Posted on 05/01/2016 6:15:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's a well-worn (if not-entirely-agreed-upon) idea that college makes people more liberal. But a new report adds a twist to this: the most educated Americans have grown increasingly liberal over the last couple of decades.
A report from the Pew Research Center finds a wide partisan gap between highly educated and non-highly-educated Americans. Not only that, but the share of college grads and post-graduates who are "consistently liberal" (based on their answers to a series of policy questions) has grown sharply in the last 20 years.
In 1994, 7 percent of post-grads were "consistently liberal," and 1 percent of people with high school educations or less were — not much of a difference. Today, the gap is 25 points wide — 31 percent of people with post-grad educations are consistently liberal, compared to 5 percent of those with high school educations or less.
The same kind of change just hasn't happened on the conservative side.
Split it out by party, and the shift is even starker. Among the post-grad set, more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners today are "consistently liberal," up from fewer than one-in-five in 1994. Likewise, among college grads, it jumped from 12 to 47.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Note also that these days a disproportionate number of folks with advanced degrees are Asian or females of all races.
Bingo. Secular humanism is replacing God. We start to believe that we are in control and that we can solve all the world’s ills. We take the power and glory away from God. What is ignored is that those nations who forsake God are and have been some of the worst as far as economic security and human rights.
Because liberals only talk to each other. Conservatives talk to everyone.
As the advanced work became simpler and more useless, more liberals signed up for them. The growth in ethnic and gender studies and literary degrees have made it easy for leftists to get advanced degrees.
That is not a new twist, it is confirmation of the first sentence.
Let's say you are going to school for a degree in computer science. You still have to take a certain number of "liberal arts" courses to get your degree. Since they are not very important to your future job you drift though them giving any of the garbage poured into you little thought and dutifully parrot it back.
If you are going for a liberal arts degree you will quickly find that your reality based views are under attack from all sides and you had better conform if you wish to graduate.
Most people at this point tell the college to kiss off, drop out and get a job.
Man that is the truth.
And so very obvious.
NPR proves it
“I’m highly educated - two college degrees - and get more conservative every day.”
This is caused by intellectual and moral laziness.
The best school in the world is the school of hard knocks.
I think you hot the nail right on the head. Academia, while always liberal, has gotten more doctrinaire over the decades. This is what kids are taught and there is little to no exposure to an alternate point of view.
Also, don't discount the deterrence factor. If you have been consistently rewarded for towing the liberal line of academia it should be no surprise that they consistently turn out liberals.
Then you get another group of these among the very richest people. They may have mostly made their money the old-fashioned way, but have become so rich they think they're a different, higher species now that is visiting planet earth on a tour.
I tag teamed with another student when we were being essentially indoctrinated on Islam by a prof who had clearly lost his way. Got a pat on the shoulder by a returning veteran fellow student on the way out of the class.
My question is, why do so many of the vets just keep their heads down in such discussions?
So what's the net effect? Everyone opining on 'indoctrination', the impact of continuing education, etc, which leads readers to completely miss the point. Now, let's replace liberal with statist and re-consider the conclusions.
The first, and most obvious, is that as a society becomes corrupt, the state begins to gain increasing power in everyday affairs, including economic activity, social decisions, police power, etc. As such, the state needs additional personnel in which to conduct its affairs, and turns to credentials for many/most hiring decisions.
Enter education - the longer one attends school and gains additional qualifications and/or advanced degrees, the greater opportunity they have of gaining a position within government.
Since this is a gravy train operation devoid of all competition once one has secured a suitable position, then the completely natural course would be to pursue this kind of career path in one were so inclined. It has nothing to do with some well developed understanding of political economy, history, etc, but simply a means of achieving some measure of financial security.
One of the (many many) challenges Trump faces is if he would like to restore the US to any measure of traditional values, then he would need to greatly reduce the size/influence of government. Reagan tried but failed; we shall see going forward.
I suspect the results would be different if you filtered out all the responses from people whose diplomas have the word “studies” on them, and people whose employment has no connection whatsoever to the degrees that they hold.
The number of years of left wing indoctrination appears to be paying off.
Leftists have an ever tightening control of educational institutions, from preschool through graduate programs.
The article conflates “education” and “indoctrination”.
For individual liberty to thrive, "We, the People" must be equipped to distinguish and between the principles that would keep America free and prosperous and the false premises that will enslave her, as well as able to articulate them. Accommodating tyranny by failing to call it what it is is dangerous. We need a leader whose words are strong and courageous and based in the principles of our Declaration of Independence.
American citizens need to wake up to the counterfeit ideas and false "hopes" offered by politicians who use "promises," just as the rest of us use "currency."
They buy votes with "promises" in order to gain power to themselves and their ilk. Then, when "hopes" are dashed, "the people" they have promised to help (the naive, the poor, the ignorant--even the "educated" who are ignorant of liberty vs. tyranny) find themselves enslaved, working for those who have purchased their power in the most despicable manner--by offering "hope and change." Thus it has ever been.
The people who founded America were not so "dumbed down." Hear two of them:
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle [usurpation of power] and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much . . . to forget it." - James Madison
" . . . nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the penshioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, lusury, foppery, selfishness, meanness and downright venality swallow up the whole society." - John Adams
Further, it was not just the founding leaders who were well-informed about their constitution and approaching threats to its protections. By the Year 1830, when the French jurist Tocqueville traveled America, he wrote admiringly of the citizenry, observing that even the backwoodsman was far more well-read and informed than those in other parts of the world, and that they understood their Constitution, and had with them a Bible and a newspaper. Sadly, beginning in the mid-20th Century, our "government" schools removed the ideas of liberty from the nation's textbooks, largely under the guise of a counterfeit idea of "separation of church and state," and the citizenry is uninformed as to the difference between tyranny and liberty.
Today, with all modern means of communication, Americans possess little understanding of threats to their liberty and, thus, risk losing it to charlatans whose only goal is power.
John Adams, on July 2, 1776, after a day in which the Continental Congress had adopted the Declaration of Independence, wrote to wife, Abigail:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not…
It may be the will of Heaven that America will suffer calamities still more wasting, and distress yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in States as well as individuals...But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.
That so-called "liberal/progressive" movement intentionally diminished the role of parents and schools in teaching students about their Creator-endowed rights and responsibilities, their individual role as citizens in their communities, and the character training which once was the goal and aim of education in America
Do older readers of this thread remember when such character training was a part of the school day? Do any now retired teachers remember when the National Education Association provided booklets and other materials based on Biblical teachings and America's founding documents in order to teach children their rights and responsibilities as good citizens?
Perhaps an examination of this web site may refresh the minds of such teachers. Or, perhaps a reading of this factual account of NEA publications may enlighten others who are younger to understand the degree to which the "progressive" control of education in America may have contributed to our current dilemma.
"Ideas have consequences." - Weaver
I think it’s because a large proportion of advanced degrees are now in education, or other soft sciences. Most teachers now get a masters in education which is mostly worthless.
Mostly because it’s inconvenient, and a major buzzkill, to believe in any sort of Superior Intelligence who might be inclined to put the brakes on at America’s Party Hearty Central.
“Do not confuse education with intelligence.”
Do not confuse 18 years of continuous, ungodly socialist propaganda with education.
Schools at every level have become liberal madrasses. The more time you spend in them the more indoctrinated you become.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.