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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (240125)	12/18/2013 1:44:37 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541551

It is the effect of the culture not the education. Education simply informs you of things. It does nothing with regards to what you will want to do with that information or how much drive you will have in pursuing your goals. Furthermore education is always incomplete. If one is not interested in continuous learning, then he/she will remain ignorant as the knowledge base expands. Your goals are not achievable through education; they require cultural and attitude changes. Here is another example: I have a family friend who is a most terrible cook. We always eat before going to her house for "dinner" and at pot luck parties nobody eats her foods. This past weekend she was over and we had a chat about food. She actually makes fun of her mother in law and her friends who follow recipes. She started out with the position that cooking is about just mixing food together without the need for measurements and "creating" food. This is certainly true about master chefs with decades of experience and training, but not so for the average cook...and she is not even average. But as we talked more about it, it became obvious that she finds following a recipe time consuming, she hates making measurements, and she is not really a "foodie" person. It is a much more pleasing world view for her to think that by just throwing some ingredients into the pot she is following the methods of master chefs than to think she is a terrible cook who is too lazy to do it right. All the food network shows on TV or gift cookbooks will not do anything for her. Why is this story significant? Because we are talking about something that is fairly easy to evaluate, learn, and make progress on. It is non-political without ethics and value issues. There are lots of objective information about it available. And yet, there she is, immune to reality. I can just as easily see how some people take political positions on war to prove themselves tough and brave, to mock sources of info to the contrary so they can prove themselves more knowledgeable, or to just talk past a person of the opposite party because they are more interested in "winning" than in the truth. You seem to think education can change this. I don't. A cultural shift towards transparency, accountability, and optimism however can change that. If my friend really knew what everyone thinks of her cooking (transparency), and had to deliver on the food instead of hers getting shuffled in the mix of all food available (accountability) and if she genuinely believed and had a drive towards being a better cook (optimism), then she would have been a decent cook long time ago. But since all of us know how to "handle" her, nothing changes. The same goes for political positions and the society. ST

To: koan who wrote (240125)	12/18/2013 6:03:03 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541551

Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated By KATE ZERNIKE and MEGAN THEE-BRENANPublished: April 14, 2010 Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. =========================== Yale Professor 'Embarrassed' to Discover Tea Party Members are Scientifically Literate October 17, 2013 - 12:42 PM You know that line liberals love to lob at the Tea Party: you're stupid. Well, obviously that's not the case, nor has it ever been true. Now, a Yale professor has released some new research showing that the so-called "Tea Party radicals" are actually scientifically literate. Professor Dan M. Kahan of the psychology department at Yale says he was surprised to discover a positive correlation between science comprehension and members of the Tea Party: "Identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure." "I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension." - See more at: cnsnews.com =========================== I thought to remind you of this since you seem to think that better education will bring about better political support for your political positions :P ST