The 'Education' Mantra
by Thomas Sowell
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One of the
sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled
by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those
words.
One of those
words that many people seldom look behind is "education." But education
can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on
baton twirling.
Unfortunately,
an increasing proportion of American education, whether in the schools
or in the colleges and universities, is closer to the baton twirling
end of the spectrum than toward the nuclear physics end. Even reputable
colleges are increasingly teaching things that students should have
learned in high school.
We don't have
a backlog of serious students trying to take serious courses. If
you look at the fields in which American students specialize in
colleges and universities, those fields are heavily weighted toward
the soft end of the spectrum.
When it comes
to postgraduate study in tough fields like math and science, you
often find foreign students at American universities receiving more
of such degrees than do Americans.
A recent headline
in the Chronicle of Higher Education said: "Master's in English:
Will Mow Lawns." It featured a man with that degree who has gone
into the landscaping business because there is no great demand for
people with Master's degrees in English.
Too many of
the people coming out of even our most prestigious academic institutions
graduate with neither the skills to be economically productive nor
the intellectual development to make them discerning citizens and
voters.
Students can
graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country,
without ever learning anything about science, mathematics, economics
or anything else that would make them either a productive contributor
to the economy or an informed voter who can see through political
rhetoric.
On the contrary,
people with such "education" are often more susceptible to demagoguery
than the population at large. Nor is this a situation peculiar to
America. In countries around the world, people with degrees in soft
subjects have been sources of political unrest, instability and
even mass violence.
Nor is this
a new phenomenon. A scholarly history of 19th century Prague referred
to "the well-educated but underemployed" Czech young men who promoted
ethnic polarization there – a polarization that not only continued,
but escalated, in the 20th century to produce bitter tragedies for
both Czechs and Germans.
In other central
European countries, between the two World Wars a rising class of
newly educated young people bitterly resented having to compete
with better qualified Jews in the universities and with Jews already
established in business and the professions. Anti-Semitic policies
and violence were the result.
It was much
the same story in Asia, where successful minorities like the Chinese
in Malaysia were resented by newly educated Malays without either
the educational or business skills to compete with them. These Malaysians
demanded – and got – heavily discriminatory laws and policies against
the Chinese.
Similar situations
developed at various times in Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, Hungary
and India, among other places.
Many
Third World countries have turned out so many people with diplomas,
but without meaningful skills, that "the educated unemployed" became
a cliche among people who study such countries. This has not only
become a personal problem for those individuals who have been educated,
or half-educated, without acquiring any ability to fulfill their
rising expectations, it has become a major economic and political
problem for these countries.
Such people
have proven to be ideal targets for demagogues promoting polarization
and strife. We in the United States are still in the early stages
of that process. But you need only visit campuses where whole departments
feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and resentment,
and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization on campus.
There are too
many other soft courses that allow students to spend years in college
without becoming educated in any real sense.
We don't need
more government "investment" to produce more of such "education."
Lofty words like "investment" should not blind us to the ugly reality
of political porkbarrel spending.
May
11, 2011
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
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