It's so unfair!
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeRelated source » The 'Education' Mantra
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“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. […] 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. […] 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. […] 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. […] 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.”
— Thomas Sowell, 2011/05/10 (townhall.com)
Thomas Sowell is a man of color, a man of scholarship, a man of wisdom. He is a realist who is unafraid to express his views that often go against the grain of conventional "wisdom", a euphemism for politically correct dogma. Thomas Sowell is one of my heroes.
Sowell is an African-American, a Doctor of Economics, and a Christian. I am an Ashkenazi-American, a Doctor of Nuclear Physics, and a Jew. We frequently express very similar views in our posts. Can't we all just get along? Yes, we can. But a prerequisite, it would seem, would be a meaningful education.
It is hardly surprising that American university campuses are a hotbed of leftist nonsense. I believe it was Churchill who once quipped, "I wouldn't trust anyone who in his youth was not a communist." The important word in that bon mot is "youth". A related aphorism, "Youth is wasted on the young," recognizes that the young are naive, impressionable, idealistic, and would rather engage in panty raids than read books. This is why American parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of having their little darlings cavort in orgies of drinking, whoring, and spouting nonsense at idiotic protest rallies. And then, after earning a semi-worthless diploma in "gender studies", a subject they are all expert in by the time they enter high school, they go out into the big cruel world of employers, who amazingly demand some useful skills in return for gainful employment.
It's so unfair!
Post 1,628 The Big Cruel World of Employers
No comments:
Post a Comment