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July 05, 2006
Too Much Education?
I used to agree with the old saying that "you can never have too much education". Now, however, I'm not quite sure.
Oh, no, I'm not knocking education, it is important, hell, vital. What I'm thinking is that it seems like the majority of the media's {of course, it is the media} most-quoted "hallowed" intellectuals today are extreme liberals, and I thought of one possible reason for this: Too much education.
Look at it this way -- you get a teenager who has not fully developed a mature political viewpoint, purely due to a lack of "real-world" experience (you know, putting bread on the table, paying taxes, sweating overstrained household and personal budgets, worrying about corporate downsizing in their fields or from their own employers, looking for a job in a glutted market, etcetera). He/ she goes to college for four years and earns a BA or BS, then says "hasta la bye bye" and heads for the marketplace. For four years, he/ she has most likely been exposed to more than a little of the liberal political bias that seems to pervade on our campuses these days, but the new graduate's got a strong mind and still thinks for himself.
On the other hand, whether to quench a thirst for higher learning, earn more saleable credentials, both, or simply to get mom & dad to continue supporting him/her (sad to say, but from my own observations, the latter would appear to include significantly more "hims" than "hers"), the graduate might continue on to earn a Master's, then a PhD and end up branching off into other areas and earning other degrees, eventually going into teaching college.
We're talking career academics, people who do little else but teach others what others taught them. It would be like spending an entire military career in boot camp, first as a recruit trainee for 500 months or so, then becoming a drill instructor. Meanwhile, the country's been to war five times but our career boot camper has never been to any of them, and he's training other people to go to war.
Our academics, likewise, spend their entire lives buried in what amounts to society's training compound without ever being tested by the outside, and real, world. They are the theory side of Theory vs Practice. Consequently, they apply that theory to their opinions of what practice should be, which is more often than not like comparing an orangutang to an aardvark.
A concept (like socialism, or that diplomacy works well on people whose only demand is that you let them butcher you), even one that has repeatedly and historically proven not to work but looks good in theory is meat and drink to them. They become so immersed in their reality-sheltered world that the lives of large groups of people they don't know don't even matter to them, unless their circumstances help "prove" the theory at hand.
When confronted with practice-based evidence that their theories are 'way off base, they simply ignore the new facts because they don't fit the "accepted" scenario. This is a phenomenon known as "pontificating", a pomposity that often afflicts those who spend too many years walking among Plato's groves.
Somewhere along the line, one of their common theories has mankind living in harmony, good health, prosperity and peace as one global political entity, in which multiculturalism is playing an early role -- deprivation of national identity. In their Utopian myopia, they don't see the same rights they use to preach freely thus being taken away as one consequence of their theory. And remember what I said about previous failures of the concepts they espouse not mattering? We need only look to the European Union to see what happens when countries give up even an iota of their sovereignty to join in such a pact.
For some reason, too much education seems to lead to the taking of an adversarial position to the United States and our form of government as it was intended by our founding fathers, and as such has been the most successful political experiment in history. According to the output of these lifelong academics, too much education seems to cause support for failure and opposition to success.
If these people are the spokesmen for the "most educated" in this country, we're in baaaaaad shape.
Posted by Seth at July 5, 2006 04:03 AM
Comments
We're talking career academics, people who do little else but teach others what others taught them. It would be like spending an entire military career in boot camp, first as a recruit trainee for 500 months or so, then becoming a drill instructor. Meanwhile, the country's been to war five times but our career boot camper has never been to any of them, and he's training other people to go to war.
I really liked that comparison...
Textbook, and real life are seldom the same. A fact that is frequently forgotten.
Posted by: That 1 Guy at July 5, 2006 02:43 PM
Thanks, T1G, and Amen to that!
Posted by: Seth at July 5, 2006 03:15 PM
Boot camp for 500 months, I shudder at the thought... but then I never would accept a position as an instructor, I had to be in a unit that was executing the mission. There is no doubt the military is far more practical than academia. The military has no “professional” instructors. Experienced “practitioners” rotate in and out of instructing positions substantiating theory with practice and then vice versa. Perhaps the collegiate world should take a lesson from those they love to hate – because it works.
Great post, Seth.
Posted by: Old Soldier at July 6, 2006 04:07 AM
Many thanks, Old Soldier --
I agree completely. Rotating people with fresher or very recent combat experience into the training system is one reason our military is the best there is.
When I was writing this post, I thought about a conversation I had with a liberal career academician I once encountered in Minneapolis, circa late 1989.
My grandfather had told me a lot about life in the Ukraine when he was growing up, and she blatantly disagreed with most of what he had told me. When I asked her if she had ever been there(and she couldn't have been born before 1960, whereas my grandfather came over here as a young adult in the late 1920s), she said "No, I've never been over there, but I've studied the history, politics and culture of the region extensively, so I know whereof I speak."
Unfortunately, that would seem to sum up one of the prime elements in the shaping of the liberal worldview: "I studied it, therefore I'm more of an authority on it than those who have lived it."
In large part because of their training by people who have "been there, done that" in real life and their can-do attitude, our military reflects the American tradition of success, while liberals, largely thanks to theories passed on by the denizens of academe, reflect the French tradition of failure, retreat and surrender.
Posted by: Seth at July 6, 2006 05:42 AM
