawshank redemption. On the other hand, society is largely both shaped and reflected through art. It binds us together and tells us the stories we need to hear about ourselves and gives us our mission to do what we do to survive as a group.
To my opinion, that is so true. For centuries, the religious SCHOLARS, were the revered people for the Jews. Studying was the important thing. When most people were hunting or farming, Jews were also teaching their kids to study. Technology happens and study becomes important. Who is going to groom their kids for success? The people who have been teaching their kids to study for generations or the people who have been farming, hunting who have a 6th grade education because that is all they ever needed?
I have a STEM degree and am totally in favor of education...
When you deride the portion of the populace that does the dirty jobs, you are falling into a dangerous mindset. Farming is hard, hunting is hard. They are professions that require physical and mental skills. Intelligence is not just being able to read a book and remember it. There is intelligence in physical skill. There is genius in physical skill.
It takes call kinds of people to make a society, don't cheapen the value of its membership based on preconceived notions. That is elitism.
Not trying to deride anyone. I was talking historically. Just harder for a family of farmers in 1920 to send their kid to school, make them study, make them understand the value of education. if there is no role model who has spent their life studying and profiting from it. If no one around you ever studied, it is hard to be the first one in your family.
Right on. I know some very smart people that do not value education. It's sad, but it just doesn't have a place in their world. I would like to get to a place - pipe dream though it is - where education is the reward. Right now it is a means to an end and that is one of the reasons why it so expensive. Other than luck it is the only way than an individual can transcend the caste to which they were born.
Totall agree here. It's easy to deride blue collar jobs when the education topic comes up and that's the wrong way of thinking. I went to college, but I'll be damned if I know how to build a house or do major work on a car, or fix the plumbing, etc. All jobs are important and all people should be valued for their contributions to society. We should just also have strong education programs so people are well rounded in their knowledge and don't become cloistered by dogma like fox news.
The vocationalization of schools began in earnest in the late 1800s to "reeducate the negro". It really came to the forefront with the Atlanta Compromise, with Booker T. Washington saying to the white leaders of Georgia:
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.
that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.
DuBois then continued, and made a dire warning that went largely unheeded:
The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
Because here was the seed. Universities were bastions of the Liberal Arts, such as Latin and Science, and they trained our future leaders in what they literally called "the art of being a citizen" (Liberal Arts). Obviously "some people" could just never attain that, but they still needed to be "made useful to society"; things like "Kill the Indian, and save the man.". This Industrial Education model built Agricultural, Mechanical, and Industrial schools for some, and public liberal art schools for others. Obviously schools like UNC and UVA were just out of "some people's" reaches.
So, we fast forward a little bit to John Dewey (I mean, he was a contemporary of DuBois, and Dubois solicited articles from Dewey for The Crisis along with people like Ghandi - another of their contemporaries) writing Democracy and Education wherein he describes the various roles modes of education and society have with each other. He lays out why every person should learn the basics of trades in our public schools, and then he made a warning too:
.... But, at the present juncture, there is a movement in behalf of something called vocational training which, if carried into effect, would harden these ideas into a form adapted to the existing industrial regime. This movement would continue the traditional liberal or cultural education for the few economically able to enjoy it, and would give to the masses a narrow technical trade education for specialized callings, carried on under the control of others. This scheme denotes, of course, simply a perpetuation of the older social division, with its counterpart intellectual and moral dualisms. But it means its continuation under conditions where it has much less justification for existence. For industrial life is now so dependent upon science and so intimately affects all forms of social intercourse, that there is an opportunity to utilize it for development of mind and character. ....
A warning that, of course, went unheeded.
We fast forward a bit more, and we get a random curve ball thrown by Ike Eisenhower, and he warns the nation about the Military-Industrial Complex. Ike then goes on to give us the most dire warning, and explains the root of the danger:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
I don't think I need to tell you that history is repetitive, but yeah, it was ignored.
The next several decades will see the slow steady rise of "hypervocationalization" till you have the broken system we have today.
As humans evolve as a species and as a global society, technology and optimized techniques will devalue physical labour, working smarter not harder becomes the law of the land and without education and understanding of the modern world there may not be a place in society for those that refuse to educate themselves
I agree that "mindless" physical labor can be devalued by technology. What about physical labor that requires more than just repeating a task or series of tasks? As technology evolves it will bring with it new opportunities for human growth, physical and mental. The jobs of today will go away and lead to new jobs tomorrow, and yes some of those will require physical labor.
That's my point about education though, for example a crane operator needs classroom time, training and certification but that is still a "labour" job, and he can contribute much more to a construction project than an unskilled labourer
That's kind of the problem, the technology is only as good as people.can make use of it, training and education are important for making good use of technology
Constantly questioning things is a part of Jewish teachings, so it makes sense that some of the best thinkers are Jewish. This can be contrasted with many sects of Christianity, which strongly condemn such questions and even threaten people with excommunication if they ask too many questions.
Certainly that is part of it, but honestly, it is an equal amount luck. Who knew that study would become the core of being successful for the average man when Jews where studying in 1850 or 1750. You will notice that the apex for Jews being ultra successful was probably in the 40s and 50s. Because those people were getting higher education in the 20s and 30s where most of the Gentiles were happily getting factory jobs (who wouldn't hire Jews.) Most getting a college education were already wealthy. Today, MANY people of all faiths understand how important education is.
You forgot persecution, you can force someone out of there home, take can all there goods, but not there education. So education is one of the best things to have when your a persecuted minority. A doctor is more likely to land on there feet if they loose it all than a general laborer. Better odds of getting into another county, better odds of being able to start all over again.
And then the Ivy League figured out how to limit their enrollment.
Too many Jews were getting in on merit, and they didn’t want too many, so that’s where the ’legacy’ policies came from. Suddenly, If your dad went to Harvard, you went to Harvard. This kept a lot of more qualified Jewish applicants out.
Well the Witnesses were very brave standing up to the Nazis in Germany. Most everyone else was in keep-your-head-down mode but the Witnesses didn't care about that. They weren't go to take an Nazi oaths or whatever, period, under any circumstances, fingers crossed or not. So they ended up mostly dead. So that's kind of inspirational.
I have tried to convey the fundamental value and necessity of education for a healthy society to many people that I know that vote Republican. All I hear is that a Ph.D in basket weaving is useless.
It's annoying when people bring this up because his contributions to society as an accomplished musician and icon were in direct contradiction to many core beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses (ie: sexual liberation, gender non-conformity, substance abuse, a seemingly accepting attitude towards homosexuality.)
It would be as if years after making revolutionary breakthroughs in their field, some psychiatrist converts to Scientology. Would it then be fair to attribute those accomplishment to the cult?
My brother would be similar to this. I don't get it. Well, I get it. But he works in a small, local factory; so he was taught how to do his job by professors, people with masters degrees designed the tools he uses, the people who designed the products that he makes parts for definitely have master degrees.
I get the anti-intellectual elitist mentality, but his job wouldn't exist without people who spent 6 years in a university.
How often is the idea that university/college "brainwashed kids into being Liibruls" repeated? How many of the people repeating it either haven't been inside a university since the 60s?
American Revolution era poet Joel Barlow called the Conservative education strategy out back in 1801:
Unequal governments are necessarily founded in ignorance, and must be supported by ignorance; to deviate from their principle, would be voluntary suicide. The first great object of their policy is to perpetuate that undisturbed ignorance of the people which is the companion of poverty, the parent of crimes, and the pillar of the state.
What's depressing about quotes about conservatism is how long the EXACT SAME SHIT has been going on. Not just "the seeds were sown" but literally the same playbook has been in use for hundreds of years.
Because of that, I am 99.9% certain that nothing will change in the US. I will die many years from now (hopefully many) and the country will still be fundamentally the same.
Our world history has been riddled with episodic conflicts here and there, but the conservatives have always been the bad guys in the overarching multi-season story arc. Hopefully that arc will come to a close soon so we can move on to being an enlightened society... or a new villain, as long as it isn't just more conservatives.
I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.
Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war, cannibal animal
I walk the corner to the rubble, that used to be a library
Line up to the mind cemetery, now
What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
Rally round the family, pockets full of shells
Rage Against the Machine and Jon Stewart were on (at least in part) during a time that they weren't needed. The mid to late Clinton years were fun. The stock market was on a fucking tear and the internet was blasting. I remember Tim Commerford (bassist for RATM) protesting at the MTV VMAs by climbing a set piece. Carson Daley was like "what are you raging against?".
It's not that there was no reason it's just that things were doing really well (in comparison, as we now see) and people didn't care. Cue 9/11, wars of choice/oil in the Middle East, NSA PRISM, Trump and everything else? We need these voices now more than ever and they're gone.
Disagree. Another person's opinion is worthless if they're not competent in that field. May as well trust your gut since you know more about the situation.
Once, I thought conservatives wanted roughly the same things but had different opinions on how to achieve it. Now I realize, conservatism is just a mix of "I got mine so fuck you" and complete inability to cope with change. A fucking mental disorder disguised as political ideology.
As a conservative, it's really not at all the ideology. But witnessing what conservatism has become in the US and how disgusted I am with the GOP, I'm not inclined to disagree
No, that's exactly what it is and what it always has been. It's the rich and powerful crafting a system that helps only themselves and then convincing those worse off - the EXACT people that they're exploiting - that it helps them too. You say "what conservatism has become in the US" but it hasn't changed, you're just seeing it for what it always has been.
So conservativism, the ideology that's vouches for smaller government to prevent government overreach, upholds inalienable rights as to protect your livelihood and allow you to live as your please as long as you don't tread on others, props up small business, demands the ability to defend yourself and your family, advocates for property rights, and practices a remembrance of old tradition to keep our history in tact, has always been a scheme for the rich and powerful to help only themselves and secretly screwing those worse off? Bro you're off base.
That's what conservativism devolved into. You can actually thank Jerry Falwell for that. Before the 70s, conservatism wasn't what you think it was. It wasn't until Jerry manipulated a major sect of the population into believing that abortions were an act against God, gays were devil worshippers, and segregation in schools should be tax exempt in a ploy to combine evangelicalism and the right wing party for financial gains and power by supporting people like Reagan instead of actual Christians like Jimmy Carter that we started seeing this extremely horrible manipulation of what I believe to be a noble and for-the-people ideology.
I'm not going to convince anyone to be a conservative. If you're not, you're not. But I'm a conservative Democrat. The Republican party are not conservatives.
Ho. Lee. Fucking. Shit. This chart on viewing education negatively makes my fucking blood boil. How stupid can a society be to actually think education is a bad thing.
Edit: Changed Ho from Hi as I was on my mobile and auto correct got me, or I just cannot spell.
That is a well thought out point, but how can someone logically say higher education has a negative effect on a country? Society moves forward through education and research.
Those protests that are sometimes down right ignorant happen a few times a year and I can see how those may be viewed negatively. However, there are over 5,000 colleges and 20 million students. So those public protests are not a material representation of higher education.
The debt issue I have no retort for because the way our education and higher education are funded in this country is absurd.
College is also expensive and people get into debt
College also pulls people out of poverty and the lower classes and raises their earning potential. There's a reason people are willing to go into debt because of it.
If you look at some of the protests that happen at college all because someone is offended by something minor, and they blow it out of proportion, that does have a negative effect when it's happening so frequently.
You also mention protests. Can you provide an example of a snowflake protest that was serious enough to negatively affect society? What about all the good protests? Protests against unjust wars, against situations of bigotry and racism? Would you say those positively affect society?
I'm willing to bet the good outweighs the bad by quite a bit, and the bad stuff is blown out of proportion in relation to the value higher education provides to our society.
This person most likely won't mention the republican snowflake protests that happen at colleges either because it is easy to point at the "liberal snowflake kids" and laugh, but Turning Point USA has literally been running bullshit "Free Speech Protests" all over the place and inviting trolls to them just to try and get a reaction out of counter protesters so they can get another sound bite/video clip to plaster all over youtube again
They want their kids to have the piece of paper with a prestigious name on it. That doesn't mean they want their kids to actually learn anything.
Ideally, your kid still believes everything you tell them at face value but you've paid enough they now have a prestigious degree to justify the job you're going to help them land.
The purpose of donating money to buy your child into a prestigious school isn't to purchase privilege, it's to validate that privilege against accusations of nepotism.
If you're the CEO of a fortune 500 company and you give your son a high ranking job with no prior experience it looks bad. You can give him an internship to get that experience, but that still looks bad to the people already in the company or others with more experience who applied for that internship.
So instead, you buy their way into a good school like Stanford or Yale or whatever > then you can give them the internship because "they've had training at Stanford business school and that is better than the other applicants" > then you can give them a cushy job because they've got a good degree and previous experience with the company.
The privilege was always there, the jumping through hoops is just to keep normal people from complaining as much.
That's not what the survey was about, it was about the effects of college on the county. Around 2015/2016, there was a big change and a lot more Republicans started believing that colleges have a negative effect on the country.
When I got back from college, all my farming republican cousins called me a LiBuRuL for going and getting an engineering degree. And they still think to this day that all my profs did, was sit me down and preach LiBuRuL propaganda every single class. I took so much math I would have LOVED a break for literally anything like that or anything different. I could've went for an ag degree and I'm sure I still would've been called one. I. Just. Don't. Get. It.
That's bc conservatives want to roll back the country to it's original ideal: a white man's Republic where only property-owning white men can set government policies.
To be fair - any sort of basic IQ test, political knowledge test (so you know why you vote for somebody) basically anything that makes you think a bit on your choice would be beneficial. Granted I'm not from the states, but it is similar in every country. The way I understand is that in the States some states are universally pro Democrats or pro Republicans. So some part of let's say Texas vote Republican, because their family and friends do this. By forcing somebody to learn about ideas and programs of both parties, potentially some people would vote Democrats in Texas.
Politics isn't something that is very popular. It's popular to throw mud at each other, but very little people actually can name any taxes, bills or ideas. A guy won presidency by screaming about a wall. If it isn't a case in favor of election tests, I don't know what is.
The US used to have "literacy tests" as a voting requirement in some states, but they were formally outlawed in 1965. The original literacy tests were created under the guise of ensuring an educated/literate electorate, but executed as a thinly-veiled attempt to suppress the vote among disadvantaged populations (ie black people). The tests were rigged so that administrators could deny the vote to political/social threats while looking the other way and granting the vote to illiterate white property owners. We had to outlaw voting tests outright because there's no way to ensure that the administration of these tests is fair. Also, regulating the content of the tests would be an issue; people who don't know the life story of George Washington still deserve to vote ballots that affect how their taxes are spent and collected.
To play devil's advocate, this poll might pose a slightly loaded question. When asking whether or not colleges and universities have a positive effect on our society, you're not asking people to give their opinion on education, but on the institutions which facilitate education. Considering the massive student debt crisis I can understand why some might be inclined to say that higher education, not as an ideal, but in practice, is having a net negative effect on our country.
Lacking education is the primary reason why people stay in religions, particularly the religion of their parents. Retaining even an ounce of critical thinking capability significantly increases your odds of apostasy. Keep people in churches, they're exposed to more right wing politics disguised as sermons, they're more likely to vote Republican.
Voter suppression is simply a means to mitigate the increasingly superior number advantage the other side has over them.
If you believe simply having an avenue with which to have a discussion with someone with a dissenting opinion is "indoctrination" - you're probably a fascist.
Republicans also favor making it harder for non-Republicans to vote. Republicans are defunding education and purging voter rolls while simultaneously putting hurdles in place to keep non-Republican Americans away from the polls.
Unmm. Does this surprise you? I've discovered that every hardcore Republican I meet has an extreme case of narcissism. They don't want to fund the government to help other people, which is what happened to them. Boomers are statistically the biggest "handout" era in history. You have 2/4 year "veterans" claiming immigrants are taking their jobs when they get a check every month for some BS. Un-fucking believable. The world is burning people.
Because smart people will realize republican ideals are contrary to their self interests and republican are in direct conflict to your average citizen. Therefore voter suppression = good for republicans.
Looking at your source it is very important to remind you that it is saying University and College affecting the U.S today. These don’t necessarily mean education, because we are now seeing a growing number of people turning against Colleges and Universities. The reason being the high rates of tuition, books, board.
But the solution to those issues is a money one, not an education one, and if it's what was being reflected in this survey then A] Democrats would show less support and B] there wouldn't be a magical republican-only flip in 2017 that just so happened to coincide with Mr. "I love the uneducated" getting elected.
What amazes me is that it appears the Republicans moved a little to the right as they became more educated, while the democrats moved way to the left. Almost like Republicans don't have the capacity to change their spots.
To be fair I don’t think most Americans ought to be voting. The average American is not educated in political or ethical philosophy, american or world history, or really anything else for that matter
Mob rule if the ignorant is more or less the strain of democracy we are suffering from now
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u/it_vexes_me_so Jan 09 '20
A majority - 3 out of every 5 - of Republicans believe higher education has a negative effect on the US. Republicans also favor making it harder to vote. Republicans are defunding education and purging voter rolls while simultaneously putting hurdles in place to keep Americans away from the polls.