58% of Republicans say college is bad. She explains why they feel that way

[applegrove]

By Egberto Willies at Daily Kos

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/6/1687350/-58-of-Republicans-say-college-is-bad-She-explains-why-they-feel-that-way

"SNIP.............


It is shocking that 58% of Republicans think negatively about college. Demos President appeared on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and explained how that came about that should disturb us all.

It isn't an accident that a large percentage of Republicans view college in a negative light. But that thinking is directly responsible for their anti-science stance. Heather explained how it has come to his in this excerpted video.

"Heather, I want to ask you to reference this stat here," said Chuck Todd. "I want to put it up here. On this issue, sort of the anti-intellectual stream that's taking place in the Republican electorate. 58% of Republicans believe colleges and university have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country. I mean it was a startling, wait a minute, I thought we all agreed college was good. We can have a debate about openness in ideologies and universities. But when did we go all the way there?

"Well, I think you really have to, sort of follow, the thread of this narrative," Heather McGhee said. You know Republican strategists began to really recognize how much more highly educated folks were trending towards being more liberal. And we can talk about why that might be. I mean Republicans would say it's a nefarious liberal bias on campus. Others might say that it's actually the more that you study America's history in the world, you understand how much we've fallen short on values of justice and equality. And you want to tend to work more voraciously towards those goals. But if you look at right-wing media, a narrative has really taken root. It's like that the liberal outrage on campus of the day, and that's where that's coming from. There's been a real spotlight a distortion I think of the news of what is coming out of college campuses. But it's just very clear. You start to see it pop up on Breitbart. You start to see pop up on Fox News, and then it moves into the Republican vote."

Ms. McGhee hit the nail on the head.

A real democracy requires an educated population. Democracy is a threat to the plutocracy's permanence. It is clear that Republicans are following the script, the Powell Manifesto.

................SNIP"

[sandensea]

1. An old standby of fascists everywhere.

"Colleges are a den of Marxists" or some version of that, can be found in hard-right rhetoric almost anywhere in the world.

[blueinredohio]

2. Then why do all the rich people send their kids to college if it's so bad?

[applegrove]

3. The warped thinking is only for masses of people who can be tricked

into voting for tax cuts for the rich. Rich people still want cancer studied by government and universities because cancer affects them. They want liberal thinking and philosophy stopped so it will not affect them.

[Renew Deal]

5. Because the rich recognize the lies of the ideology and are smart enough to profit on them.

[haele]

7. Because rich people want their kids to be able to network.

And College/University is one of the primary ways of Networking around. It also gets the heirs out of the house and provides a safe structure in which to get experience in "the Real World". A smart wealthy parent understands that sending kids to college also gives them opportunities to explore their own levels off intelligence and talents.
Of course, University is too often wasted on Alumni spawn and Legacy application slackers who litter campuses with their privileged class angst.

Haele

[Renew Deal]

4. I wonder if there is a self propelling cycle of ignorance, regression, and resentment

Amongst ordinary republicans. It's a cycle of forgoing education because education is "bad." This leads to personal and financial regression which leads to resentment that isn't connected to the true source...misguided political attitudes. Basically, the buy the lies of the "conservative" movement without recognizing the untold truths and suffer for it.

[applegrove]

6. Right. And they feel less secure and lash out at people like them but of

different races or religions. Predictable that less economic security would result in tribalism.

[Igel]

8. I'll be frank.

I've been in enough college classrooms that if my kid wants to major in most social sciences or humanities, I'd tell him we'll find somebody else for his education account and he'll be paying it all on his own.

Not a problem in science, engineering, some humanities or social sciences. Or music, even. But the others ... Oy.

I'll paraphrase a guy interviewed last week on a radio show I listened while cleaning the kitchen.

He was the first in his family to go to college. Working class parents. He went away. He saw something happening to him and tried to resist. But after he graduated he was visiting his parents. He found them obsolete, retrograde, outdated. He had nothing in common with them. Liked different food. Had different politics. No longer laughed and their humor, and his humor was openly insulting towards them. And he was condescending to them--he found them mildly disgusting. He also had to admit that (a) he'd changed and (b) it had very little to do with the factual content or research methodology that he went off to study. The radio host had a quick panicked "change the topic" when he finally said that he had to confess, he was now "elitist" and while he considered himself in solidarity with workers, he didn't like them, didn't understand them, didn't share their views, and fell into "if they only really understood their interests like I do with my white-collar job in a big city." She freaked; honesty on that show about such things is strictly taboo.

Now try it from the parents' point of view, since we like empathy and solidarity with workers and his parents, like mine, were workers.

They raised their child and loved him, wanted the best for him. They saved and helped pay what of his tuition and fees and expenses they could. He goes off to study something, and when he comes back he considers himself refined and superior to them, condescending. What insults them is humorous. What he used to like to do with them is now slumming. Culturally he's morphed, and very little of it had to do with his engineering or history or Italian or whatever it was he studied.

His parents' friends visit and see this thing that came back from school, talking down to them and insulting them no matter how hard he tries, obviously viewing them with distaste. "My kid's 17, and we're close. Do I want my kid going off and coming back not just a stranger, but an enemy?"

I get this. I went away to college and came back distant from my parents. Then again, I always had been, so they couldn't blame the school. While I studied language/literature and science, I got no pomo remake-society content to my literature class. It was Russian literature and "theories" training from the English dept. hadn't made it there. No Derrida. And Saussure, for me, was a linguist, so when postmodernists cite him and get him wrong it's fairly obvious (even if their Saussure' isn't the same Saussure--one must put a derivative ' on their Saussure' to keep them distinct). My parents considered college generally a good thing because it didn't remake me in the professors' image.

If he wants to be a teacher, there are alternative certification programs.

[applegrove]

9. I went to university. Learnt about African history. Had a different view of Britain

than my Anglophile family. Luckily my family liked to debate. We got over it. Sometimes MBA schools indoctrinate too. They create little assholes. Academics are always changing as new ideas are tried or new fads come into play. Sometimes those new ideas pass the test of time. Sometimes they are rejected as not useful or hateful. MBAs are no different. Doubt the GOP wants to stop MBA schools though they are just as guilty of following fads. GOP just wants history to end and go back in the 1870s. Except for cancer research and MBA schools. All partisan reasons to destroy schools.

[yardwork]

10. Well, that's an unfortunately uninformed view of the humanities.t

There are a number of English professors in my family and I majored in History.

The humanities teach people how to think. They teach us logic and insight and, ultimately, compassion for human failings.

[mac56]

11. "He goes off to study something," etc.

Couldn't the same thing be said of kids who enroll in the military right out of school?

"He goes off to get stationed overseas, and when he comes back he considers himself worldly and superior to them, condescending. What insults them is humorous. What he used to like to do with them is now slumming. Culturally he's morphed, and very little of it had to do with his combat skills or artillery or strategy or whatever it was he trained in."

I know many people of my parents' generation who would say that exact thing.

Don't lay it all on academia.

[airplaneman]

12. The most important lesson I learned from college is that learning

is a lifelong endeavor. If I had not had four years devoted to learning - I don't think I would have figured that out. I am sure everyone experience is unique. I think most of the world puts value in education and learning. JMHO.
-Airplane

[MrPurple]

13. A BA in the humanities from a good college will teach you to think, study and write

Skills necessary in society and an advanced workplace. This anecdotal idea that it alienates kids from blue collar families is unfounded. If you have a strong relationship with your children, it's not going to be jeopardized by their expanding the ideas they're exposed to. If you're so insecure that that will alienate your child from you, then you don't have a very deep relationship to begin with.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Exactly. As a STEM grad years ago, I can say that a BA is great, not wasted.

Sure, science, math, and engineering are great careers, but if you can't communicate or understand complex analysis then you only get so far and no further.

People are very complicated. Humanities are not easy, at reputable schools.

I always advise young people to follow their interests deeply, but also keep their radars on wide scan.

When somebody does a deep dive in a field, they are motivated to go farther than dilettantes just in it for a buck or a piece of paper. It leads to truly satisfying success.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Now now ... shouldn't reference the Powell Memo/Manifesto without a link ... ;)

https://junctrebellion.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/how-the-american-university-was-killed-in-five-easy-steps/

(This has been posted on DU numerous times, but it can never be enough.)

The Powell Memo its own evil self: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/