Hi Billy, Fascinating article.
I found this bit confusing, though: On Apr 22, 2012, at 12:22 PM, [email protected] wrote: > My friends who work in sociology always warn me about confusing cause and > correlation. Yet I think most people would agree, regardless of where they > are on the political spectrum, that the public discourse in this country has > been declining rather than improving in recent years. I would suggest that > there might be some correlation between that decline and the degree to which > our commitment is weakening to the kind of education I’m talking about. I > tend to trust the public more than politicians, but too many politicians try > to get the conversation down to the lowest possible denominator and reduce > the conversation to slogans and sneers. If you have an educated citizenry, > they will recognize that. That’s the bedrock tenet of our democracy. We > cannot have a thriving democracy without an educated citizenry. If college > works as it should, you will have more citizens who can tell the difference > between panderers trying to sell you a bill of goods and someone who is > making a reasoned argument and respecting you as a thinking human being. If > we don’t have a citizenry like that, we can just close up our democracy. > That’s perhaps the biggest reason we should all be concerned about the future > of college as an institution. > The irony is that I'm pretty sure we have more college educated people than ever before -- and certainly pretty much everyone in Congress has a college degree -- but that doesn't seem to be improving the public discourse. I somehow doubt that selecting only graduates of liberal arts colleges would make things better, but I'd be interested in seeing some data. The only conclusion I can make from his argument is that either: a) colleges aren't doing the job they should do b) it encourages exerts like him to make sweeping statements without the data to back it up c) by "more educated" he means "more liberal", so that people will agree with his side of the discourse Either way, it makes me *more* interested in destroying the presumed credibility college holds in our culture -- if only to force schools like the ones he lionizes to actually deliver what they promise. The real danger to college isn't their future, but their present. -- Ernie P. > -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
