“We know. You don’t”

1 Response to “We know. You don’t”

1. Mark Miller says:

   January 11, 2014 at 11:31 pm

   Gosh, there’s so much here, it’s difficult to know where to begin. What I mean is in the comments that came afterwards. One of the commenters said that, “This makes sense, since liberals tend to be better educated than conservatives.” This has been touted many times before, because if one looks at the raw statistics, it seems to be true. More liberals have more college degrees than conservatives do. What I realized about a year go is that most of the degrees are in the Arts & Humanities. Not very many Americans get degrees in math, science, or engineering. So, most college graduates tend to have been steeped in some kind of history (one that’s viewed through an indiscriminate lens), literature (postmodern), and political philosophy (of a leftist variety). They know how to read and write, but they aren’t literate, not in the sense of being able to engage in an argument, to read a significant body of work, such as an essay or a book, and to critique it on its merits, rather than summarily judge it out of hand. They weren’t taught to analyze information, to model it into a coherent whole, test a theory for its rigor, and then come to their own conclusion about it. In short, they’re prepared to become writers, journalists, voters (in the sense that they’re capable of reading pamphlets, marketing materials, and recognizing names and backgrounds, and understanding they need to go through a procedure to influence a political outcome), and political activists, but little else. They’re able to hear, speak, and recall from memory, but understand next to nothing.

   This isn’t to say that Arts & Humanities is worthless. Rather, it’s been made to be worth very little by our universities.

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