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Townhall...
The ‘Education’ Mantra
By Thomas Sowell
One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are
enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind
those words.
One of those words that many people seldom look behind is “education.”
But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to
courses on baton twirling.
Unfortunately, an increasing proportion of American education, whether
in the schools or in the colleges and universities, is closer to the
baton twirling end of the spectrum than toward the nuclear physics end.
Even reputable colleges are increasingly teaching things that students
should have learned in high school.
We don’t have a backlog of serious students trying to take serious
courses. If you look at the fields in which American students
specialize in colleges and universities, those fields are heavily
weighted toward the soft end of the spectrum.
When it comes to postgraduate study in tough fields like math and
science, you often find foreign students at American universities
receiving more of such degrees than do Americans.
A recent headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education said: “Master’s
in English: Will Mow Lawns.” It featured a man with that degree who has
gone into the landscaping business because there is no great demand for
people with Master’s degrees in English.
Too many of the people coming out of even our most prestigious academic
institutions graduate with neither the skills to be economically
productive nor the intellectual development to make them discerning
citizens and voters.
Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in
the country, without ever learning anything about science, mathematics,
economics or anything else that would make them either a productive
contributor to the economy or an informed voter who can see through
political rhetoric.
On the contrary, people with such “education” are often more
susceptible to demagoguery than the population at large. Nor is this a
situation peculiar to America. In countries around the world, people
with degrees in soft subjects have been sources of political unrest,
instability and even mass violence.
Nor is this a new phenomenon. A scholarly history of 19th century
Prague referred to “the well-educated but underemployed” Czech young
men who promoted ethnic polarization there-- a polarization that not
only continued, but escalated, in the 20th century to produce bitter
tragedies for both Czechs and Germans.
In other central European countries, between the two World Wars a
rising class of newly educated young people bitterly resented having to
compete with better qualified Jews in the universities and with Jews
already established in business and the professions. Anti-Semitic
policies and violence were the result.
It was much the same story in Asia, where successful minorities like
the Chinese in Malaysia were resented by newly educated Malays without
either the educational or business skills to compete with them. These
Malaysians demanded-- and got-- heavily discriminatory laws and
policies against the Chinese.
Similar situations developed at various times in Nigeria, Romania, Sri
Lanka, Hungary and India, among other places.
Many Third World countries have turned out so many people with
diplomas, but without meaningful skills, that “the educated unemployed”
became a cliche among people who study such countries. This has not
only become a personal problem for those individuals who have been
educated, or half-educated, without acquiring any ability to fulfill
their rising expectations, it has become a major economic and political
problem for these countries.
Such people have proven to be ideal targets for demagogues promoting
polarization and strife. We in the United States are still in the early
stages of that process. But you need only visit campuses where whole
departments feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and
resentment, and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization
on campus.
There are too many other soft courses that allow students to spend
years in college without becoming educated in any real sense.
We don’t need more government “investment” to produce more of such
“education.” Lofty words like “investment” should not blind us to the
ugly reality of political porkbarrel spending.
Read it at Townhall
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