You may think they are "right wing" ideas. But ideas are just ideas. Some ideas the right wing likes- often for the wrong reasons- but it doesn't make the ideas "bad" just because the right wing likes them.
Family, for example, helps a child succeed. We have hard data on this Koan. If you want to ignore it, just because the right wing happens to like families too, that's short sighted, imo.
And I did not imply how education helped you. You said that.
My kid is going to UC Davis because my kid scored in the top 98th percentile, and does not need remedial help to go to Davis. My kid has had two parents grooming it since it was born. My kid had every enrichment program we could find. And I and my husband were willing to pay an enormous amount of our money to have our kids at UC Davis.
I went to Berkeley with minority affirmative action students. They were utterly unprepared for Berkeley. They had to have a special tutoring program for them (and in one instance were given the actual test answers for a test) and still they failed.
So while I'd like to join hands with you and sing Kumbaya and get everyone a fabulous job, not everyone is intelligent enough, or temperamentally suited to college, and a lot of students cannot remediate themselves enough to hack college. It is cruel to send students (black, white and other) off to college, to rack up huge loads of debt, when they haven't a shot at ever succeeding.
I do not believe in the positive results of mass higher education. It defers life too much for a lot of people. Especially when they major in moronic majors which are not needed in society.
We have had this debate before, and while I guess it's interesting you think a college education in even the stupidest majors is rewarding, I will never agree with you on that. And as for the majors that make you money, you need preparation for those- and for many of them, you need a good ability to grasp mathematics. I wish more people had that, but they don't- and that involves aptitude, not just education.
If only things were as simple as you seem to think they are. But they're not. |
