. wrote:
lukhman_khan<[email protected]> wrote:
For a person to be able to vote there should be a minimum education criteria.
I disagree. Adding any form of criteria is discrimination and it flies
against the very tenet of democracy, besides being unconstitutional,
by denying each individual an equal right to _one_ vote.
I've got to side with lukhman here. I do not wish the mentally deficient
to help decide the fate of my country. We can all imagine those so
enfeebled by age, disease, or damage that their vote could never be more
than a random selection, though we can agree to disagree on how to draw
that line.
But once that line exists, and I think it must, we then have to consider
where it should be located. Positions chosen in history have ranged from
permitting near comatose individuals to have their votes cast by their
family to dictatorships with an electorate of one.
Now here in the US, there's a free public education system (granted, of
varying quality), that provides education to a certain generally
agreed-upon level. For those who drop out and wish to earn such a degree
later, there is an equivalency exam widely and inexpensively available.
This educational standard does not guarantee wisdom, which is what I'm
sure we'd all here prefer, but it does argue that the individual has the
skills with which to consider the news and make a decision. This is, I
grant, a long way from saying they will *apply* those skills.
Would this be a reasonable standard of education? I think it might be,
but it's not possible now. The US still suffers from the legacy of a
racially segregated educational system of unequal quality, and
discriminatory educational tests have been applied here in living
memory. Might work in a few decades here, or now elsewhere.
Would a more advanced degree be a better standard? Perhaps, but for now
I'm more concerned about developing *some* minimum, such as the ability
to read and understand English, which itself is under attack here.
But how does an educational requirement strike the rest of you?
Bruce
