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In America, Most Republicans Think Colleges Are Bad for the Country (chronicle.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Chronicle of Higher Education:
A majority of Republicans and right-leaning independents think higher education has a negative effect on the country, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center on Monday. The same study has found a consistent increase in distrust of colleges and universities since 2010, when negative perceptions among Republicans was measured at 32 percent. That number now stands at 58 percent. By comparison, 72 percent of Democrats or left-leaning Independents in the study said colleges and universities have a positive impact on the United States... In the Pew Research Center's study, distrust of colleges was strongest in the highest income bracket and the oldest age group, with approval levels of just 31 percent among respondents whose family income exceeds $75,000 a year and 27 percent among those older than 65.
This sudden decline in opinion isn't the result of some new strain of anti-intellectualism, as some Democrats will no doubt suggest, but rather the perception that modern universities have become hotbeds of SJW, "Antifa," and anti-capitalist ideology. That's why the disapproval numbers are particularly high among those with higher incomes (who HATE anti-capitalists).
Even I'm more distrustful of modern universities than I used to be just a few years ago. And I used to be a professor.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And I wish Evergreen were just a completely fringe case. But sadly, even many mainstream universities in red states are now indoctrinating students and stifling any dissent. Even reddest of red states, Tennessee, had to pass a law (against the opposition of its own public university administrations) just to guarantee students basic free speech rights.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Anyone who disagrees with me must have been indoctrinated. It couldn't possibly be that by becoming better educated these people see clearly the bullshit that the GOP has become."
Right, and that's why we have:
- States trying to ban people marrying the person they love because it disagrees with the Bible. ...
-States trying to force women to carry babies to term even when it'll kill them, because the Bible apparently says they have to.
- States erecting public monuments to christianity, despite constitutional requirements that they don't.
- States trying to force people to be taught non-science in science classes because it disagrees with the Bible.
- States trying to give tax payer funding to churches and calling them schools
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Don't give me that bullshit about no one trying to ram ideology down throats other than the left. The religious right has been trying to ram the bible down everyone's throats for decades.
A large part of the issue stems from STEM threatening religious beliefs, directly or indirectly. While climate change, evolution, and the origin of life and the universe are the common hot-button issues, where religion might directly contradict science, the entire process of questioning understanding, checking for facts, and drawing logical conclusions is antithetical to belief. With a sizable percentage of republicans relying on a base where religion is a very prominent core of their being, it's not surprising that they would be against something that threatens it.
As a whole, the education has the potential to give people the tools to question belief, but more critically, question authority. Given the extreme shift to authoritarian positions by the current crop of republicans, I can definitely see how education can be a threat.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Sadly, there's plenty that do. I'm currently living in Texas, and I can take you to meet several of them right now. Here's a Republican elected official over in Arizona.
http://tucson.com/news/local/e...
You are welcome on my lawn.
And although dependence on big government programs is likely a nice political side effect for people who generally advocate such things, the primary reason for skyrocketing costs is the same as our public pension crisis: special interests lobby for more government spending for their causes, and traditionally, it's been hard for politiciains to say "no" to subsidizing education. If you subsidize something, prices generally go up.
Fascists are not "leftist" no matter what they or other people may call them. You gonna tell me the People's Democratic Republic is a democracy?
They may be "to the left" of Dominionist Republicans, but that's still the extreme right.
I'd bet more American flags are burned
I bet more American flags are burned by veterans and Boy Scouts than at all colleges combined.
You are also hypocrites - you have zero problems with killing humans. It is only the unborn that are, for some reason, sacred.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I disagree somewhat with both you and the person you're responding to. I don't think it's explicitly the engineering or math that is upsetting them, and I don't think it's "brainwashing". The real problem is that, when you get a broad education and actually learn about the world we live in, modern Republican ideology is revealed to be complete insanity.
Evolution and global warming are real. Government isn't inherently evil. You can't always increase tax revenue by cutting taxes. The American "founding fathers" were not trying to create a "Christian nation". The Constitution does not work the way Republicans say it does. Muslims do have the right to practice their religion. There's no "historical proof" that Jesus was a real guy who was really the Messiah. The Bible doesn't say, "Poor people are just lazy. Fuck'em."
So these ignorant morons send their kids to college, and their kids come back saying, "Ummm... Yeah, so... that part of the Bible that says you should kill gay people...? That's roughly the same part of the Bible that says you can't eat bacon. So since you're not completely adhering to the rules in the Bible, maybe it's ok to not-kill gay people?"
And now they're upset. Their kids are using big words, and talking like murdering gay people isn't cool. The only conclusion their tiny minds can reach is that college is evil, and brainwashing their kids against "good ol'fashioned 'Merican values!" At some point, we might just need to find a way to stop listening to those people.
First of all, our schools have been "failing" our students because moronic Republicans on the education boards insist on "teaching the controversy" of their invisible sky man over evolution, and insisting that there has been no debate over climate change. Then throw in the numerous tax cuts that under fund the schools while they try to smooth talk us into believing that charter schools will be more than ponzi schemes to milk even more wealth out of the system. I'm seriously waiting for the conservative push to teach the Flat Earth "controversy".
Your biased lecture against colleges neglect that there are quite a number of alternative conservative colleges which are still quite happy to indoctrinate students and teach women that they are lesser beings to be raped and tossed aside as whores if they dare to question their role in the conservative lifestyle.
The truth is that conservatives hate education. Educated people ask questions and conservatism doesn't like to be questioned. It's an article of faith, like religion, and questions highlight the many conflicting inconsistencies that patch it together. Plus kids go to college, get a degree and then look back at the rural economic wasteland their conservative parents have surrounded themselves with and immediately go live somewhere they can get a job, typically the big scary liberal city.
I went back in for the grad school thing and as a condition of registration, I had to take a sensitivity test where to pass, I had to assert on the multiple-choice quiz at the end that 40% of women on college campuses are victims of rape. And that accused don't have rights because I had a moral duty to "believe the victim."
See what happened? If you challenge the believability of that number ("Look to your left, look to your right, one of you is being raped right now!"), you confess to not "believing." Lovely game, no?
This was ten months ago, and not at some backwater no-name liberal arts school, either.
Church
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
— Isaac Asimov, 1980
I think this is an old (older than the US as a nation) reaction to the pro-intellectuallism of the Northeastern states -- Yankeedom. The culture of this region has always been very pro-education, to the point that during the Puritan era social status was primarily determined by education level. The southern part of the country, of course, had constant economic and ideological conflict with the north. The north was aggressively egalitarian and prized communitarian notions of freedom and community self-government. The south was aristocratic and prized the individual liberty of the aristocrats. Social status in the south was based on wealth and heritage; education was largely irrelevant, though some sub-cultures in the south lionized classical education as a sign of and means to culture and gentility.
I think anti-intellectualism arose primarily as a straightforward rejection by the south of all things northern. As history rolled on, this view became deeply embedded in the conservative culture, and was regularly reinforced by the fact that intellectuals always want to apply their knowledge and theories to change society, while conservatives obviously don't want change.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Don't confuse anti-US College with anti-education
Really? Have you ever learned about the Age of Enlightenment? It's that era that went hand in hand with the scientific revolution and took the western world out of the dark ages of medieval thinking, for good. It's also the reason why the west has been steering human progress for the last 300 years. The dark ages on the other hand where dominated by religious thought, superstition and fraught with prejudice towards critical thinking. Religious fanatics would rather burn progressive thinkers like Galileo Galilei on the stake rather than listen to reason.
I'm sorry, but the conservative right in the US with the denial of climate change supported by the *vast* majority of scientist, their antipathy towards the theory of evolution and efforts to teach creationism in schools, their tactics of spreading fear and uncertainty among the populace to legitimatize their crackdowns on civil rights and their boosting in defense spending, even though in reality terrorism is a marginal threat. All of this looks like steps of a counter-enlightenment movement, a return to the dark ages to me.
I grew up being taught about the Bible as well, but then I grew up, learned critical thinking skills, and realized there is no proof for any god. Since man is the only animal smart enough to understand that it will die someday, the fear of death is a convenient tool by which to control people and gain power. And while people do some really good things to impress their gods, kids also do some really good things to impress Santa, but they grow out of that one day and do those good things, hopefully, just because they are good people. I regularly do good things just because I'm a good person, not because I feel the need to impress a mythical figure.
As such, my life is now ruled by logic, not by the moral standards of people who lived in very different times and who turned to dust thousands of years ago. Since science is built on logic, I trust science, my knowledge of history, and my own moral compass as my guides.
The Republican Party's power is based largely on the manufactured consensus of the fearful, ignorant, and with the addition of the religious right, the superstitious, so it's plain to see why colleges and universities pose a huge threat to their power base, and it clearly explains the impetus for Fox "News" and other right wing propaganda sites to tear at the foundation of our educational institutions by describing them as generating "lefties", "communists", "Marxists", and other buzz words that gin up conservative hatred and fear.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
it's an old joke, but it's not far from the truth. Right wing economics (Supply Side, or what is disparagingly called Trickle Down or Voodoo economics) doesn't work. It's been tried again and again in Red States (Kansas is the latest) and failed miserably. And sure, Communism doesn't work. But Democratic Socialism _does_.
That said, it's not that they're 'growing out of it' but that they're becoming fearful. As you get older and you have something to lose you turn conservative. Not Right Wing. Conservative. You don't want change because you're terrified of losing what you have.
Personally, I'd like to live in a world we're we're not all living in constant terror of dying in a gutter.
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I love how you snowflakes cry.
A "snowflake" is someone who whines about their own sense of entitlement, not someone who speaks up for the rights of others.
Suppression of free speech on college campuses is a serious issue. Liberal advocates of restrictions should learn from history. In the past, policies designed to suppress the right were later turned against the left. McCarthyism was based on laws originally intended to suppress the far right, rather than "commies". Judicial activism was originally a tool of Liberals, but is now increasingly used against them.
In the US, churches have been supported by the state for about a century now. Their tax exemption means I am forced by law to pay their bills.